Khurshid, A. (2020). Love marriage or arranged marriage? Choice, rights, and empowerment for educated Muslim women from rural and low-income Pakistani communities. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 50(1), 90-106. doi:10.1080/03057925.2018.1507726

This article explains how empowerment for educated women means access to multiple types of power within families and communities, based on ethnographic data collected with Muslim women teachers from rural and low-income communities in Pakistan. The participants’ conceptualisation of empowerment as a practice of rights that entailed making the right choices—choices that resulted in positive long-term benefits in terms of making new opportunities and roles available to them within their contexts—is revealed by focusing on the issue of choice in marriage. The author gives a critical critique of gendered notions and practices of choice, rights, and empowerment by concentrating on the lived experiences of educated and professional Muslim women in a specific cultural setting. It challenges the global narrative that portrays Muslim women as victims of their society and instead portrays education as a tool for empowering Muslim women against patriarchal families and institutions.