Women’s Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions: Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Foremothers

In this collection of articles, Kari Elisabeth Borresen and Kari Vogt point out the convergence of androcentric gender models in the Christian and Islamic traditions. They provide extensive surveys of recent research in women's studies, with bio-socio-cultural genderedness as their main analytical category. Matristic writers from late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are analyzed in terms of a female God language, reshaping traditional theology. The persisting androcentrism of 20th-century Christianity and Islam, as displayed in institutional documents promoting women's specific functions, is critically exposed.