ABSTRACT
Though religion has often been used as a major tool in the oppression of women for millennia, it is now being reinterpreted as a critical source of women’s empowerment. Women in growing numbers are re-reading religious traditions from their collective experiences and perspectives. In doing so, they are reclaiming the foundations of their faiths and setting themselves free of dogma that has served to hide the truth of their historical and contemporary capacities for action. Religious teachings that portray women as naturally inferior and morally weak, fulfi lled only in complement to men, are being increasingly exposed as stereotypes based on ignorance and illusion. Such stereotypes are being challenged as the basis of the power inequalities that underlie violence against women.
