Private male tutors for exams make gaze-lowering socially awkward for pious young women

Evidence

Hajja Samira and the other daeiyat spent considerable time dwelling on the intricacies involved in avoiding eye contact when taking private lessons from a male tutor-a practice that is quite common among middle.- ass families since both private and public schools often fail to prepare students to succeed in nationally administered annual examinations. At fi the young women objected to the daeiyat’s reading of the Quranic verses on the basis of the prac.. tical diffi they would encounter if they avoided eye contact with male teachers: some said they would appear strange and awkward if they behaved in this manner; others said that it was diffi to fi qualifi women to provide private lessons; and still others argued that they would not understand what was being taught if they did not look their teachers in the eye. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 704