The spiritual revolution and the New Age gender puzzle: the sacralisation of the self in Late Modernity (1980-2000)

Delivered as a keynote lecture by the first author at the conference Religion and Gender, BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group, Lancaster University, April 11-13, 2005, this chapter has benefited greatly from research conducted during his visiting professorship at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille, France (November 2003). The authors further thank Sabine Lauderbach, Peter Mascini and Peter Achterberg for their useful comments on an earlier draft – especially Peter Achterberg’s statistical advice was as useful as ever. Finally, they wish to acknowledge Linda Scheelbeek, because it was her Master’s thesis (2003) that put the first author (who acted as her supervisor) on the track of the solution to the gender puzzle proposed here.