Maeera Shreiber remembers sitting alone in her apartment, considering her options if her husband wouldn?t grant her a divorce: to stay with her faith or abandon her religion.

Jewish law dictates that only men may initiate divorce proceedings and Shreiber, who was an Orthodox Jew at the time, worried her husband would not give her that option.

Shreiber is a professor of English at the University of Utah, and on Thursday she facilitated a group discussion in the Women?s Resource Center on women?s roles in patriarchal religions.

Jewish women whose husbands will not grant them divorces was the focal point of discussion.

Within the Jewish community, these women are known as ?chained women,? because they are tied to their husbands, unable to divorce and remarry within the Jewish faith.

Fortunately, Shreiber said, her husband did grant her a divorce.

But many others are not so lucky, and are left in emotional and religious limbo.

Members of the discussion group agreed there is an ?incredible sense? of community abandonment when women are placed in that situation.

Sometimes faith leaves the women no options, participants said, since the men cannot be forced to grant divorces.

And this form of female powerlessness is a problem in almost all religions, they said.

Men become tyrants because they hold all of the power, said Alan Sandomir, a U marketing professor and member of the discussion group.

The question then arises: ?Why do you stay in a system in which you are a perpetual victim,? said Carol Einhorn, another participant.

?Obviously, women are looking for validation, support, enforcement of a community rule from a community that?is not willing to do it anymore,? she said.

Other members of the discussion group cited religious and traditional ties as a reason why women tolerate being victimized.

?It?s hard to say ?no? when you?ve grown up in it,? said group member Sharon Sonnereich.

Therefore, solutions to these issues must come out of community activism.

?If women in good marriages will stand up and say ?This is unacceptable??; if normal, everyday families will start to talk about it,? then change may occur within the community, Shreiber said.

However, ?no entrenched authority accepts change to their own law,? Sandomir said.

Consequently, there are ?glacial changes happening in [Jewish] Orthodoxy,? Shreiber said.