WOMEN AND DA’WAH IN CONTEMPORARY ISLAM: NEGOTIATING GENDER, RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY, AND DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERES

Abstract

Women’s participation in Islamic da’wah has expanded beyond conventional religious spaces into education, community work, public scholarship, and social media. Yet increased visibility does not automatically eliminate gendered hierarchies in religious authority. This article critically examines how women negotiate da’wah, gender, and religious authority in contemporary Muslim contexts, with particular attention to Indonesia’s digital public sphere. Drawing on a qualitative interpretive literature-based approach, the article synthesizes scholarship on gender and Qur’anic interpretation, women’s religious authority, digital religion, and Indonesian Muslim public culture. The analysis indicates three interconnected transformations. First, women are increasingly positioned as producers rather than merely recipients of religious knowledge. Second, digital platforms lower some institutional barriers to religious participation while simultaneously introducing new forms of visibility, commodification, algorithmic dependency, and gendered scrutiny. Third, women’s agency in da’wah cannot be reduced to a binary opposition between emancipation and patriarchy; it is better understood as a negotiated form of religious agency shaped by theological commitments, social expectations, institutional structures, and platform affordances. The article proposes a conceptual framework of negotiated religious agency consisting of knowledge production, relational engagement, institutional participation, and digital mediation. The framework contributes to scholarship on Islamic communication by linking gender-sensitive Qur’anic interpretation with the changing ecology of religious authority in digital Indonesia.