Feminism, Law, and Religion (Gender in Law, Culture, and Society) - Hardcover

'This valuable book offers powerful new insights into the troubled relations between religion and feminism. The contributors go beyond facile dichotomies to show the paradoxes and complexities of the human condition. Cutting across different religions, the book offers a salutary understanding of how women experience - and often resolve - the tension between faith and feminism. We are on the threshold of a new phase in the politics of religion and gender, both globally and locally.'Ziba Mir-Hosseini, University of London, UK

With contributions from some of the most prominent voices writing on gender, law and religion today, this book illuminates some of the conflicts at the intersection of feminism, theology and law. It examines a range of themes from the viewpoint of identifiable traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, from a theoretical and practical perspective. Among the themes discussed are the cross-over between religious and secular values and assumptions in the search for a just jurisprudence for women, the application of theological insights from religious traditions to legal issues at the core of feminist work, feminist legal readings of scriptural texts on women's rights and the place that religious law has assigned to women in ecclesiastic life. Feminists of faith face challenges from many sides: patriarchal remnants in their own tradition, dismissal of their faith commitments by secular feminists and balancing the conflicting loyalties of their lives. The book will be essential reading for legal and religious academics and students working in the area of gender and law or law and religion.