Citizenship, Faith, and Feminism

Religious women in liberal democracies are "e;dual citizens"e; because of their contrasting status as members of both a civic community (in which their gender has no impact on their constitutional guarantee of equal rights) and a traditional religious community (which distributes roles and power based on gender). This book shows how these "e;dual citizens"e;-Orthodox Jewish women in Israel, Muslim women in Kuwait, and women of both those faiths in the U.S.-have increasingly deployed their civic citizenship rights in attempts to reform and not destroy their religions. For them, neither "e;exit"e; nor acquiescence to traditional religious gender norms is an option. Instead, they use the narrative of civic citizenship combined with a more authentic, if alternative reading of their faith tradition to improve their status.