Global Fault Lines: Gender, Religion, and Nationalism

Guest Edited by Fauzia Husain (Queen's University, Canada) and Rachel Rinaldo (University of Colorado Boulder, US)

Completed manuscripts due April 11, 2026

In an era marked by resurgent nationalisms, right-wing mobilization of religion, and a widespread global backlash against feminism, examining the intersections of gender, religion, and nationalism has become increasingly urgent. Scholars of gender and sexuality are particularly well-equipped for carrying out such an inquiry. Yet within sociology, a lingering tendency to center the Global North (see Alatas 2006; Patil 2011; Bhambra 2014; Becker and Burchardt 2023; Go 2023;) and a reluctance to examine the complexities of religion (Avishai, Jafar, and Rinaldo 2015; Hanafi 2020; Husain 2025) have contributed to a general insufficiency among even sex and gender scholars in developing the theoretical tools and transnational insights essential for critical sociologies (see also Parreñas and Hwang 2023; Puri et al. 2025). With this special issue, we seek to unravel the complex, multi-scalar, and often paradoxical entanglements of religion, gender, and politics across diverse contexts.

Recent political developments underscore the urgency of this work. Across the globe, feminist gains are under threat. Scholars have warned feminist-minded sociologists to prepare for a possible “funeral” of feminist progress (Connell 2023; see also Jung and Moon 2024; Mustafa 2025) and call for a robust response to the international assault on so-called “gender ideology”—a term deployed to reverse hard-won feminist and human rights freedoms (see Butler 2024; Corrêa 2017; Graff and Korolczuk 2022). Such rollbacks include attacks on reproductive justice and sexual rights (Luna 2020); ongoing genocides; renewed racisms and xenophobias; the abandonment of social justice initiatives, the moral panic around a “crisis in masculinity,” and the associated rise of pronatalist movements and efforts to re-domesticize women around the globe (Merchant and Brown 2024; Rudrappa 2024; Freeman, Cordelia and Shoman 2025; Idriss 2025; Stevenson et al 2025). In this climate, sociology must urgently develop global and intersectional theoretical tools to not only sharpen our analytic capacities but also equip us to contest them.

By invoking “global fault lines,” we aim to highlight the fractures, tensions, and shifting boundaries that emerge where gender, religion, and nationalism collide. These fault lines are sites of deep contestation—where feminist struggles meet powerful reactionary forces; unexpected alliances emerge or fragment; and new solidarities bridge borders even as old colonial patterns resurface in modern conflicts. Understanding these fault lines is crucial for illuminating the uneven terrain of power that structures contemporary politics and for envisioning more just and livable futures.

We seek a wide range of scholarship—both empirical and theoretical—relevant to the discipline of sociology that engages these entanglements between religion, nationalism, and gender across the world. We welcome contributions that examine the role of gender and sexuality in nationalist and religious movements and the mobilization of pronatalist and anti-gender ideologies including bathroom bills, anti-trans legislations, the decimation of gender affirmative care, and renewed efforts toward the re-domestication of women in pursuit of authoritarian politics. We also invite work that analyzes resistances, solidarities, social movements, and political imaginaries working to contest these assaults and to generate alternative visions. We particularly encourage contributions that adopt a transnational focus.

Completed manuscripts, due April 11, 2026, should be no longer than 9000 words and should be submitted online to http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gendsoc. Please follow all submission guidelines for Gender & Society. Please indicate in a cover letter that the paper is to be considered for the special issue on Global Fault Lines: Gender, Religion, and Nationalism. For more information on the special issue, please feel free to contact the special issue editors, Fauzia Husain (fauzia.husain(at)queensu.ca) and Rachel Rinaldo (Rachel.Rinaldo(at)Colorado.edu).

Call for Papers (Link)

 

References:

• Alatas, Syed Farid. 2006. Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism. New Delhi: Sage.
• Avishai, Orit, Afshan Jafar, and Rachel Rinaldo. 2015. "A gender lens on religion." Gender & Society 29(1): 5-25.
• Becker, Johannes, and Marian Burchardt. 2023. "Doing Global Sociology." Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 48(4): 7-32.
• Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2014. Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury.
• Butler, Judith. 2024. Who’s Afraid of Gender? New York: Random House.
• Connell, Raewyn. 2023. “Six Revolutions and Perhaps a Funeral.” American Journal of Sociology 129(3):925–931.
• Corrêa, Sonia. 2017. “Gender Ideology: Tracking Its Origins and Meanings in Current Gender Politics.” Engenderings, December 11. Retrieved September 22, 2025 (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2017/12/11/gender-ideology-tracking-its-origins-and-meanings-in-current-gender-politics/).
• Freeman, Cordelia, and Hala Shoman. 2025. “No Justice in a Genocide: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Gaza.” Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (just-accepted):1–10.
• Go, Julian. 2016. Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Graff, Agnieszka, and Elżbieta Korolczuk. 2022. Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. New York: Taylor & Francis.
• Hanafi, Sari. 2020. “Global Sociology Revisited: Toward New Directions.” Current Sociology 68(1):3–21.
• Husain, Fauzia. 2025. "Muslim women's agency; getting past the binary trap." Sociological Forum. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.13059
• Miller-Idriss, Cynthia. 2025. Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. Princeton University Press.
• Jung, Gowoon, and Minyoung Moon. 2024. “‘I Am a Feminist, But…’: Practicing Quiet Feminism in the Era of Everyday Backlash in South Korea.” Gender & Society 38(2):216–243.
• Luna, Zakiya. 2020. Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice. New York: NYU Press.
• Merchant, Emily and Win Brown. 2024. “The Problem with Pronatalism.” theconversation.com/the-problem-with-pronatalism-pushing-baby-booms-to-boost-economic-growth-amounts-to-a-ponzi-scheme-235725
• Mustafa, Balsam. 2025. “Gender Found Guilty: Anti-Gender Backlash and (Dis)Translation Politics in Iraq.” Gender & Society 39(4):509–534. doi:10.1177/08912432251344267.
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• Puri, Jyoti, Sa’ed Atshan, Minwoo Jung, and Zine Magubane. 2025. “In Plain Sight: Conversing Empires, Race, Sexuality and Gender.” Sex & Sexualities 1(1):67–74.
• Rudrappa, Sharmila. 2024. “No Reproductive Justice with No Ceasefire in Palestine.” Critical Sociology 50(6):1025–1032. doi:10.1177/08969205241262058.
• Stevenson, Amanda Jean & Clark, Shelley & Dowd, Jennifer & Gemmill, Alison & Guzzo, Karen Benjamin & Lindberg, Laura D. & Hayford, Sarah & Root, Leslie, 2025. "Don’t Panic: Population Projection is Not a Crystal Ball," SocArXiv mq978_v1, Center for Open Science.
• Tamale, Sylvia. 2020. “Decolonization and Afro-Feminism.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies.