A com­pelling look at the lives of ultra-Ortho­dox and for­mer­ly ultra-Ortho­dox Jew­ish women and their use of media tech­nolo­gies to cre­ate a new mar­ket for music and film

For Women and Girls Only argues that access to tech­nol­o­gy has com­plete­ly trans­formed how ultra-Ortho­dox women express their way of being reli­gious and that the dig­i­tal era has enabled them to cre­ate an alter­na­tive enter­tain­ment mar­ket out­side of the pub­lic, male-dom­i­nat­ed one. Because of expec­ta­tions sur­round­ing mod­esty, ultra-Ortho­dox women do not sing, dance, or act in front of men and the pub­lic. Yet, in a rev­o­lu­tion­ary move, they are cre­at­ing ​“women and girls only” spaces onsite and online, putting the onus on men to shield them­selves from the con­tent. They devel­op mod­est pub­lic spaces on the Inter­net, about which male reli­gious lead­ers are often unaware. The book also explores the entan­gle­ment between these obser­vant female artists and those who left reli­gion and became pub­lic per­form­ers. The author shows that the arts expressed by all these women offer a means of not only social but also eco­nom­ic empow­er­ment in their respec­tive worlds.