Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Situating the Issues, Framing the Analysis Carolyn Evans and Amanda Whiting -- 2. Sex or Sangha? Non-normative Gender Roles for Women in Thailand Lucinda Peach -- 3.Women and Witchcraft: Positivist, Prelapsarian, and Post-Modern Judicial Interpretations in PNG Jean G. Zorn -- 4. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Women, Religion and Law in Solomon Islands Jennifer Corrin Care -- 5. Women, Religion and the Law in Aotearoa /New Zealand: The Complexity of Accommodating Different Value Systems in Law Margaret Bedggood and Leah Whiu -- 6. The Roman Catholic Church and the Rights of East Timorese Women Susan Harris Rimmer -- 7. Muslim Women's Political Struggle for Marriage Law Reform in Contemporary Indonesia Kathryn Robinson -- 8. Islamisation, Modernity and the Re-positioning of women in Brunei Ann Black -- 9. "She's a Woman but She Acts Very Fast:" Women, Religion and Law in Singapore Li-ann Thio.

The essays in this volume explore some of the diverse and contradictory ways that the lives of women in the Asia-Pacific region are shaped by two powerful regimes - 'religion' and 'law' - and by the interactions between them. They show that for women, laws - customary, colonial, post-independence and international - and religions - indigenous or introduced, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Confucianism - have been a 'mixed blessing'. These diverse legal systems and religious doctrines and institutions have variously denied women authority and the capacity to participate fully in the public organization of social, political and religious life; they have furthermore constructed gender and familial relations in ways that subordinate women. Yet they have also offered promises of women's empowerment, and provided rules and procedures, norms, values, and interpretations of sacred traditions to deliver those empancipatory promises. Each chapter is devoted to a single state; first, the history and current framework of the national legal system is introduced; then the place of religion in the state is explained; and finally, by means of precise and detailed case studies or examples, each author explores how these sometimes competing, sometimes colluding regimes constructed women and how women interpreted this positioning and sought to resituate themselves.

Description based on print version record.