The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the various meanings of legal pluralism and its impact on human rights and on gender hierarchies. Is legal pluralism an obstacle to human rights, particularly of women? Is status based legal pluralism defensible if the groups exercising the coercive power of the state involve patriarchal norms and/or non-democratic hierarchical authority structures? Should one differentiate between ethnic and religiously based legal pluralism when the rights of women are at stake?