Women and Religion

"While taking women's subjectivities and reasons for their taking to religion into account, this book focuses mainly on the functions of religion: the way it relates to women; its contribution to gender differences; and the status of women within it, particularly the relationship between gender on the one hand, and power and social control on the other, and within this context, the meanings attributed to the female body. The author examines why, in all three monotheisms the gender of God is male and what the impact of this is on our thoughts regarding gender definitions, the nature of authority, and power structures. Undertaken as well, is an exposition of contemporary Fundamentalism in both its Protestant and Islamic variants (in America and Iran)."--BOOK JACKET.