Amanda Lewis, University of Notre Dame
“Perceptions and Realities: Discerning the Relationship Between Mayan Women and the Roman Catholic Church”
Bio: Amanda Lewis is a junior at the University of Notre Dame, majoring in Sociology with a supplementary major in Gender Studies. She currently serves as the co-president of the campus group Feminist Voice and as the secretary of the Gender Studies Honor Society. Amanda won the 2008 Genevieve D. Willis Senior Thesis Summer Research Grant through the Gender Studies Program to study gender relations in Guatemala. After graduation Amanda plans to attend graduate school to pursue a Masters of Social Work degree.
Abstract: For thirty-six years, Guatemala experienced the violence and unrest of a racially charged civil war in which violations of human rights, especially against the indigenous Maya, were all too common. Since the signing of the peace treaty in 1996, various people, including members of the Roman Catholic Church, have attempted to address issues of discrimination and human rights. Mayan women, who are considered by many to be the most vulnerable members of their society, are one of the groups affected by these efforts. In contrast to a commonly held feminist view that the Catholic Church promotes some of the most rigid and traditional notions of gender in contemporary society, my research illustrates that members of the Catholic Church in Guatemala are currently playing an integral role in advancing ideas of gender equity. The paper intends to explore the functions of the Church in Mayan women’s lives, as well as how women are in turn impacting their Church and communities. The Catholic Church has become a strong, positive, and empowering influence in Guatemalan women’s lives, offering resources and a space for them to discuss issues of human dignity and equality in a society pervaded by post-war social problems and the machismo culture. Because of this influence, women are gradually reclaiming their lives as their own and beginning to develop their own ideas of what it means to be a woman in their culture.
