Members shared personal experiences with fasting, such as recognizing another person was a Baha’i because they were fasting too. Mirafzali’s book provides some quotations, but takes a pragmatic approach as well, with discussions on topics such as what foods to choose during the Fast that members found especially helpful. Herrmann’s book includes quotations about fasting and the Fast, organized by which figure of the Faith authored the quotation. Members found both books helpful, but in different ways. Steele and his colleagues didn’t.Members discussed two books on Baha’i fasting at last month’s meeting: Happy Fasting by Saied Mirafzali, and Fasting, A Baha’i Handbook by Duane L. His earliest research on the subject observed how women underperform on math tests solely because of the widely held belief that they are inferior to men in mathematics. Steele, now dean of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, has a particular interest in how stereotype threat functions in academic settings. Each setting renders a specific group or groups vulnerable to stereotype threat. A white man may experience this form of stereotype threat on the court, but he won’t experience it as he moves into another setting, such as the classroom, where his athletic ability is irrelevant and the associations that accompany his social identity are confidence and competence. Because the white man is in a situation where a stereotype could apply to him, he knows that one false move could cause him to be reduced to that caricature, to be seen and treated in terms of it. Evidence shows that this stereotype has real effects on that white male’s experience of the world, often inhibiting his athletic performance regardless of the actual abilities of those around him. For a white male participating in a high-pressure sport like professional basketball, the ghost that hovers over his head is the widely held stereotype that white men are inferior in athletic ability to their black teammates and opponents. 1 The ghost is menacing and shifts according to one’s context and social identity. Social psychologist Claude Steele made stereotype threat famous with his 2010 book, Whistling Vivaldi, where he laid out years of social-scientific evidence for the “ghost” that haunts each and every one of us as we move through everyday life. “Stereotype threat” occurs when people’s anticipation of stereotyping consciously or unconsciously hinders their actual participation in society. It is an ongoing manifestation of patriarchy that rouses Daly’s ghost. This problem, known as stereotype threat, is not unique to the younger generations of women in Catholic theology, but it is pernicious and ubiquitous among us. In an effort to promote greater intergenerational understanding and a more accurate account of the experiences of young women in Catholic theology today, I take a close look at one of the underacknowledged and especially elusive problems that still faces us. We continue to traverse a number of gendered obstacles in the field today, often while being told (implicitly, of course) that these problems are negligible. Yet all this casual talk of women’s progress in Catholic theology elides the challenges that my generation still faces. There are certainly many ways that Catholic theology is easier for me-a thirty-year-old laywoman-than it was for women in previous generations. The profession is “so much better” for me than it was for them. I am reminded of this on the many occasions when mentors tell me how good I have it. They serve as presidents of our national and international theological societies. They run our prestigious academic journals. Women hold chairs in Catholic theology at our top universities. Professional female Catholic theologians exist, and they excel. Those of her generation and the women who immediately followed rarely had female role models in the profession. When Daly first taught at BC, she was one of the few women in Catholic theology. Yet Daly’s ghost is not only a companion to me as I bemoan the realities of women in Catholic theology today but also a hopeful reminder of the improved status of women in the field. She hovers in the corners of offices where well-meaning professors warned me that my interest in gender and sexuality could ostracize me on the job market. Her groans echo in the classrooms where I took my first doctoral seminars during my first semester of doctoral studies, I was the only woman in half of my systematics classes. Sometimes, I imagine feminist scholar Mary Daly as a banshee who haunts the halls of the Boston College (BC) theology department where I study.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |