Economic need, not ideology, drove women’s emancipation in Muslim societies

Evidence

A major factor in the emancipation of women was economic need. Peasant women had from time immemorial been part of the work-force and had, in consequence, enjoyed certain social freedoms denied to their sisters in the cities. Economic modernization brought a need for female labor, which was augmented by mobilization for modern war. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1147

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A sharp, almost materialist counter-claim to the usual narrative that Western ideas emancipated Muslim women — the driver was labor demand, and the rural/urban inversion of freedom is genuinely paradigm-rearranging.
• XREF: Parallels the World-War labor-mobilization arguments about women’s roles in Europe, and Quesnay/economic-determinism traditions. — connects to: Entry into production and reproductive freedom drive women’s political emancipation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 276; Frontier necessity raised women’s value but did not overturn male command of society — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 280; Socioeconomic and political conditions affect women’s rights far more than Islam itself — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 289 (+1 more)