WOMEN IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES

In reality, women’s lives in Muslim societies have been shaped by shifting state-building projects, imperial entanglements, nationalist movements, socialist reforms, authoritarian retrenchments, and global economic transformations. When examined comparatively and over time, patterns of reform, backlash, accommodation, and resistance in Muslim-majority contexts are neither exceptional nor static—they mirror broader global struggles over gendered power. To portray these societies as uniquely oppressive is not only analytically unsound, but also politically consequential because this reinforces narratives that conflate religion with repression while ignoring the structural forces that shape women’s lived experiences worldwide.

For decades, stories have painted Muslim women as helpless victims trapped in backward cultures. Edward Said showed how the West has long portrayed the ‘Orient’ as inferior in order to justify dominationiSaid 1978. Sarah Graham-Brown demonstrated how images and the media have reinforced this picture, turning Muslim women into symbols of oppressioniGraham-Brown 1988. Building on this, anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod asked a simple but piercing question: Do Muslim women really need saving?iAbu-Lughod 2002. Her point was not to deny inequality, but to challenge the assumption that outsiders know what liberation should look like. Too often, ‘saving women’ becomes a slogan that serves political and military goals rather than the needs and voices of women themselves. Instead of asking how to rescue Muslim women, we should be asking who benefits from these rescue narratives—and why they persist.

In her book Women and Gender in Islam, Leila Ahmed shows that ideas about women in Muslim societies have never been fixed or purely religiousiAhmed 1992. They have changed over time, and have been shaped by politics, class, empire, and struggles over power. Taking an in-depth look at women’s lives—from their legal rights, access to education, or public visibility—helps us see how power works during moments of reform and crisis.

Iran offers a striking example. In the 1920s, under the pro-Western Pahlavi monarchy, women were forced to remove the veil, and these unveiled women became symbols of modernization and alignment with Europe. After the 1979 Revolution, the new Islamic Republic reversed course and made the veiling mandatory. This time, women’s clothing signaled a rejection of Western influence and a commitment to an Islamic political identity. In both cases, women’s bodies were used to project the state’s ideology.

Once we place women’s lives within broader histories of empire, nationalism, and state power, the idea that Muslim societies are uniquely oppressive begins to fall apart. What we see instead are political struggles over identity and authority—struggles that look remarkably similar to those found elsewhere in the world.

Education has often been presented as the key to women’s freedom. But history shows it has also been a powerful tool of control. Across empires—from the Ottoman Empire to British colonial rule—girls’ schooling was promoted as proof of ‘progress’ and civilization. Reformers in Central Asia, the JadidsiThe Jadids were the late nineteenth-century modernist Muslim intellectuals of Central Asia who sought to reform Islamic society through modern education and new methods. argued that educating girls was essential to saving and strengthening their communitiesiKhalid 1998; Kamp 2004. But this support came with expectations. Women were seen not simply as individuals, but as future mothers responsible for preserving national values and moral order.

Education was never neutral. As scholars have shown, schools did more than teach reading and writing. They also shaped how women were expected to behave—how to dress, speak, manage a household, and embody respectabilityiAhmed 1992 and Fahmy 1998. Schooling opened the doors to literacy and professional development, but it also trained women into new forms of discipline and domestic responsibilityiNajmabadi 1998.

This tension complicates the simple assumption that education automatically equals liberation. In Muslim societies—just like in other places around the world—modern schooling has been both a pathway to opportunity and a tool government used to shape loyal, ‘proper’ citizens. Women did not simply receive education—they navigated it, resisted parts of it, and used it in ways their rulers did not always intend.

Turkey offers a powerful example of both the promise and the limits of state-led women’s emancipation. Under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, sweeping reforms changed women’s legal status almost overnight. They gained the right to vote, entered new professions, appeared more visibly in public life, and were encouraged—or pressured—to remove the veil as a sign of modernity.

There is no doubt that these reforms brought real gains. Women accessed education, careers, and public roles in ways that had previously been restricted. But there was a catch. Women were held up as symbols of the new, modern Turkish nation. Their appearance and behavior became proof that the country was moving forward. As a result, the state carefully defined what a ‘modern woman’ should look like and how she should act. Forms of femininity that did not fit this image were sidelinediKandiyoti 1991.

In other words, women were emancipated from above, but within limits set by the state. They were granted rights, yet their political voice and range of expression remained tightly managed. It is important we remember that this pattern is not unique to Turkey—or to Muslim societies. Around the world, socialist, colonial, and postcolonial governments have used women’s rights as symbols of progress while simultaneously controlling how women could exercise those rights.

The years between and after the two World Wars make it even harder to claim that Muslim societies are somehow uniquely resistant to women’s rights. During this period, women across the Middle East and Central Asia were organizing, speaking publicly, and building movements that crossed borders.

In cities like Damascus and Tehran, women held congresses to debate suffrage, labor rights, and access to education. Activists such as Huda Shaarawi, Saiza Nabrawi, and Nabawiyya Musa were not isolated figures—they were part of vibrant, international feminist networks. In Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, women’s unions tied the struggle for gender equality to the fight for national independence. For them, women’s rights were not separate from politics; they were central to shaping the future of their countries.

At the same time, in Soviet Central Asia, the Second World War reshaped women’s lives in Soviet Central Asia by drawing them into factories, offices, and other areas of public life. The state encouraged this participation to support the war effort and promote socialist ideals. And so, while women gained new skills, jobs, and visibility, their mobilization also served government goals.

Across all these cases, women’s rights became powerful symbols of national progress. Sometimes, this opened up real opportunities. Sometimes, it meant women’s lives were used to send political messages. Often, it was both at once.

