Women-only Congregations
Schools differ on whether a woman may be imam (leader) of a jama'ah (congregational) prayer if the congregation consists of women alone. Three of the four Sunni madhhabs—Shafi'is, Hanafis, and Hanbalis—allow this, although Hanafis consider it to be makrooh, a disliked act. (The fourth division, Malikis, do not permit women to lead women in prayer.) Where it is allowed, the woman stands among the congregation in the front row, instead of alone in front of the congregation. In 2000, six marjas among Iran's Shia leadership declared that they too allowed women to lead a woman-only congregation, reversing a previous ban in that country.
An unusual feature of Islam in China is the existence of nüsi, mosques solely for women. The imams and all the congregants are women and men are not allowed into the buildings. A handful of women have been trained as imams in order to serve these mosques. However, in at least some communities where these mosques operated, women were not allowed in the men's mosques. In recent years, efforts have been made to establish similar mosques in India and Iran.
Read more about this topic: Women As Imams