The birth act for the study of gender concerns in Jainism is undoubtedly the publication of Padmanabh S. Jaini's Gender and Salvation: Jaina Debates on the Spiritual Liberation of Women (1991). Jaini's monograph goes to the heart of the Jain tradition by dealing with a gender-based issue that is crucial to it and that marks one of the clearest differences between its two main ideological currents, the Śvetāmbara and the Digambara Jains (born from a split that probably took place in the beginning of the common era). Some of the other factors that encouraged reflecting on the place of women in the Jain tradition in the last 15 to 20 years, which run parallel to the general trend of developing reflection on the role of women in all traditions, are the following: an increasing interest in Jainism among female scholars (e.g., anthropologists, philologists) who, in...