Nafiseh Sharifi's book addresses the issue of female sexuality in Iran. A main research question revolves around how female sexuality is constructed, normalized, and naturalized for two different generations of women. To respond, Sharifi explores the personal narratives presented by women born in the 1950s and 1980s in Iran, with a particular focus on how they have experienced and relate to virginity, menstruation, and marriage. The result is a fascinating account of how attitudes toward sex and female sexuality have developed during these very different epochs of modern Iranian history.
Already in the introduction, the author, who is originally from Iran, reveals that the book was born of her own curiosity about the differences in perceptions of the female body and sexuality between her mother's generation, raised in the 1950s, and her own, raised in the 1980s. From the 1950s to the present, Iranian women have experienced both the modernization reforms enforced during the Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi regime and the Islamization of Iranian society that has targeted women's rights and gender policies, particularly after 1979. Concurrently, Iranian women have become increasingly present in the public sphere through participation in higher education and the job market, as well as through access to global media. The book examines what such shifts have entailed through women's own narratives of the female body and sexuality. As comparative studies of these two generations on female sexuality are lacking, this book provides a refreshing addition to the existing literature on women in Iran.
The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the two generations explored in the book, followed by an account of the research methods employed. The empirical material was collected during fieldwork in Tehran in 2011 and 2012. Sharifi conducted in-depth interviews with 76 interviewees: 39 raised in the 1950s and 37 in the 1980s. In Chapter 2, the author moves on to discussing the power/resistance framework that constitutes the analytical starting point of the book. Inspired by scholars such as James C. Scott, Saba Mahmood, and Lila Abu-Lughod, Sharifi argues for redefining the close connection between resistance and agency and for assessing multiple relations of power involved in women's daily practices and positionalities in maintaining and negotiating norms on sexuality and the female body (26–28).
Sharifi contrasts her research with the existing literature on women in Iran. She argues convincingly that such literature in general has failed to recognize “the existence and complex relations of power that operate in different social and economic contexts in Iranian society” (4). She argues in favor of moving beyond a mere focus on the “misogynistic” aspects of Iran's post-1979 policies on sexuality and, instead, including the complex and contradictory situation that such policies have entailed in regard to norms and constructions of female sexuality.
Sharifi's study also differs from other studies in this field in that she avoids placing the interviewees into categories such as modern/traditional, liberated/oppressed; rather, she chooses to highlight the interviewees’ bodily behaviors and negotiations (31). Additionally, she includes their marital situation, level of education, religious background, and economic situation in the analysis of diversities found among the interviewees (17). It would, however, be interesting to have additional information about the rural and urban differences found among the interviewees. Probably quite a few of the interviewees have grown up rurally and moved to Tehran as adults. Although this change in location likely would affect an interviewee's idea of sex and sexuality, it is only mentioned once in the book in regard to the tradition of the so-called blood-stained napkin (84–85).
Another difference is related to class. Sharifi criticizes Saba Mahmood for ignoring class and level of education in her analysis of the women's movement in Cairo (31). In Sharifi's book, descriptions of the interviewees’ backgrounds tend to be made according to categorizations such as “lower-middle,” “middle,” “upper-middle class,” and “traditional family” (18). What such descriptions entail, however, is not always clear. Also, more information on the socioeconomic differences existing within Tehran during these different periods of time, and the possibilities of social mobility in Iranian society, could help explain differences among the interviewees even further.
Chapter 3 gives an account of dominant discourses on sexuality throughout the modern history of Iran, which has resulted in the country's changing policies on population control and ambivalent attitudes toward sex and women's sexuality. This provides a highly interesting background for understanding the personal narratives presented in the book. A main conclusion is that the scientific discourse on sexuality, called upon by state discourses and by women themselves, has led to a medicalization of sexuality but also legitimized a space for women to address their sexual concerns (57–58).
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are dedicated to exploring narratives of virginity, menstruation, and marriage, respectively. The author connects these issues to shame and the politicization of the female body and sexuality. The ways in which female virginity has been employed as a bargaining tool for both generations is particularly intriguing in this regard. However, the book's discussion of virginity omits the fact that the idea of a hymen that can break during sexual or gymnastic activities is a myth. Nor do these chapters address subjects such as homosexuality or masturbation as part of female sexuality, as pointed out by the author in the introduction (16). Hence, the book continues the heteronormative framework that tends to inform research on gender in Iran.
Chapter 7 draws the conclusions for the reader. A main argument in the book is that the negative social consequences of having premarital sexual relations are present not only for the 1950s generation but have been reproduced and reinforced through social stigma in the 1980s as well. The book also provides detailed accounts of how women have maintained tools of negotiation through different phases of Iran's modern history.
A major strength of this study is the comparative use of personal narratives from two generations for the purpose of exploring how sexuality and gender norms are constructed and maintained. Although the book has certain limitations, it offers new insights into the complexities involved in the construction of the female body and sexuality in modern Iran. Hence, Sharifi's work is essential reading for anyone interested in the construction of norms on gender and sexuality in Iran.
