The relationship between women and religion poses manifold problems. There is the question of religion in theory and religion in practice, and it is difficult to speak about women as if they constitute a unified entity, when in actual fact they lead fragmented existences subject to divisions of class, race, nationality, and ethnicity. Things become all the more complicated when it comes to trying to understand women's subjectivities, the ways in which they conceive of themselves and of the world around them.This book, while taking women's subjectivities and reasons for their taking to religion into account, focuses mainly on the functions of religion -- the way it relates to women, by providing legitimization and reification and by its contribution to reinforcing rigid gender differences.The status of women in religion compels one to deal with the relationship between gender on the one hand, and power and social control on the other, and within this context, the meanings carried by the human body -- particularly woman's body: why in all three monotheisms is the gender of God conceptualized as male; what is the impact of this conceptualization on our thoughts vis a vis gender definitions, the nature of authority and power structures; why is the power of procreation of women underestimated while the ability to create culture and civilization, attributed solely to men, overestimated?Undertaken as well is an exposition of contemporary fundamentalism in both its Protestant and Islamic variants (in America and Iran) in the hope that a comparative approach to religious fundamentalism will offer clues for a deeper understanding of the revival of religious belief in our modern world.