One of the earliest depictions of flying witches is in a 15th-century text entitled “Le champion des dames,” or “The Defender of Ladies.”
Martin Le Franc/W. Schild. Die Maleficia der Hexenleut' via Wikimedia Commons
The iconic image of a witch on a broomstick has apocryphal origins. But whether they could actually fly didn’t stop Christian society from persecuting them.
Six years after the #MeToo hashtag went viral, women in minority communities still face extra challenges addressing harassment and abuse.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
In minority faith groups that already face hate, women who have experienced harassment sometimes fear bringing negative attention to their community.
The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., where on July 19 and 20, 1848, the first women’s rights conventions in the U.S. were held.
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Most of the convention’s core organizers were Quakers. The religious movement’s beliefs about men and women’s equality before God has shaped members’ activism for centuries.
Jewish law includes acknowledgment that not everyone fits neatly into the categories ‘male’ and ‘female.’
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People sometimes assume religious traditions’ ideas about gender have always been conservative and unchanging.
Attendees, or ‘messengers,’ hold up their ballots during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in 2022.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
In Southern Baptist history, rules on women and sexuality are often entwined. A scholar writes about the first congregation to be expelled from the SBC over LGBTQ+ issues
Buddhism prizes both compassion and undivided focus – which can be hard to combine.
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The lines between family life and Buddhist monasticism are not so ‘either/or’ as they might seem.
People admire a massive statue of the Hindu goddess Kali.
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Mother figures from faith traditions around the world reflect many different ways of thinking about the divine.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, photographed in New York circa 1874.
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Theosophy and its founders had an outsize impact on Americans’ ideas about spirituality and Asian religions.
Iranian newspaper headlines about the protests that started with death of Mahsa Amini.
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Controversy of veils goes back more than a century, a scholar of Iran explains.
‘A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding,’ a 19th-century painting by Russian artist Vassily Maximov.
Tretyakov Gallery/Wikimedia Commons
The idea of a ‘witch’ was usually female in Western Europe, but not so in Orthodox Russia – partly because of the period’s rigid social hierarchies.
A woman describes being abused sexually by a Southern Baptist minister, outside the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in June 2019, in Birmingham, Ala.
AP Photo/Julie Bennett
Accused men were protected by the SBC while the women who dared to speak up were called sluts, adulteresses, Jezebels and even agents of Satan. A scholar of evangelicalism writes about this culture.
Demonstrators stand outside the Supreme Court in 2014.
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Views on abortion differ not only among major religious traditions, but within each one.
Sara Hurwitz, Amy Eilberg, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso and Sally J. Priesand, each of whom was the first female rabbi in her branch of Judaism.
Courtesy of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives
Rabbi Sally J. Priesand’s ordination by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion opened the doors to hundreds of women becoming rabbis.
Congregants sit in a circle at the Women’s Mosque of America.
Women's Mosque of America
As Muslims congregate in their local mosques in communal prayer for Eid, the Women’s Mosque of America, located in Los Angeles, will provide an exclusive religious space for its female congregants.
Nigerian women greet each other at St. Charles Catholic Church in Ngurore, Nigeria, on Feb. 17, 2019.
AP Photo/Sunday Alamba
Women’s contributions to global Christianity are immense, but scholars’ understanding is hampered by limited data.
Tsvi Reiter, Yvonne Reiter and Hei Le participate in Yvonne’s bat mitzvah ceremony, which was performed over Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Judith Kaplan became the first American bat mitzvah in 1922. The Jewish coming-of-age ceremony has become more popular for girls ever since.
Muslim women’s sports participation is growing.
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Two researchers collected data from Muslim women in 34 countries on their views on wearing sports hijab. Here is what they found.
The number of women religious leaders is growing, but the 2018-2019 National Congregations Study, which surveyed 5,300 U.S. religious communities, found that only 56.4% of these communities would allow a woman to “be head clergy person or primary religious leader.”
AP Photo/Young Kwak
Three female academics discuss how women are forging new pathways in faith leadership throughout religions that traditionally have been patriarchal.
Opportunities are expanding for Orthodox Jewish women to formally study Jewish texts. This event in Jerusalem celebrated women who completed the 7 ½-year cycle of daily study of the Talmud.
AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov
Religious leadership roles for Orthodox Jewish women are expanding, including community scholars and guides on Jewish law.
What should a marriage look like? Religious leaders’ ideas have shifted for centuries.
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LDS leaders still stress that men should ‘preside’ over their families. But in recent years, messages about marriage have stressed more equal partnership.