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"Honarbin-Holliday provides invaluable glimpses into the lives of mostly young, and two older, Iranian women. She describes and advocates women's agency at the personal, societal, political, and not least cultural levels. Education, and higher education's role, in particular, form the uniting bases on which ambitions, struggles, hopes, dreams, and relentless efforts at creating public spaces and identities are placed." "The author applies a novel approach to the different aspects of dress code and the restrictions and advantages of styles of dress in the society ... She offers a discussion of young people's views on developing a society where women's social and legal status is considered equal to that of men ... introduces some grand narratives of civil society, democracy, and equality, showing women's increasing awareness of their political situation and its implications on a global scale."
Young men in contemporary Iran, indeed men in the Muslim world, are often seen in a highly generalized light, and as as sources of machismo energy, trouble, and extremism. The aim of this book is to show how the existence of urban men in contemporary Iran is neither monolithic nor particularly influenced by the Islamic ideology advocated by the Iranian government. Rather, such existences demonstrate that the masculine world is a site of struggle where young men attempt to safeguard age-old gender hierarchies and gender order in a changing world whilst also facing the gradual loss of patriarchy's legitimacy. Many feel emasculated by the harsh realities of the current economic situation and unemployment and the inability to provide for their dependents.
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