The Cambridge Companion to Women and Islam provides a comprehensive overview of a timely topic that encompasses the fields of Islamic feminist scholarship, anthropology, history, and sociology. Divided into three parts, it makes several key contributions. The volume offers a detailed analysis of textual debates on gender and Islam, highlighting the logic of classical reasoning and its enduring appeal, while emphasizing alternative readings proposed by Islamic feminists. It considers the agency that Muslim women exhibit in relation to their faith as reflected in women's piety movements. Moreover, the volume documents how Muslim women shape socio-political life, presenting real-world examples from across the Muslim world and diaspora communities.  Written by an international team of scholars, the Companion also explores theoretical and methodological advances in the field, providing guidance for future research. Surveying Muslim women's experiences across time and place, it also presents debates on gender norms across various genres of Islamic scholarship.

What does it take for women to win political office? This book uncovers a gendered qualifications gap, showing that women need to be significantly more qualified than men to win elections. Applying insights from psychology and political science and drawing on experiments, public opinion data, and content analysis, Nichole M. Bauer presents new evidence of how voter biases and informational asymmetries combine to disadvantage female candidates. The book shows that voters conflate masculinity and political leadership, receive less information about the political experiences of female candidates, and hold female candidates to a higher qualifications standard. This higher standard is especially problematic for Republican female candidates. The demand for masculinity in political leaders means these women must “look like men” but also be better than men to win elections.