Women in World Religions

The book opens with Arvind Sharma’s preface, which frames the project as a collaborative scholarly enterprise written by women scholars and grounded in a phenomenological respect for the insider’s perspective. Katherine K. Young’s introduction establishes the methodological foundation of the volume, explaining the development of women’s studies in religion, the need to move beyond purely androcentric sources, and the importance of examining both textual traditions and lived religious experience. The chapter on Tribal Religions: Aboriginal Australia by Rita M. Gross provides a comparative baseline by showing how gender complementarity, ritual life, and women’s ceremonies may function differently from patriarchal world religions. Katherine K. Young’s chapter on Hinduism analyzes women through the lenses of domestic ritual, motherhood, goddess symbolism, caste, marriage, asceticism, and reform. Nancy Schuster Barnes’s chapter on Buddhism examines doctrinal equality, the admission of women into the monastic order, the authority of monks over nuns, and later developments in Buddhist traditions. Theresa Kelleher’s chapter on Confucianism studies family order, filial piety, ancestor worship, ritual hierarchy, and women’s roles within the moral-political structure of Chinese society. Barbara Reed’s chapter on Taoism explores yin-yang symbolism, female spiritual power, nature imagery, and Taoist spaces that allowed more flexible possibilities for women. Denise L. Carmody’s chapter on Judaism focuses on covenant, family, purity, Torah, domestic religion, and the tension between exclusion from formal authority and religious power within the home. Rosemary R. Ruether’s chapter on Christianity traces women from the Jesus movement through church history, monasticism, Protestantism, reform, and feminist critique. Jane I. Smith’s chapter on Islam addresses Qur’anic teachings, social stereotypes, marriage, modesty, law, women’s piety, and the complexity of Muslim women’s historical experience. The volume closes with notes on contributors, notes, bibliography, and index, making it a structured reference work for comparative study.