Inspired by the grassroots women's spirituality and feminist movements around the world, the Women's Spirituality Program at CIIS is a learning community that reclaims women's spiritual experience, cultural history, and multiple ways of knowing. Women's Spirituality is understood as broad and inclusive, encompassing women's experience of the sacred, physicality and sexuality, perceptions of self, society and of Earth community, and women's bio-psycho-spiritual development.

A primary professional goal is to empower women to participate ever more fully and creatively in the global culture of the 21st century. Thus, the program encourages embodied scholarship which encompasses feeling, imagination, expressive and cognitive skills, spiritual insight, and social and cultural activism. Creativity is nurtured through the visual, literary, performing, and ritual arts. And an appreciation of diversity is fostered through a multicultural approach that includes the experiences of women through history and across geographical boundaries.

Students often enter the Women's Spirituality program in order to pursue a teaching, research, or writing career; or to enhance existing careers in fields such as psychotherapy, ministry, artwork, bodywork, media, public policy, social action, hospice work, or women's health and health advocacy.