These patterns are not unique to Muslim-majority societies. Similar dynamics unfolded in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and East Asia, where governments promoted women’s rights as signs of modernity while still shaping and limiting how those rights could be exercised.

The 1970s were a period of rapid change across much of the Muslim world. Oil money transformed cities, expanded universities, and opened new careers for women in fields like science, government, and even the military. In countries such as Iran and Afghanistan before 1979, women reached some of the highest levels of education in their history.

In Western media, images of Muslim women in miniskirts and in mixed-gender classrooms became symbols of ‘progress’. But these images told only part of the story. What was really driving change were deeper political and economic shifts—urban growth, state investment in education, and ambitious modernization projects. Clothing and coeducation were visible signs of these transformations, not the cause of them.

What happened next reveals something important. When political systems collapsed or radically shifted—as they did in Iran after the 1979 Revolution or Afghanistan during decades of war—many of these gains proved fragile. The rollback of women’s rights did not happen simply because of religious dictates. It followed political upheaval, a breakdown of the state, and ideological struggles over the direction of the nation.

This history reminds us that progress in women’s rights is rarely a straight line. Advances can emerge quickly under certain political and economic conditions—and they can disappear just as quickly when those conditions change. Women’s rights everywhere depend on power, stability, and the political choices of those who govern.

Recent events challenge the idea that Muslim women are passive or silent. In Iran, the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement grew out of decades of feminist activism and openly confronts authoritarian rule. In Afghanistan, underground schools for girls show that even severe repression cannot fully erase women’s determination to learn. In Türkiye, the government’s withdrawal from the Istanbul ConventioniThe Istanbul Convention is a 2011 human rights treaty requiring states to criminalize violence against women, protect victims, and implement coordinated policies to prevent domestic abuse. sparked renewed protests, continuing a long history of women pushing back against state control.

These movements are not sudden ruptures. They are part of a long pattern: women adapting, organizing, and resisting under changing political conditions—much like feminist movements confronting authoritarianism in other parts of the world.

At the same time, reforms imposed from above—often called ‘state feminism’—have produced mixed results. In Tunisia, state-led reforms created strong legal protections for women, and many women have successfully defended those rights. Yet, those reforms were also tied to male-dominated, centralized power. Rights were granted to women, but within an authoritarian framework.

A different version of this story unfolded in Soviet Tajikistan. Soviet leaders launched campaigns to ‘liberate’ Muslim women through unveiling drives, literacy programs, and labor mobilization. These efforts opened real opportunities in education and employment. But they also created new inequalities. Urban women benefited more than rural women. Russian-speaking women often advanced faster than others. Access to higher education and leadership positions remained limited, leading to competition rather than broad solidarityiAbman 2024.

Rural women in different countries faced additional barriers: early marriage, large families, limited childcare, and restricted access to schooling. As a result, emancipation was uneven. Some women advanced; many remained constrained by local power structures and economic realitiesiAbman 2024.

Across these cases, the pattern is clear. State-driven reform can expand women’s rights, but it can also deepen divisions based on class, ethnicity, geography, and political access. This is not unique to Muslim societies. Around the world, when governments lead gender reform from the top down, rights are shaped by hierarchy and power struggles.

Women are not simply recipients of liberation. They navigate, challenge, and sometimes reproduce the systems around them. Their stories are not about passivity or cultural exception. They are about politics, power, and the uneven paths of modern change.

Studying women’s lives in Muslim societies helps reveal power structures that often disappear in male-centered histories. It shows how laws, education, family systems, and political movements shape everyday life. It also highlights diversity within these societies and connects local stories to larger forces—empire, nationalism, capitalism, and global politics.

At the same time, this kind of study requires care and attention. As scholars like Lila Abu-Lughod, Chandra Mohanty, and Leila Ahmed remind us, focusing on ‘Muslim women’ can easily slip into stereotypes if we ignore differences of class, ethnicity, geography, and political contextiMohanty 1984; Abu-Lughod 2002; Ahmed 1992. Treating culture or religion as the sole explanation oversimplifies complex realities.

When done thoughtfully, women’s history does not set Muslim societies apart as exceptions. Instead, it places them firmly within shared global patterns. The idea of ‘exceptionalism’ falls apart not because injustice is denied, but because it is understood as shaped by history, politics, and power—forces that operate worldwide.

1. Abman, Zamira. Coerced Liberation. Muslim Women in Soviet Tajikistan. University of Oxford Press, 2024.
2. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. Yale University Press, 1992.
3. Abu-Lughod, Lila. ‘Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others’. American Anthropologist 104, no. 3. (2002).
4. Fahmy, Khaled. All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
5. Graham-Brown, Sarah. Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East, 1860–1950. Columbia University Press, 1988.
6. Kamp, Marianne. ‘Between Women and the State: Mahalia Committees and Social Welfare in Uzbekistan’ in The Transformation of Central Asia, edited by Pauline Jones Luong. Cornell University Press, 2004.
7. Kandiyoti, Deniz. ‘End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism and Women in Turkey’ in Women, Islam and the State, edited by Deniz Kandiyoti. Temple University Press, 1991.
8. Khalid, Adeeb. The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. University of California Press, 1998.
9. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’. Boundary 2 12/13 (1984).
10. Najmabadi, Afsaneh. ‘Feminism in an Islamic Republic: “Years of Hardship, Years of Growth”’ in Islam, Gender, and Social Change, edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito. Oxford University Press, 1998.
11. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Random House, 1978.