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GASXXX10.1177/0891243214549193Gender & SocietyKhurshid / Islamic Traditions of Modernity
Ayesha Khurshid
Florida State University, USA
Women’s education has been central to discourses that have sought to modernize develop-
ing and Muslim societies. Based on ethnographic data collected from women teachers from
rural and low-income communities of Pakistan, the article shows how being a parhi likhi
(educated) woman implies acquiring a privileged subject position making claims to middle-
class and Islamic morality, and engaging in specific struggles within, rather than against,
the institutions of family, community, and Islam. This focus on the lived experiences of
educated Muslim women complicates the prevalent narrative of modernity that presents
women’s education and gender empowerment as an expression of individual women’s
choice and free will against the oppressive frameworks of family, community, and Islam.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am grateful to Myra Marx Ferree, whose mentorship and guidance
was central to conceptualizing and developing this piece. I would also like to thank Mary
Louise Gomez, Kirin Narayan, Katherin Pratt Ewing, Catherine Campton Lilly, and Carl
Grant for their support to write this article. A very special thanks to Joya Misra and the
three editors of the special issue as well as to the five reviewers whose comments were im-
mensely helpful. This research was made possible with the help of grants from the Tashia
Morgridge Fellowship Program and Mellon Foundation. I am deeply grateful to the IEL
staff and policymakers as well as to the women teachers who made this project possible by
generously sharing their experiences, reflections, and time. Correspondence concerning this
article should be addressed to Ayesha Khurshid, Florida State University, 1209 Stone Build-
ing, 1114 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA; email: akhurshid@fsu.edu.
learned “proper” manners was the most important part of her work. A
30-year-old woman with an energetic and warm personality, Rehana was a
popular teacher at the girls’ school in her low-income village where she
had worked for five years. Her village was typical of the Pakistani rural
landscape, with limited access to schools and low literacy rates, especially
for women. Rehana was one of the first women in her village to complete
a high school and college education. However, she did not consider her job
or her academic credentials to be her most important marker of distinction.
Instead, Rehana was proud that she had learned to behave like an educated
person. “People can tell that I am parhi likhi1 even if they do not know
about my educational background,” she said.
Like Rehana, most of the women teachers I interviewed during my
16-month ethnography of girls’ schools in Pakistan were among the first
women in their rural and low-income communities to have received high
school, college, and sometimes even graduate education. For these women,
the primary purpose of education was to instill mannerisms associated with
the middle class, such as polite and confident speech, conversing in
English, dressing like city women, speaking confidently with strangers,
establishing eye contact during interactions, and resolving conflicts with-
out engaging in verbal or physical fights. On the one hand, the participants
approached middle-class mannerisms as the distinctive feature of the
parhay likhay people. On the other hand, they argued that acquiring educa-
tion was an Islamic right and responsibility of all Muslims. In this narrative
of women’s education, the parhi likhi subjectivity instilled in women the
mannerisms and values central to them becoming “good” Muslims as well
as productive members of their families and communities. This parhi likhi
subjectivity provides insights into a discourse where being educated, seen
as synonymous with being a good Muslim, is validated through the perfor-
mance of middle-class mannerisms. In a global context where education is
seen as a universal tool to empower Muslim women, the experiences of
parhi likhi teachers offer important insights into the intersections between
education and gendered, class-based, and religious subjectivities among
Muslim women from rural communities in Pakistan.
Women’s education has been central to different discourses that have
sought to modernize the developing and Muslim societies (Abu-Lughod
1998; Adely 2009; Chatterjee 1989; Cornwall 2007; Kandiyoti 2005;
Najmabadi 1998). These multiple paradigms approach education as the
process to change women: For example, international development agen-
cies assume that education will equip Muslim women with tools to trans-
form their “oppressive” culture, whereas religious militant groups such as
100 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2015
entered into public spaces that were earlier reserved for men. Muslim
women became participants and eventually leaders in women’s literacy
movements as well as in India’s Muslim nationalist movement, which in
1947 resulted in the creation of Pakistan. However, rather than challeng-
ing existing hierarchies, the public presence of Muslim women was meant
to protect the domestic domain from unscientific and un-Islamic values
(Metcalf 1994). This article shows how Islamic reformism has shaped the
contemporary sociocultural context of Pakistan, where women’s educa-
tion is seen as an Islamic institution, and urban middle-class values as a
reflection of that education.
