'The introduction and essays provide nuanced and stimulating treatments of their topics...this volume promises to stimulate thought and debate.' - Claire Sahlin, Texas Woman's University, USA 'Helpful for students of women's religious history, as an introductory text for the ten themes it covers...an excellent resource for libraries and classrooms.' - Bernadette Flanagan, Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland 'This easily read, sensitive but provocative contribution to the growing interest in the history of women Religious, offers an antidote to both the blind 'one-size-fits-all' approach of gender studies and the near infantilising whimsy of Catholic romanticism.' - James Kelly, The Tablet 'Carmen Mangion and Laurence Lux-Sterritt are to be commended for soliciting and editing ten essays that, despite their considerable geographic and chronological range, collectively illuminate a number of themes and patterns that have affected the relationship between women and the Catholic Church across time and place. ...A rich collection.' - Kathleen Sprows Cummings, American Catholic Studies