No Shame for the Sun: Lives of
Professional Pakistani Women

Shahla Haeri
Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002. 454 pages.

Shahla Haeri’s groundbreaking work could not have emerged at a more
desperately needed time. In the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on Iraq, the
western media have worked feverishly to bombard the West with images
and messages about Muslim women and Islam. Whether it is the image
of Afghanistan’s burqa-clad women or Iraq’s veiled women, the message
has been the same: All Muslim women are speechless, powerless, and
often invisible victims of an oppressive monolithic Islam. 

In  No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women,
Haeri presents the reader with an insightful and poignant look at the lives
of six educated, middle-class and upper-middle class, professional
Pakistani women. Situated against Pakistan’s changing social, political,
economic, cultural, and religious landscapes, their successes, costs, and
struggles “challenge the notion of a ‘hegemonic’ and monolithic Islam that
victimizes Muslim women” (p. xi). 

The book’s preface spells out its main purpose: to render visible the
experiences of professional Pakistani women within the larger goal of dis-
rupting the dominant western stereotypes and beliefs of Muslim women.
In the introduction, Haeri situates herself by raising a series of questions
emerging from her own experiences as an Iranian-born, middle-class, edu-
cated, professional Muslim woman living and working in the United
States. Namely, she questions her own invisibility resulting from the per-
sistence of western stereotypical images and beliefs of women in the
Muslim world and then offers an overview of the theoretical and histori-
cal rationale for their persistence.

114 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:2



The rest of the book is organized into three main sections. In the first
section, Haeri communicates her feminist theoretical underpinnings
amidst a historical, political, social, and cultural overview of Pakistan,
thereby elaborating on many of the aspects mentioned by the women in
their narratives. This paves the way for a smooth transition into the narra-
tives, which comprise the remaining two sections (the bulk) of the book.
The short conclusion highlights these women’s power and agency, draw-
ing attention to their accomplishments without trivializing their struggles
and obstacles. Haeri points out that they encounter many of the same ten-
sions and conflicts faced by their counterparts in the West and elsewhere,
including reconciling their careers with their culture’s demands regarding
their duties as wives and mothers (p. 407). She acknowledges, as the nar-
ratives themselves illustrate, that their oppression is not grounded in a
“hegemonic” Islam that victimizes Muslim women, but rather in
“Pakistan’s nation-building objectives, a growing religious intolerance and
influence, and the dominant code of honor characteristic of a feudal and
tribal society” (p. 407). 

The book’s organization is one of its key strengths, lending itself well
to illustrating the power and agency of these women. Haeri’s presentation
of each woman’s narrative in its entirety (organized as separate chapters),
rather than dissecting and organizing them along common themes for the
purpose of analysis, allows the reader a more intimate engagement with
each woman. Furthermore, she strategically centers their voices by
removing her own voice from the main text of the narratives (including
the questions she poses to the women). Instead, she consigns her presence
to footnotes and the last few pages of each chapter, where she offers her
analysis of each woman’s story. 

Her analyses are understandably brief, since the women themselves
reflect and theorize upon their own experiences in complex ways, reveal-
ing their high degree of social consciousness. This book is a “shared
ethnography” (p. xii) in the truest sense, for it allows each woman to
“author” her life. However, the depth of Haeri’s own knowledge and insight
cannot be underestimated, as is evidenced from the elaborate footnotes con-
taining detailed explanations and countless sources from varied disciplines
that build and expand upon the women’s knowledge and further inform the
reader. 

Despite the fact that each narrative is distinguished by an overarch-
ing theme reflective of each woman’s individuality, it is also clear that
Haeri seeks the opinions of all women pertaining to specific topics, namely,

Book Reviews 115



veiling, religion, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic law, education,
women’s activism, and the complexity of gender roles in Pakistan. As a
result, this evoked common themes that resonate strongly throughout the
book: the resilience of Pakistan’s oppressive feudal system, the domi-
nance and oppressive nature of Pakistan’s male centered honor (izzat)
system, the consequences and challenges women encounter when inhab-
iting public spaces, the urgency for education and the dilemmas sur-
rounding literacy, Pakistan’s powerful political ideologies and structures,
the complexities of identity and of familial relationships (particularly
marital and parental relations), and the fluidity between culture and reli-
gion in Pakistan.

The book has, however, three shortcomings. First, despite the fact
that their struggles and successes emanate from within Pakistan, many of
them had the privilege of traveling to the West in varying capacities (e.g.,
educated, lived, taught, and visited). Haeri fails to consider the impact of
this experience and its larger relevance to the book’s main purpose.
Second, while she illustrates these women’s diversity and complexity, she
neglects to interrogate the tendency of many of them to reify and essen-
tialize the subaltern (Pakistan’s mass of poor landless people, subjected to
lifelong servitude by feudal landowners) into a monolithic victimized
group, thereby underplaying their individual and collective agency. Third,
while the narratives examine gender and class privilege and its intersec-
tions to varying degrees, there is only a brief acknowledgement of the
privilege afforded to these women by virtue of their coming from a
Muslim background. Haeri’s failure to probe this religious privilege and
its intersections is a serious omission for a book that focuses on an artifi-
cially constructed postcolonial society that contains a number of minori-
tized religious groups.

Despite its shortcomings, No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional
Pakistani Women is a valuable contribution to a wide range of disciplines,
particularly anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, cultural studies,
Islamic studies, and South Asian studies. After reading this book, there can
be no doubt in the reader’s mind that this is not only an exemplary schol-
arly work, but also a labor of love for Haeri.

Zabeda Nazim
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
The University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

116 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:2