In a plural socio-legal system such as Iran there is no singular meaning of access to justice. However, various factors are concerned in determining whether or not women have access to justice; from substantive protection of rights, procedural barriers and the subjective component of access to justice which steps outside of formal law and asks to what extent Iranian normative framework including customary practices and religion can promote women’s legal empowerment. Legal empowerment or the capacity to seek legal remedy and challenge the multidimensional barriers to ‘access’ is influenced by women’s legal awareness, legal representation and law reform. While the universality of women’s access to justice is often associated with a secular arrangement, this paper argues that so called justice initiatives in a plural socio-legal context such as Iran can be successful if they engage with the society’s inherent religious dimensions. In this paper, I examine the role of religious notions in furthering access to justice of women. I demonstrate that legal entitlements and access to legal justice is distributed according to religious readings of law and legal procedures. I introduce the concepts of hybrid justice and human rights in the vernacular to present case studies of the applications of religious understandings within the Iranian society in furthering women’s access to justice. This paper presents some of key findings of the survey study that I have conducted on women’s perceptions and access to justice in Iran. I did interview around 120 women in Tehran to see how they understand rights, Islamic law, legal institutions, justice system, culture and other barriers to access to justice. The paper also is based on several case studies on how religious-based approaches can improve women’s access to justice. These case studies include the experience of clinical legal education in Iran where law students have used religious notions to raise awareness, legal aid and poverty lawyering for women in need based on religious teachings, and also law reform and substantive justice.