The discourse of Islamic modernity shapes how parhi likhi women par-
ticipants negotiated and embodied a particular class-based Islamic morality.
Feminist scholarship highlights how Muslim women create and recreate
their gendered identities in complex ways, such as through attire, social
relations, and a domestic/public division of labor (Huisman and Hondagneu-
Sotelo 2005; Hutson 2001; Killian 2003; Marshall 2005; Predelli 2004;
Read and Bartkowski 2000). For these women, Islam becomes a flexible
resource (Predelli 2004) and a “dynamic tool kit” (Bartkowski and Read
2003) used to activate, reinforce, and subvert gendered boundaries. This
context-specific engagement with Islam to define gender empowerment is
captured in ethnographic accounts of Muslim women’s participation in
diverse Islamic movements (Mahmood 2005; Rinaldo 2013).
I employ the concept of “embedded agency,” defined as a capacity to
act in a particular context (Korteweg 2008). My approach is grounded in
theories of gender as a social construction and a performance rather than
a universal norm (Butler 1999; West and Fenstermaker 1995; West and
Zimmerman 1987, 2009). This is a departure from more individualist
notions often employed by the mainstream international development
agencies that support women’s education in countries like Pakistan
(Adely 2009).
Specifically, I examine how context-specific structures of gender, class,
Islam, and women’s education enter into the gender performances of par-
ticipants as they make claims to the parhi likhi subjectivity. This parhi
likhi subject position provides insights into gender performance and gen-
der empowerment as constitutive of multiple levels of contestations, con-
tradictions, and tensions. For instance, Muslim women in countries like
104 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2015
Methods
This article emerged from a larger study that examined how a woman-
centered transnational development organization that I call the Institute
Khurshid / Islamic Traditions of Modernity 105
education in their families, believed that as parhi likhi women, they were
distinct from other women in their villages. They attributed this distinc-
tion to their dispositions, which they aimed to teach to their students.
Interestingly, some of the women who were labeled unparh (uneducated)
by interviewees had also attended school and some even had academic
credentials. This became clear as Salma, the 28-year-old headmistress of
an IEL school serving a low-income rural community, discussed the per-
formance of women teachers at her schools:
You should have seen my teachers when they started working at the school.
They would come to school looking as if they had come to work in the
fields and not to teach children. Their clothes would not be pressed, their
hair would not be combed, their dupatta [scarf] would be hanging from
their head, and they would be yelling at each other and at the students. They
have their degrees, but can anyone call them educated? They are no differ-
ent from other women in the village.
Salma felt that the teachers at her school did not qualify as parhi likhi
because they neither looked nor behaved like educated women. They had
attended schools but were unable to learn educated ways of being.
Salma contrasted these women’s behavior to herself and her family,
who were more like “people from the city.” Salma’s father was the first
person in his village to receive a high school education, which secured
him a clerical government job. Salma and her family moved with her
father to the city, where Salma and her siblings attended school. For
Salma, studying in the city distinguished her from village women who had
attended school but were never exposed to city life. Salma moved back to
her agricultural village after her parents arranged her marriage to her
cousin, following the local custom.
The IEL staff invited Salma to work at their school because there was
an extreme shortage of educated women in her village. In Salma’s narra-
tive, being parhay likhay involved not only acquiring academic creden-
tials but also learning the mannerisms of educated urbanites. Her ability
to perform this identity qualified her as educated while excluding teachers
who lacked the cultural styles of educated women. These cultural styles
not only were significant within the space of the school but also shaped
women’s opportunities outside of school. For instance, Salma was the
only woman to participate on village committees that worked with non-
governmental organizations and state institutions to initiate development
projects providing health care, roads, and clean drinking water to the com-
munity. In rural villages, participation in these decision-making processes
Khurshid / Islamic Traditions of Modernity 109
People used to get upset when Salma disagreed with them in the meetings.
But she was always polite and respectful and did not get into fights. Now,
that’s the difference between parhi likhi and unparh women, and people
saw that. Today, people send their daughters to school because they want
them to be like Salma.
In these narratives, the term parhi likhi was used not only as an indication
of the ability of educated women to take up nontraditional roles but also
as a reference to their qualifications as “good” Muslims who understood
their rights and responsibilities.
