Religious Authority as Gendered Power

Sor Juana's struggles cannot be separated from her identity as a woman in a patriarchal Church. Male bishops and confessors exercised authority over her intellectual work, her time, her body, her speech—a power they would not have wielded over a man of equal intellectual stature. This framework recognizes that religious doubts and departures are not always primarily about doctrine; they may be about the gendered violence embedded in institutional structures. Women's discomfort with religious systems may stem from how those systems encode male authority as divine truth. For women navigating religious identity—whether as believers seeking reform, doubters questioning why they feel so constrained, or leavers seeking freedom—this framework validates the connection between intellectual liberation and gender justice. Sor Juana's fight for the right to think was inseparable from her fight against being treated as a subordinate vessel requiring male supervision.