This volume enriches scholarship on gender and religion by exploring Orthodox women's roles and the “gender aspects of lived Orthodoxy,” fields that have been “understudied” compared with other denominations and/or Islam (2). Besides a Foreword and Introduction, there are nine chapters, each with a mainly national focus, covering Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Finland, and the US. Most chapters focus on regions where Orthodoxy has been the predominant religion historically and/or on former Soviet republics. The articles on Finland and the US examine contexts where Orthodoxy is a minority religion. Given the volume's geographical coverage, the title is overly broad. Chronologically, most chapters address post-World War II and/or post-Soviet eras. In her Foreword, Kristin Aune identifies thematic links between the articles in the volume and the scholarly literature on religion and gender. Ina Merdjanova briefly summarizes each chapter in her Introduction, highlighting issues of historical continuity and transformations.
Orthodox churches venerate women's religiosity—especially virginity or motherhood as exemplified by Mary—but generally accept a biological definition of gender and traditional gender roles. Orthodox women tend to be “socially conservative” and buy into “gender complementarity” rather than equality (9). Thus, feminization of Orthodoxy in many places has not fundamentally altered the doctrine, patriarchy, or hierarchy of Orthodox churches. The contributors see Orthodox women, to whatever degree they participate in a patriarchal, hierarchical religion, as active agents, not as “unaware victims who have internalized their own oppression within the grids of patriarchal culture” (213).
Orthodox women are typically excluded from clerical orders, are not allowed in the altar area, and depending on specific contexts, may also be prohibited from participation in services as readers or choir members/directors. The extent of exclusion depends on national context, with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church being among the most exclusionary discussed here. The contributors demonstrate that although women are denied official power positions in the church hierarchy, they exercise influence through their roles as professionals (accountants and secretaries for parishes, dioceses), teachers, abbesses, council members, or participants in lay organizations. As Aune notes, they seek to expand opportunities for women within a church that nonetheless “seems to disadvantage them” (xvi–xvii).
Without challenging the formal patriarchal structure of the church, women circumvent official subordination and assume influence and unofficial leadership roles by using social media, founding convents or participating in monastic life, or at least in Georgia, by operating “in gray zones of religiosity” as healers, clairvoyants, or fortune-tellers (although fortune-tellers are not accepted by the church, 115). Georgian women push back against marginalization and exert tremendous influence when it comes to the rituals surrounding death. They exercise influence by serving as secretaries or managers for priests and bishops, including the patriarch. Greek female bloggers “blur the boundaries between ‘experts’ and ‘followers’” and potentially have greater reach than many clergy (31). In Soviet Moldova the Archangelist monastic movement attracted many young women who preached, collected money, and even sometimes adopted “priestly functions” (138). Their monastic ideal represented an alternative to marriage, childbearing/rearing, and housework, empowering women to resist the Romanian and Soviet states and the official Orthodox Church that treated women as a resource to “be marshaled for the good of the state and the nation” (149).
Several contributors argue that in the last few decades the Orthodox churches have become increasingly patriarchal and conservative, the widespread feminization of Orthodoxy notwithstanding. Since the 2008 economic crisis, the Greek Orthodox Church abandoned its recently reestablished female diaconate among nuns and returned to a focus on “fatherland, faith, and family” (19). Some Greek Orthodox female bloggers promote socially conservative discourses against secularism and feminism and affirm traditional gender roles. The Bulgarian church opposed the Council of Europe's Convention on Preventing Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (2011) because of the Convention's acceptance of the idea that gender is a constructed, not biological category, displaying more interest in combatting gender ideology than in battered women. In Georgia since the collapse of the USSR women's roles have been minimized. The Russian Orthodox Church's (ROC) official social teaching upholds the traditional patriarchal family as the Christian model and many lay people idealize the patriarchal family. Yet the ROC is experiencing a de facto “cultural turn” without a corresponding “doctrinal turn” (84). In reality, single motherhood is ubiquitous and normalized in both the Russian church and society—the church employs many single mothers—with about one-third of Russian children “born out of wedlock” and many children growing up in households with no male adult (81). Survey research of Orthodox women's political views—187 responses, mostly from women in the US—suggests that while women's views are not homogenous, female converts are transforming Orthodoxy into an even more socially conservative movement, with a strong “family values” focus, than it has historically been (264).
Although each chapter has a national focus, read together they allow for comparative and transnational study of Orthodox women. Communist repression was not uniformly deleterious to religious participation. In Romania church attendance rates and monasticism—especially female—increased during the communist period. Female monasticism is thriving in Greece and Romania, increasing in Serbia, and impoverished in Bulgaria. Orthodox communities in traditionally ethnically homogeneous areas are becoming more transnational. The internet facilitates transnational interaction and enhances the outreach of social media users. Multiethnic female monastic communities have been springing up. In Finland, only one percent of the population is Orthodox, but foreign-born membership in the autonomous Orthodox Church of Finland has increased from three to eleven percent in recent years due to migration, leading to a more glocal, multilingual, and multiethnic church.
Overall the volume shows the range of ways that Orthodox women live out their faith without prioritizing patriarchy, hierarchy, or gender equality. It helps to explain alignments in contemporary debates surrounding liberal democratic values. Ina Merdjanova states that the study of gender and Orthodoxy is ultimately about Orthodoxy and human rights. The Orthodox churches will not be at the forefront of the human rights movement anytime soon.
