Abstract
The right to equality and the right to individual religious freedom of women stand in conflict with community religious freedom. The determination that group religious freedom cannot override women's individual rights should be upheld, but attention must be given to the complex problems this determination creates: once a State acknowledges a right to religious freedom of communities and relegates legal powers to them, it is in practice more difficult for the State to implement rights of equality for women. A clear, albeit far-reaching, consequence of recognising the individual rights of women to equality and to freedom of religion and belief over any communal right of religious freedom is that religious institutions should not be able to curtail these rights of women even in their internal organisation. Finally, the compatibility of institutional participation of religion in the law-making process that determines the rights of women, both at the national and international level, with religious freedom is questioned.