Shenila Khoja-Moolji's Forging the Ideal Educated Girl offers an innovative and ambitious entry into the complex role of education vis-à-vis the formation of gendered subjectivities in Muslim South Asia. As a genealogical study, the book focuses on examining the practices by which the subject is produced, rather than the subject in itself. Hence, the book revolves around the following research question: “Under what conditions and through what forms can an entity like the subject appear in the order of discourse; what position does it occupy; what functions does it exhibit; and what rules does it follow in each type of discourse?” (17).
To respond, the author directs an intercontextual approach toward a broad variety of sources such as cultural, linguistic, and visual texts. These sources are combined with women's narratives collected during the author's fieldwork in Pakistan. In total, Khoja-Moolji conducted 12 focus group interviews in a small city in south Pakistan. This combination of “top-down” and “bottom-up” analysis is fruitful and conveys the complexities and social negotiations involved in forging the subject in question, namely, the ideal educated girl. The author explains and analyzes the ways in which the education of Muslim women and girls has been intricately linked with governing and forming them into desired and ideal subjects. However, the author shows that this process has not proceeded through coercion only, but also through self-regulation and self-governing.
In the first chapter, the author maps the discourse on girls’ education in colonial British India, as well as the book's methodological approach. Chapter 2 looks into ongoing debates about women's education at the turn of the twentieth century. Through the characters Akbari and Asghari, two sisters introduced in the popular novel Mirat-ul-uroos (The Bride's Mirror), published by Nazir Ahmed in 1869, the chapter unpacks concerns related to class, social status, and gender in regard to education. Asghari represents the ideal sharif (respectable) subject who displays “correct” education and reproduces her own and her family's social standing. Her sister Akbari, however, experiences suffering and severe trouble due to her ignorance and lack of what is seen as proper education (26–27). Hence, these characters portray the ways in which notions of the failed and the ideal educated subject are constructed.
In Chapter 3, the book explores examples of educated women and girls during and after the establishment of the Pakistani nation-state (1947–67). A particular focus is dedicated to how the ideal educated girl is combined with ideas of nation building, modernization, and religion. In this vein, the book also provides examples of how girls and women were seen as failed citizen subjects and how such definitions were defined and produced at this particular time.
In Chapter 4, Khoja-Moolji addresses the transnational discourse on women's education. I particularly enjoyed her aspirations to go beyond “the trend of painting neoliberalism as a bogeyman that magically infects everything” (100), as is often the case in studies within this field. Instead the author focuses on how transnational discourses work, and how they are renegotiated by different actors for various purposes. The author's analysis of the case of Malala Yousafzai in this regard is brilliant, and it also underlines the timely topic of this book. Then in Chapter 5, the author returns to the characters of Akbari and Asghari and demonstrates the ways in which they are still relevant in present-day Pakistan.
Chapter 6 draws the book's conclusions. The author argues that notions of respectability signify different kinds of relationships between women and capital, women and the nation-state, and women and the patriarchal family (147). In turn, this provides different possibilities and limitations for women and girls. The author also illustrates through her fieldwork how the link between education, respectability, and social class continues to the present. The link she provides between education and marriage is particularly interesting in this regard (146). One of the main conclusions is that education is no guarantee for girls’ and women's emancipation or their social or economic growth. On the contrary, the author finds that education may very well have unforeseen outcomes, particularly for those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds (158). She argues that the book “problematizes education's emancipatory promise by showing how schooling can reinscribe old hierarchies and/or produce new ones” (158).
Although the author brings the categories of class and religious minorities into the analysis in convincing and clear ways, these aspects could be more explicit in regard to her interviewees. Khoja-Moolji makes it clear that they stem from lower classes and that they are Shia Muslims, but it would be interesting to learn more about the importance of their status as religious minority. The author's fieldwork was conducted in an area of south Pakistan, which is predominantly Shia, but the book does not explore the Shia interviewees’ experiences of relating to the default Sunni understanding of Islam beyond that of advocating for Shia religious knowledge to be reflected in the curriculum (119). The author asserts that schooling is problematic for religious minorities as they face Sunni dominated ideologies and interpretations of Islam (120). However, more information on what this entails in practice would help clarify their minority position and differences even further.
Overall, Khoja-Moolji's book offers an innovative and important contribution to research on women's negotiations and agency in relation to gender hierarchies and how they maneuver—successfully and not—within such constraints. Although it is theoretically dense, it is balanced with rich empirical data. The book provides a thought-provoking analysis of how education, girlhood, and womanhood intersect with historical, sociological, and political discourses inherent within colonial India and Pakistan. The result is a complex and intriguing genealogy of the educated Muslim girl that is relevant for colonial India and Pakistan, and beyond.
