The Role of Women in Secular Communities
Summer grant funds unique research project for DU senior
Denver, CO, August 24,2016
Ayn Rand and Madalyn Murray O’Hair may have helped to popularize atheism in the 1950s and ’60s, but in today’s atheist and secular communities, women tend to be underrepresented. DU incoming senior Kristen Kennedy — a double major in sociology and international studies — wanted to find out why.
Thanks to a DU summer research grant, Kennedy was one of 50 undergraduates who were able to spend the summer working in their fields instead of working at the mall. She used the funds to continue a project she began in February 2016, attending meetings of local atheist and secular communities and interviewing their members to study the role of women in such organizations.
“I started this project in a [sociology] methods class,” she says. “It wasn’t exactly the same project; it was more looking at atheist activism and what people think when they hear the word ‘atheist.’ There’s a lot of backlash from that. I stumbled across women atheists when I was doing that project.”
Kennedy found a venue that is home to several secular groups, and she began hanging out there, paying attention to what was discussed — and by whom — at their meetings.
http://news.du.edu/the-role-of-women-in-secular-communities