Israeli security guards at the Western Wall on Friday searched women worshippers arriving at the holiest place where Jews can pray for a seemingly inoffensive object — the Jewish prayer shawl, which under the Orthodox tradition can be worn only by men.

Results from the first census of England and Wales for 10 years this week revealed a crisis engulfing what until recently had seemed to be Britain's newest and most vibrant religion: The ranks of Jedi Knights have more than halved to 176,632.

Women’s voices were some of the loudest in the Tahrir Square protests that drove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from office nearly two years ago.

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently reduced the age requirement for missionaries by one year for men, to 18, and by two years for women, to 19, the number of women applying to serve jumped five-fold.

For decades, Palestinian women seeking to divorce their husbands risked years of miserable, expensive litigation or lengthy domestic battles as they begged their spouses for permission to leave.

A remarkable thing happened this past May in Riyadh. Officers belonging to Saudi Arabia’s ever-zealous religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, ordered an abaya-clad young woman out of a shopping mall for wearing nail polish.

Georgetown law student Melanie Habwe Dickson stood nervously outside a District courtroom, waiting for the chance to argue for her client, a domestic-abuse survivor.

Australia has become more Asian, less religious and the population is more spread out, according to a five-yearly snapshot which reveals the changing face of the nation.

While Olympic leaders and human rights advocates are encouraged by signs that Saudi Arabia may bow to pressure and send female athletes to the Summer Games, women athletes in the ultraconservative kingdom are worried about a backlash at home.

Family troubles forced Sharmeen Ansari (19) to quit studies after completing her intermediate.

Events this week that raised questions on women’s rights and ethnic tensions have added to long-term concerns about Afghanistan after American-led forces withdraw in 2014 and new elections are held.

The presidential candidate for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on Tuesday sought to expand his support base ahead of a tight runoff against an ex-regime figure next month, vowing to ensure the full rights of Christians and women if he is elected.

Israel has watched its cold peace with Egypt turn frigid since the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak, but as Egyptians voted for a new leader this week, some Israeli officials said they believe the peace treaty between them is likely to endure no matter who wins.

For Egyptian women, it was the most revolutionary image of all: male and female protesters spending days and nights together in Tahrir Square, bringing down a hated regime side by side — comrades in a country where women had long been plagued by masculine scorn and harassment.

When Marguerite Driessen, a professor here, entered Brigham Young University in the early 1980s, she was the first black person many Mormon students had ever met, and she spent a good bit of her college time debunking stereotypes about African-Americans. Then she converted to Mormonism herself, and went on to spend a good deal of her adult life correcting assumptions about Mormons.