The chapter presents a survey of various instances in which Muslim women in Twelver Shi?ism have become learned in the Islamic religious sciences and wielded religious authority, concentrating on women hadith experts and women jurists. The paper makes the point that the frequent total neglect of women as religious authorities throughout the Islamic world during the various historical periods is belied by an objective consideration of the evidence on the ground, whether historical or contemporary. The paper ends with a plea for the programmatic examination of the factors that enable women to wield authority in some Islamic contexts but not in others.