Women, Work and Islamism, Ideology and Resistance in Iran. 2nd edition.

This book is based on an extensive field research during 1989-1992 in Iran. This book analyses women’s employment across classes and levels of religiosity. The book focuses on women’s struggle for change and the impact that this has had on state ideology and on gender relations in both the public and the private spheres

Afghan Women, Identity and Invasion

This book is intended to counter the often inaccurate and misleading impressions put about by the media and politicians in the west when they talk about Afghanistan and Afghan women in particular. It is a contribution to the global peace movement and the struggle of millions of people against the continuation of the wars and conflicts orchestrated by George W Bush, Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice. It is also a challenge to western feminists who do not try to understand women in Muslim majority societies and cultures, and who today do not take a stand against the misogynistic culture of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism that promotes western superiority and the imperial strategy of 'saving Afghan and Muslim women'. This passive stance has allowed their ideas to be hijacked by the particularly aggressive new imperialism of the twentieth-first century, which has successfully manipulated their ideas for its own economic and political power-seeking. I include in this discussion the current reactivation of Islamophobia, fear of Islam: Afghan women in the West alongside other practising Muslim women have been the victims of this contemporary racist discourse. The future of women's rights in Afghanistan does not just depend on challenging local male domination, but also on challenging imperial domination

Feminist Contestations of Institutional Domains in Iran

Iranian Feminists outside Iran are divided on women's positions in Iran under the Islamic state. Some have argued that the process of Islamization has marginalized women. Others have argued that the dynamic nature of Shari'a interpretation and the debate among religious scholars in Iran have shaped the indigenous forms of feminist consciousness, feminisms and women's involvement in the process of change. This paper, based on field research, is challenging both views. It will be argued that the contradictions of the Islamic state and institutions led to the process of feminist consciousness. In the period 1990–2000, Muslim and secular feminists in Iran have found their own ways of coming together, making demands and pressurizing the State and institutions to reform laws and regulations in favour of women's rights. But women are divided by the nature of their diversity. As their alliance has challenged the limitation of the Islamic state, the breakdown of their alliance (2000–2001), could have a great impact not only on gender relations, but also on the process of democratization and secularization