Work–faith integration in the neoliberal age: Women professionals’ alignment of evangelical identity with professional identity in South Korea

Abstract

Prior studies on work–faith integration have only explained professionals’ negotiation of religious and professional identities within one occupational setting, overlooking how the negotiation diverges in the soaring force of neoliberal regime that intersects with gendered workplace culture. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Korean evangelical women professionals, the article demonstrates how women, proportionately more religious than men, arrive in the alignment of two identities at the workplace. The research finds two patterns of alignments: (1) individual moralising, which is achieved through displaying the narratives of calling and participating in expressive activities, and (2) selective compartmentalising, which is obtained through the practices of setting flexible boundaries and turning evangelical language off. Bringing a neoliberal and gendered perspective to the categorisation of workplaces, this study argues that women are likely to display higher degrees of faith and more evangelical language within less neoliberal-oriented, feminised workplaces than in neoliberal-oriented, masculine ones.