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The chapter shows how several scenes, paralleling prevalent early Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions, depict Eve as accountable for inflicting death on Adam and all humanity. Simultaneously, other scenes subtly portray Eve as playing a beneficial role in the context of Adam’s death, such as caring for his body, mourning his decease, pleading for his soul, and witnessing his final ascent to heaven. The chapter demonstrates how these later portrayals resonate with a broad range of culturally esteemed funerary practices and conceptions associated with women, well established in the multicultural landscape in which the GLAE emerged. With attention to relations between social practices and narrativation, the chapter further suggests that, by associating Eve with valued funerary practices, the GLAE representations undermine traditions of Eve’s liability, emphasize countertraditions about her positive role in the aftermath of Adam’s death, and ultimately assert an ideological stance concerning the valued standing of Eve in the context of contrasting views.

This epilogue draws on the author's field-based research to examine the status of women after the contest. Even after the lines had been drawn, the institutions purged, and victory declared, tensions over women's practices and behaviors in conservative and moderate life persisted. Though the contest between conservatives and moderates left scars, women emerged from the denominational struggle to discover inner strength, sisterhood and self-empowerment.

Chapter Three proceeds as a walk undertaken with the women in Usuthu Gorge, a ward situated at the precise juncture of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland. Framed as an extended narrative, the walk, and the walking songs that accompany it, chronicle women’s lives in the borderlands, linking specific sites and localities to memories about childhood, kinship ties, linguistic identities and women’s livelihood practices. Embedded in this conversation is an intimate exposition of what it means to live at the edge of three nation states, where the political topography and institutional patchiness emerges in its sharpest relief, and where the ecologies of constraint and opportunity affect a constant process of adaptation, hybridity and motion.

This introductory chapter considers the perspectives of the Japanese toward their own nation's politics in general, and profiles the average Japanese voter, in particular—a woman. On every House election since 1969, more Japanese women have turned out to vote than men, yet the typical Japanese woman is also unaffiliated with any political party in the system. The chapter turns to “women-centric networks” as an explanation for this feature of Japanese women's citizenship practices, by linking these political activities to the thousands of study and hobby groups in local communities across Japan. In addition, the chapter also outlines the background and methodology of the book's research, by centering the analysis primarily in the Nagano Prefecture, and using data gleaned from national survey data, focus groups, news reporting, statistical and archival data housed by the national and local governments, and a rich secondary literature.

This concluding chapter offers concrete examples of political action by women and for women that is inextricable from the cognitive processes that are mobilized in political conversation, study and lifelong learning, and local political action. It examines how the state's interest in bringing citizens into collaborative relationships to solve problems coalesces with citizens' demands for direct participation. Japanese women are thus placed at the center of a struggle to harness human capital to achieve state developmental goals. The process by which everyday citizens convert basic education into knowledge for empowerment raises important questions for further research on the potential for lifelong learning to empower underrepresented and socially disadvantaged groups in the political process. The chapter concludes with reflections on the potential and limits of lifelong learning in promoting political deliberation, a more inclusive democracy, and more representative outcomes.