Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper showcases a new typology of women leaders in religious organizations by creating a four-cell paradigm of leadership strategies employed by exemplars Hilda of Whitby, Theodelinda of the Lombards, Teresa of Avila, and Dorothy Day. This research intersects sociological inquiry with the discipline of leadership and contributes to the study of women in the organizational settings of patriarchal church. It identifies the intersectionality of religious identity with leadership actions by examining leadership in the organizational context of religion that significantly shaped their lives. By invoking current relevancies among prevailing leadership paradigms (e.g. authentic, transformational, situational, and so on) I show how contrasting leadership styles provide a measure for overcoming gender limitations in demonstrating organizational success. Ultimately this creates a typology of women, religion, and leadership, which intersects a female leader’s place within church institutional authority with personal role identity as a leader. The intersection is bi-directional: while we learn how to lead, it is also the case that leadership studies paradigms demonstrates what it means to be a woman who challenges the status quo, defies accepted social norms, and redefines the role as leader. Each woman has a legacy identity, socially constructed in museums, archives, commemorations, or surviving institutional establishments. I examine their contemporary legacy using visual sociology, a tool based on what we experience with our senses, engaging each woman’s leadership legacy in their modern enabling environment in order to construct a typology intersecting leadership strategies with gender and institutional structures and power.