Feminism and the Protestant World

There is a strong link between the American suffrage movement and the commitment of Protestant women to re-reading sacred texts and rewriting the Bible in terms of gender. It was in 1895 that Elisabeth Cady Stanton's work The Woman's Bible was completed. The exegete Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza highlights two criteria : the biblical text is androcentric and in many passages patriarchal and kuriarchal. The distinction of these two dynamics also defines the staying of Protestant women in churches: as "residents alien" in an androcentric context, acting to dismantle the forms of patriarchal speech and domination. In Italy, Protestant women have intertwined their paths with the strength of feminist movements, going through the different phases of emancipation, the "thought of difference", lastly the gender and intersectional analyses. The presence of women as leaders or pastors in church is only a starting point towards building awareness of female freedom and towards the alliance with other "abject" and invisible subjects, such as migrants and refugees, the Roma people, the lgbtq+ people.