Investigating the Intellectual Bifurcation Between Feminist Theory and Sociology of Religious Leadership

Despite rich theoretical developments occurring within feminist theory, Avishai and Irby (2017) have identified that a problematic ‘intellectual bifurcation’ (652) exists between the fields of ‘feminism’ and ‘sociology of religion.’ This means that developments in feminist knowledge and theorising may not be being used by sociologists of religion to frame their work on gender. The present study elaborates on the work of Avishai and Irby (2017) by conducting a literature review which considers empirical sociological journal publications in the area of religion, gender and leadership between January 2001 to December 2021. Using a combination of citation analysis and the analytical codes developed by Avishai and Irby<i> </i>(2017), the findings of this article suggest that the existence of the intellectual bifurcation subtly persists, as scholars in the subdiscipline of sociology of religion doing work on gender and leadership include some gender or feminist citations in background or literature review sections, but these are rarely substantial or timely, nor do they trickle down to influence the conceptual frameworks used to situate analyses or discussions. The article concludes by presenting some considerations on using citation analysis to better understand patterns of knowledge transmission and bifurcation.