Around the World, Women Find Very Different Roads to Wider Rights

And while gains have been small - the ministry, for instance, is still largely closed to women - more women "are putting their demands to the church for a different vision of Christianity."

Ema Prez de Lugo, for one, has felt empowered by her conversion. She says her new church, Mexico City's Apostolic Church, opened the Bible to her in a way that made her feel that - even as a woman in a "macho" society - she could change her life.

"Suddenly I felt I had the power of God in my hands," she says. Her husband, Guillermo - who, like Delgado's husband, was drinking heavily - "began taking notice of the good it was bringing to our home," she says.

Guillermo Lugo followed his wife to church and today is an Apostolic pastor.

The momentum for change has carried into the Catholic Church as well. There women "are pressuring from within for a more democratic church, one that offers new roles and more-equal stature to women," says Leonor Aida Concha, a founding director of Women for Dialogue, an organization of Mexican Catholics promoting the training and empowerment of groups of mostly poor women.

"We didn't opt for confrontation as [Catholic women] have in North America and Europe," Ms. Concha says.

"We chose to promote change by working with the currents in the church that are favorable to an interpretation of Christianity as a liberating force for women."

- Howard LaFranchi

New views of Islamic law elevate women

CAIRO

When Leila, a young housewife, gave birth to a third daughter recently, her husband divorced her for not having a boy. Today, she and her children live in a cramped, 16-by-16-foot apartment with her mother, two sisters, and brother, while Leila (not her real name) fights the courts for financial assistance from her husband.

Her situation is not uncommon. Under Islamic law, husbands can divorce their wives in seconds, while it takes women years. To get even the meager alimony allowed, women must brave Egypt's bureaucratic court system. Men can marry as many as four wives, yet if a divorced woman remarries, she risks losing custody of her children.

But if a fast-growing group of scholars and activists has its way, that could change.

This group is reinterpreting Islamic teachings to promote women's rights, and its new take on Islamic texts is challenging long-held views on issues ranging from polygamy to a woman's right to a fair alimony.

In some ways, the growing Islamic fundamentalism - manifested by stricter adherence to dress codes in Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example - has moved these more-liberal interpreters of Islam to action. While the interpretations of these scholars and activists, who range from fundamentalists to staunch secularists, vary widely, most reject Western feminism for a version that reflects their culture and values.

They say the conservative male clergy has interpreted the Koran from its viewpoint, often overlooking its enlightened stance on women. And even one of the Middle East's most-prominent secular feminists, Fatima Mernissi of Morocco, has changed from accusing Islam of discriminating against women to reinterpreting its teachings to show its support of women.

"Allah spoke of the two sexes in terms of total equality as believers," Ms. Mernissi writes in her book, "The Veil and the Male Elite: a Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam."

One country in the forefront of this trend is Iran, where women have made noteworthy gains, despite the tight constraints of the Islamic government there. In 1991, divorced Iranian women gained the right to seek back wages from their husbands for housework performed during marriage.

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