Qualitative Study on Gender Inclusion and Power in Digital Religious Spaces in Nigeria: A Review

Abstract

Digital platforms have become important sites of worship, religious education, pastoral care, identity formation, debate, and community building. Yet expanded participation does not necessarily produce equitable participation. This paper examines how gender, social location, institutional authority, and platform design interact to shape inclusion and power in digital religious spaces, with particular attention to Nigeria and comparable Global South settings. It adopts a critical integrative review and qualitative thematic synthesis of scholarship on digital religion, gendered religious authority, platform governance, online activism, and digital inequality, supplemented by reports from international institutions. The analysis is guided by networked religion, intersectionality, counter public theory, and platform power. Four interconnected dimensions emerge: access, visibility, authority, and safety-accountability. Digital media can reduce spatial and institutional barriers, enable women to access religious knowledge, create alternative publics, and establish relational forms of authority. However, affordability constraints, unequal digital skills, language hierarchies, algorithmic ranking, engagement-driven visibility, harassment, and persistent patriarchal norms restrict these gains. Nigerian evidence shows that women religious leaders and learners can achieve wider reach online while male authority, institutional endorsement, and platform metrics continue to structure credibility and influence. The paper proposes a Digital Religious Power and Inclusion Framework for assessing who can enter digital faith spaces, whose speech becomes visible, whose knowledge is treated as legitimate, and who can participate without disproportionate risk. It recommends gender-responsive digital policies within religious organisations, transparent and locally informed platform governance, improved affordability and literacy, accessible low-bandwidth design, safeguarding protocols, and independent research using disaggregated data. Inclusive digital religion therefore requires more than connectivity: it requires the deliberate redistribution of visibility, voice, protection, and decision-making power