Agents for cultural reproduction and structural change: The ironic role of women in immigrant religious institutions

Changes in the roles of women in 13 immigrant religious institutions in Houston, Texas, are analyzed using gender theories related to the reproduction of gender and to structural changes that enhance opportunities for women. In immigrant congregations, women uniformly play central roles in reproducing traditional ethnic culture as they "do gender." Their access to lay honorific and authority positions, however, is increasing in nearly all 13 cases as a result of (I) considerable expansion in the number of lay roles and (2) enhanced resources on the part of women, flowing from employment and education, which spur them to seek changes in their status and roles within their congregations. The extent of women's access to formal congregational roles is significantly an inverse function of the strength of men's desires to fill them, which, in turn, reflects the extent to which men have suffered social status loss in the migration process.