Religious Control and Forms of Agency Regarding Women's Sexual and Reproductive Rights

Abstract

The article examines the relationship between religion, gender, and the control of the female body in conservative Christian contexts in Latin America. Its aim is to analyze how doctrinal, symbolic, and community structures within Christian religions function as mechanisms of patriarchal control over women’s sexuality and sexual and reproductive rights, as well as to identify the forms of agency and resistance women develop within these restrictive frameworks. The methodology employed is based on a qualitative approach centered on critical documentary review and content analysis. The corpus consists of feminist literature, theological studies, sociological research, normative frameworks, and recent academic documents. From a hermeneutic and intersectional feminist perspective, this allows for an understanding of religion as a cultural device that articulates multiple inequalities. The results show that religious control over female bodies is sustained through five main dimensions: doctrinal, symbolic-liturgical, institutional, community, and subjective-affective. These dimensions operate through discourses of guilt, the exaltation of mandatory motherhood, moral surveillance, and the reproduction of hierarchies that exclude women from spiritual authority. However, the study also demonstrates the existence of forms of female agency, expressed in practices such as critical reinterpretation of sacred texts, strategic use of contraceptives, the creation of support networks among women, and the personal re-signification of faith. These everyday acts of resistance show that, although religion reproduces patriarchal structures, it is also a space where symbolic disputes and possibilities for transformation emerge.