Home was another site for shifting patterns of gendered participation as
a result of access to education for women. This is reflected in the story of
Noor, a 33-year-old teacher at an IEL elementary school. Noor lived with
her elderly parents, her two brothers’ wives, and their children, while her
brothers lived in the city and worked government jobs. In Noor’s low-
income rural village, it was common for women to marry in their mid-
twenties, but Noor’s parents had not found a suitable match for her because
Noor had a master’s degree in a community where few men had studied
beyond high school. Noor’s refusal to marry a man who was less educated
had troubled her family, but they eventually accepted her decision. Noor
laughingly told me that her education had saved her from “serving a man”
because her parents would not have honored her choices regarding mar-
riage if she were not educated. Noor proudly added that due to her educa-
tion, her brothers respected her opinion and consulted her before making
any decisions about their families. In their absence, Noor made all of the
decisions regarding her nieces’ and nephews’ education and health as well
as about agricultural work on her family’s land. Noor believed that the
respect she had earned did not come from her academic credentials alone,
but also her ability to prove her worth as an educated woman:
For Noor, her sisters-in-law were unable to embody the mannerisms that
she wanted to instill in her nephews and nieces, the mannerisms that
qualified her as a parhi likhi woman. She believed that she learned this
educated way of being primarily from her interactions with the IEL staff,
all of whom were women from urban middle-class backgrounds.
Parhi likhi women like Salma and Noor distanced themselves from the
gossip, fights, and practices associated with unparh women, who were
seen as lacking knowledge about Islam. They were accepted in public
domains because they were able to perform an educated subjectivity that
separated them from “other” women in the village. However, although
such inclusions of women into the public domain signify a shift in patri-
archal structures, it would be simplistic to assume that it completely trans-
formed these structures. Male members of these committees became
dependent on Salma because of her ability to engage with representatives
from the state and development organizations, read documents, and pro-
vide academic guidance to young girls and boys in the village. But Salma
was not invited to participate in the meetings when they involved resolv-
ing local issues such as land and marriage disputes. Similarly, despite
being parhi likhi, Noor, unlike her brothers, could not take a job outside
of her village. Thus, becoming parhi likhi not only implied carving out
new roles for women, but also reinforced certain gendered norms by stop-
ping short, for example, of demanding participation in processes that did
not require the “educated expertise” of parhi likhi women or by not enter-
ing into labor markets outside of the local context.
This is not a city where women are smart enough to do everything on their
own. Here, women can be so naïve. They are not educated to know the dif-
ference between right and wrong. I bet my cousins would not stop giggling
on the bus if they were traveling on their own.
women lacked the awareness and self-control to work outside of the home,
travel alone, and interact with men. They were less concerned with wom-
en’s sexual morality than with their ability to comport themselves in a way
that would display an Islamic and class-based respectability. This Islamic/
class respectability for women entailed displaying wisdom to negotiate
situations and avoid unproductive conflict. For instance, Rukhsana, a
35-year-old teacher who saw herself as a role model for women in her rural
village, shared how young girls often came to her with their problems:
Young girls are like colorful butterflies who want to fly, have fun, see the
world. But they can also be so easily lured too, right? I warn them to be
careful if they want to live lives that are different from their mothers and
grandmothers. If they want to become something, attend college, have a
job, and have some say in their lives. But they have to prove that they can
be trusted before they can have this freedom.
right, they mobilized gendered local norms to restrict such mobility for
unparh women. In other words, whereas Islamic rights were seen as supe-
rior to local customs, it was only parhi likhi women who could effectively
utilize rights without violating the respectability of their families.
woman could see the potential consequences of divorce. It would not only
bring dishonor to her family but also make it difficult for other girls in her
community to pursue education, as people would view Salma’s action as
the outcome of her being educated. There were a number of cases in her
village where women had separated from their husbands, but a parhi likhi
woman was not expected to defy community norms. In other words,
Salma saw her choice to stand up against her husband and in-laws as well
as to enter into an arranged marriage and stay in the abusive relationship
as a reflection of her making informed choices as a parhi likhi woman.
Similarly, Noor, another participant discussed earlier, explained her
choice to not get married as an expression of the right given to her by
Islam. She shared how she convinced her parents of her decision by telling
them how Islam had forbidden forcing people into marriage against their
free will. However, she recognized that she could not exert the choice of
seeking an educated man outside of her caste and kinship group as a poten-
tial match. In fact, her being parhi likhi implied that she, unlike unparh
women, would not “misuse” the freedom of employment and mobility
outside of home. This misuse implied any romantic or sexual liaison out-
side of marriage that could bring dishonor to the family and disharmony to
the community. Noor’s reserved mannerism in public earned her a good
reputation in the community and helped her convince her parents that she
was capable of making the decision of not getting married.
