Een glas-in-lood plafond? ‘De Vrouw 1813-1913’ en andere verbeeldingen van vrouwen, religie en emancipatie
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18352/bmgn-lchr.10043Keywords:
History, Low Countries, Netherlands, Belgium, gender, women's historyAbstract
A Leaded-Glass Ceiling?: ‘Women 1813-1913’ and Other Visions of Women, Religion and Emancipation
The exhibition ‘Women 1813-1913’ was a key moment in the visibility of women’s religiosity in the public realm. However, it was so because it accentuated the feminist framework of women’s formal rights and projected it on the ecclesiastical domain. This one-sided representation, which excluded Catholic women among others, has remained unacknowledged in historiography. Focusing on motivations and aims of female subjects, this article addresses Catholic women’s attempts to gain an authoritative position and have a public voice in the religious realm, despite opposition.
It analyses both their resentment of the formal rights discourse and their appropriations. By doing so, the article emphasises the historical diversity of female religious agency and the experience of empowerment, as well as the importance of religion as a category for identity. The last is typified as a source of difference rather than a unifying factor among women, both in 1813 and 1913 and in the twenty-first century.
This article is part of the special issue 'De Vrouw 1813-1913'.
De tentoonstelling ‘De Vrouw 1813-1913’ was een scharnierpunt in de
zichtbaarmaking van de religiositeit van vrouwen in de publieke sfeer, maar accentueerde het feministische denkkader van ‘formele rechten’ van vrouwen in de kerken. De geschiedschrijving heeft het eenzijdige karakter van deze representatie, die onder meer katholieke vrouwen uitsloot, niet onderkend.
Vertrekkend vanuit de denkkaders van de vrouwelijke subjecten zélf, hun doelstellingen en motivatie, belicht deze bijdrage de pogingen van katholieke vrouwen (religieuze bewegingen, politica’s en feministisch theologen) in de jaren ná 1913 om religieuze spreekposities in te nemen en de weerstanden die ze ontmoetten. Soms stonden de pogingenhaaks op het rechtendiscours, soms eigenden vrouwen zich dat toe. De bijdrage benadrukt de historische diversiteit van vrouwelijke religieuze agency en ervaringen van empowerment, alsmede het belang van religie voor identiteit. Religie komt erin naar voren als bron van verschil tussen vrouwen, zowel in 1813 en 1913 als een eeuw later.
Dit artikel maakt deel uit van het themanummer 'De Vrouw 1813-1913'.
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