It is a painful rite of passage for girls in many African and Middle Eastern countries. But in Senegal there has been a remarkably successful campaign to change people's attitudes towards female circumcision in an effort to eliminate the practice altogether.

Millions of women in the developing world suffer from obstetric fistulas and are outcasts in their societies, but a medical missionary from Australia has spent much of her life working to eradicate the condition.

"There's a lot of compatibility between the notion of Islamic finance and microfinance," says Roshaneh Zafar, who established a nonprofit organization that has made small business loans to hundreds of thousands of women.

"I'm doing the best I can to live out my faith as I understand it," says Episcopal priest and Vanderbilt University chaplain Becca Stevens. "Love is the most powerful force for social change."

The basement of Christ Lutheran Church is one of the few places in Baltimore where homeless single women and their children can find help.

On May 21, 2009 the Moroccan American Cultural Center and the American Jewish Committee sponsored an interfaith panel discussion in New York City on "Women’s Spiritual Voices: Crossing Continents, Finding Common Ground." Panelists explored the roles of women religious leaders in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

Watch Shohreh Aghdashloo, Cyrus Nowrasteh, and Steve McEveety talk about their new film, "The Stoning of Soraya M."

The prolific and best-selling author Jodi Picoult writes "ethical thrillers" about contentious issues such as the death penalty, organ donation, euthanasia, sexual abuse, date rape, teen suicide, and school shootings.

"Our job is to take an illiterate woman and make her into an engineer in six months," says social activist Bunker Roy, founder of the Barefoot College. Students come from villages across India and a dozen other countries.

Acedia is a condition best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer, according to writer Kathleen Norris. "It's an ancient word that means the inability to care, even to the extent that you don't care that you don't care anymore."