Cults and Confidence: An Examination of Cult Recruitment Rhetoric Targeting Women and Its Presence in Mainstream Confidence Culture Discourse

Jeannette Mulherin

Advisor: Douglas Eyman, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Courtney Adams Wooten, Michael Malouf

Horizon Hall, #4225, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/97254505551?pwd=uSXd96hFiRyG5RkHYawn1NurAQXK7A.1
April 22, 2025, 12:00 PM to 02:00 PM

Abstract:

At any given time, thousands of cults exist in the United States, and experts estimate that 70 percent of their members are women. Although scholars in disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and law among others have done extensive research into cults, only minimal attention has been devoted specifically to women’s involvement in such groups, and none of it has examined the rhetoric that draws women into cults.

To address this research gap, this project applied a qualitative thematic analysis to 10 memoirs written by women who joined U.S.-based cults as adults to determine whether rhetorical commonalities existed in their recruitment narratives. This first phase of the project identified and examined the rhetorical practices that draw women into cults and keep them there, revealing significant similarities among the women’s stories and indicating a fairly standard approach to female recruitment and retention among the varied groups. During the second phase, the set of themes generated by the initial analysis were examined against the concepts that animate “confidence culture,” a term that scholars Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill have attached to a contemporary mainstream rhetoric that also targets women, characterizes itself as feminist and liberatory, and circulates widely in the media and advertising, on social media, and as the focus of self-help programs, professional training courses, and corporate slogans. Broadly, confidence culture rhetoric asserts that an increase in confidence is a panacea for all that ails women, with the underlying message that structural inequality is not holding women back from greater achievement but rather, women’s general lack of self-confidence is the real culprit.

The research findings demonstrate that the two rhetorics, although seemingly seeking opposing aims, share significant similarities. They both promise to move women toward achievement and personal and career satisfaction if they work tirelessly to fix themselves but ultimately result in differing degrees of servitude. They both deny the existence of structural inequality in the cult or in society, placing the blame for failure or dissatisfaction squarely on individual women’s shoulders. These rhetorics replace feminism’s call for collective action to dismantle the systemic oppression that harms women’s advancement with a directive that women should work tirelessly to overcome the inherent psychological flaws at the root of their inability to reach personal and career goals. Finally, both rhetorics trap women in a never-ending loop of failure because no amount of work will ever be enough to “fix” them.