No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women: Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East

This groundbreaking work sheds new light on the status, conflicts, and social realities of educated Muslim women in Pakistan. Six candid interviews introduce the readers to a class of professional Muslim women rarely, if ever, acknowledged in the West.

These women tell of the conflicts and compromises with family, kin, and community, while facing violence, archaic marriage rules, and locally entrenched codes of conduct. With brave eloquence, they speak of human dignity and gender equality, economic deprivation and social justice, and of feminism and fundamentalism. Challenging prevalent stereotypes, No Shame for the Sun reveals the uniqueness of each woman, and the diversity of Pakistani Muslim women's life experiences, their world views, and the struggles to change their society. Each chapter explores a particular woman's life experiences and her attempts to reconcile her career with her personal life, providing examples of ways of resolving religious, cultural, and political conflicts. Through their struggles, professional Pakistani women have become conscious of their own and other women's situations within their society. Because they exercise power and authority in their chosen fields, they risk losing their family's support and antagonizing their community.

Carefully detailed and meticulously researched, this book gives us a much needed perspective to reflect on the changing circumstances of professional Pakistani women, as well as on the established patterns and structural constraints within Pakistan. On a broader level, it examines western misconceptionsregarding Islam, a religion that crosses many borders and impacts differently upon many cultures.