As the second of two volumes exploring comparative secularisms, this book builds on the growing scholarly interest in the gendered dimensions of secularism and secularization. The book wrestles with the question of why women's rights and sexual freedoms in modern history have been so readily ascribed to secularism and secularizing processes. Taken together, the contributions to this volume problematize narratives attributing women's emancipation or sexual liberation to the progressive forces of secularism.

The essay described by the editors as the “anchoring contribution” is Joan Wallach Scott's “Secularism and Gender Equality.” Focusing on Western contexts, Scott sets the tone and agenda for the volume by arguing that secularization does not necessarily lead to the liberation of women. In fact, women were absent from the “originary moments of secularism” (28) and excluded from political life by the very process many observers today view as vital to women's liberation. Arguments from nature, as opposed to religion, were employed to rationalize women's inequality. Scott acknowledges that greater opportunities for women did arise in the course of modern history, but she is skeptical of just how liberated women have become in secular societies, citing the low percentages of women in Western legislative bodies and the challenges facing Muslim women wearing headscarves in France. She concludes by noting how analyzing the categories of “religious” and “secular” from the perspective of gender and sexuality collapses any sharp distinction between the two and illuminates their interdependent relationship.

The essays that follow take up Scott's call to use gender and sexuality as the prism through which to investigate assumptions about secularism's liberating power. They do so from a diversity of disciplinary and methodological perspectives, including history, sociology, anthropology, law, and literary studies. They also focus on a range of geographical contexts such as Egypt, Bosnia-Herzegovina, India, France, and the United States. Finally, they address multiple religious traditions, though Christianity and Islam dominate the volume.

Most contributors share Scott's skepticism that religion is the cause and secularism is the solution to conflicts over gender and sexuality. Azza Karam describes how Islamist movements in contemporary Egypt empower many Muslim women and offer strategic resources for participating in the public square. Margot Badran, also focusing on Egypt, maintains that while secularism may have granted women some freedoms, it also reinscribed gender inequality through the codification of Muslim family law. Zilka Spahić-Šiljak's case study of socialist and democratic regimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina also demonstrates the limitations of secularism for the emancipation of women. She notes that whatever gains women made under socialist and later democratic rule, traditional religious views associating women with the private sphere and the roles of wife and mother have persisted, at times with the aid of the secular government. For example, she observes that under democratic rule, the country's “religious and cultural heritage, suppressed under socialism, now enjoys recovered prestige, protection, and deference” (122), leading to a strengthening of patriarchal views on the place of women.

Many of the essays address the limitations of secularism and secularizing processes for women's liberation and sexual freedoms, but as the editors note in their introduction, “[c]ontributors hew to no party line” (7). Different evaluations of secularism and religion exist in the book, with some authors more optimistic about secularism's potential than others. In an examination of the Roman Catholic Church's encounter with secular liberalism, Gene Burns argues that secular liberal states will always provide more opportunity for women than religious regimes. Burns does not overstate his case, however, making it clear that secularism's default position is not necessarily geared toward gender equality. In her analysis of religious and secular themes in Indian literary texts, Sunder Rajan concludes that secular modernity makes room for religious identities and sensibilities. A religious/secular dichotomy need not be operative. The Burns and Rajan essays add nuance to the debate within the volume concerning the merits and limitations of secularism from the perspective of women's emancipation and freedoms.

Given the increasing interest in the politics of liberating women, particularly Muslim women, in the post-9/11 West, this volume provides a much-need engagement with the problematic assumptions involved in easy identifications between Western secularism and women's emancipation or sexual freedom. The only real drawback in the book pertains to the overwhelming focus on Christianity and Islam. Essays tackling a greater diversity of religious traditions would have enhanced the volume and added interesting layers to this debate. But the volume is still one of the best contributions to date on gendered approaches to secularism and secularization.