Women exercising choice in marriage was perceived as a potential
challenge to the institutions of family and community, even when it was
acknowledged as a right given by Islam. For example, Sabiha, a 33-year-
old teacher, described her marriage to her cousin as a “love marriage.”
She and her husband fell in love and their respective families agreed to
the match because of their shared caste and kinship backgrounds.
However, instead of approaching this choice as an expression of edu-
cated Muslim womanhood, she spoke about how education had helped
her learn how the unmodern traditions, and not Islam, deemed women a
burden for the family:
contrasted this to her actions as a parhi likhi woman who supported her
family in the “right” way. This view echoed the experiences of other
women participants for whom the economic benefits of working as a
teacher were valuable. However, they spoke of their work in terms of its
usefulness to the girls in their communities, and insisted that “making
money” was not the central objective of their work. Furthermore,
whereas employment extended economic benefits as well as an ability to
make certain decisions at home, it was not the central avenue for women
to respectability in their communities. Indeed, it was the authentic parhi
likhi women, and not all the teachers, who were invited to participate in
community-level decision-making processes.
Participants also made differentiated claims to respectability in relation
to marriage. Mariam, a 24-year-old teacher, summarized her position by
stating, “We know that Islam has given us the right to choose our hus-
bands but we do not feel the need to practice this right. The parents who
have educated us can also make best decisions for us when it comes to
marriage.” Mariam did not see marriage as a productive site to practice
her rights because of the staunch opposition to women involved in pre- or
extramarital relations. Participants shared that, although the families pre-
ferred men to also enter into marriages, the repercussions of men having
“love marriages” or marrying outside of their community were often neg-
ligible. Thus, being an educated Muslim woman, in this case, did not
constitute exercising the right given to women by Islam but rather deploy-
ing it in a manner that did not disrupt the harmony of the family. Being
parhi likhi thus highlights a tension between acknowledging and yet
refraining from practicing an important right given to women by Islam.
This tension is also a productive site to examine the separation and/or co-
construction of religion and culture. Whereas the women participants
recognized the lack of choice in marriage as a cultural rather than Islamic
norm, they viewed their efforts to support family harmony as a reflection
of their wisdom as parhi likhi women.
Ultimately, the lived experiences of participants complicate liberal
notions of women’s education as a tool to challenge patriarchal Islamic
traditions. At the same time, they also highlight the tensions inherent in
the subject position of parhi likhi women, who at times willingly
embraced and reinforced structures of domination instead of opposing
them in order to gain respectability equated with Islamic and middle-class
morality. This analysis helps us understand how parhi likhi women
actively participate as embedded agents, rather than passive objects of
modernity discourses, by negotiating which cultural practices to transform
Khurshid / Islamic Traditions of Modernity 117
and which ones to keep intact as they exercised the limited and specific
forms of power available to them in day-to-day life. As discussed earlier,
dominant structures sometimes benefited the participants by distinguish-
ing them from “other” women in the community and enabling them to act
in their own self-interest. Thus, embedded agency for the participants in
this context meant deployment of education to claim empowerment
within, rather than against, the institutions of family, community, and
Islam. Second, whereas the Islamic modernity project provides a produc-
tive context for examining parhi likhi subjectivity, the analysis shows how
Islam was one of multiple institutions that these women engaged with to
define their status as modern educated Muslim women. This discussion
helps us move away from the “oppressed Muslim woman” trope to better
understand how Islam, gender, and class are simultaneously deployed in
the making of parhi likhi subjectivity within a particular context.
Conclusion
Notes
1. Parhi likhi is the Urdu term used to refer to educated women, whereas
parhay likhay is often used as a gender-neutral term to refer to both educated men
and women.
2. I use South Asian Muslim modernity project and Indian Muslim modernity
project interchangeably because of their similar use in the scholarship. Pakistan
shares this legacy with India and Bangladesh.
3. I theorize my observations as participant observations since I was invited to
participate in the formal and informal discussions that teachers had with each
other as well as with the IEL staff. In addition, I was also asked to help students
with different tasks as I observed teachers in their classrooms.
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