ABSTRACT
Religious organization of cults and practices is an important site for the social construction of gender ideology, and the positions taken by women is consequential to both sexes, whether they consent to consent to dominant models, reformulate them or actively oppose them. Islamizing women are among those who prefer the use of the shower over the public bath. The differences in personal meaning and public significance among women who wear the veil are lost if it is simply reduced to an index of Muslim women’s oppression. Some women are able to draw on historical traditions where they define their identity and link it to a historical tradition of indigenous feminism and authorized authenticity in contrast to Western feminism. The women presented draw on a number of discourses and take up a variety of subject positions where they invest and make emotional commitments in multiple, even mutually competing, discourses on gender and religious practice.
