Women and the Church : challenges in researching women’s religiosity in Poland

This chapter focuses on the problem of reflexivity and the positioning of the feminist and irreligious researcher when studying women in conservative religions. It also points to the impact of the wider institutional and historical context on the methodological choices we make and on the course of the research process. The author’s reflections are based on her experiences gathered during a qualitative study of conservative Catholic women in Poland. First, Szwed identifies the challenges associated with the influence of the dominant religion (i.e. Roman Catholicism in Poland) on the way women’s religiosity is conceived and their religious practices are studied. Second, she discusses the problem of positioning the researcher vis-à-vis the object of the research and the possible tensions that arise when researching people with radically different religious identities and ideological stances from our own. Third, the author addresses the question of religious women’s agency. The discussion points to the relativity of the subordination-emancipation dichotomy and the challenges the researcher meets when acknowledging practices that support the patriarchal order as agentic. Finally, the chapter demonstrates that a researcher’s reflexivity often means casting doubt on one’s assumptions, working on one’s own limitations and prejudices, and accepting the dissonance that appears when the data gathered contradicts our ideological agendas