The establishment of Jamiat al-Zahra in 1984, the first official female hawza in post revolutionary Iran, opened up new possibilities for women to enter the male-dominated clerical hierarchy. The rapid growth in the number of female hawzas increased the presence of hawza-educated women in the official religious sphere. One might expect that these women have been successful in making ‘the women’s issue’ an important topic for clerical discussion and this might eventually limit the present clerical domination over women’s affairs in general and women’s religious affairs in particular. However, this scenario is somewhat optimistic. As opposed to the male hawzas which had a long pre-revolutionary history and had enjoyed autonomy from the state, Jamiat al-Zahra and other female hawzas in Qom were established under the initiative of the clerical leaders of the Islamic Republic, who are eager to mobilize the support of women in their political cause. This subordination of the female hawzas to the state facilitated the application of bureaucratic management and the adoption of a university-style system, and transformed hawzas into revolutionary agencies whose primary role is to train propagandists (muballigh) of valayat-e faqih (government of the jurist), rather than to train mujtahids who can issue a competent legal opinion, which is the dominant role of male hawzas. Under such circumstances, only a small number of women can proceed to dars-e kharej (the most advanced course) to become mujtahids. Furthermore, they are confined in the gender-segregated space of hawzas, which restricts women’s access to the library and religious seminars offered by the highest-ranking authorities where the jurisprudent knowledge is transmitted from a mentor to the disciples. Therefore, even though a few female mujtahids such as Zohre Sefati and Masume Golgiri of Jamiat al-Zahra offer dars-e kharej or the women’s section of the Islamic Propagation Office of the Qom Seminaries provides the dars-e kharej for Islamic jurisprudence and principles in women’s issues, women can hardly go beyond the gender-segregated sphere. Drawing on the interviews, documents issued by hawzas and secondary sources, the paper concludes that the priority of propagandists training over dars-e kharej in female hawzas, the scarcity of female mujtahids, and their inability to extend their knowledge beyond the gender specified issues limit the influence of female mujtahids within the clerical hierarchy. At least for now, this in no way weakens the male-centric patriarchal system in contemporary Iran.