A well-documented and fresh perspective on Muslim society.
How an influx of working women is changing the Muslim world.
Head of Education, Gender, and Work at the World Economic Forum, Zahidi makes her literary debut with an informative and revealing look at the work life of Muslim women throughout the Middle East and South, Central, and East Asia. Drawing from interviews in 16 countries with 200 women from different classes and professions, the author paints an optimistic picture of women’s increasing participation in the economies and politics of their communities. With policymakers and business leaders in mind, she bolsters her profiles of individual women with persuasive statistics about women’s work and its impact on family dynamics, businesses, and education. Since 2000, 50 million women have joined the workforce throughout the Muslim region, an unprecedented increase in less than a generation. Zahidi points to several reasons for this astonishing change: an expansion of girls’ education, with some governments, such as the United Arab Emirates, making “deliberate efforts” to bring educated women into the workforce; a decline in fertility, freeing women from prolonged infant care; increased funding for women-owned businesses; and technology, which allows women to work flexibly, connect with customers easily, and become exposed “to the aspirations of women around the world.” Crucial to women’s ability to work is the cooperation of husbands, brothers, and fathers; one woman, allowed to go to university, was held back from working by her father, who insisted “that she observe the strictest rules of female seclusion.” Zahidi was heartened to learn that educated women are seen as good marriage prospects, and the dual-career family is accepted—and even desired—by younger women and men who “have lost interest in reliving the traditional breadwinner and caregiving model of their own fathers and mothers.” Despite some legal and societal challenges that still exist to impede women’s agency, Zahidi looks forward to a “prosperous, dynamic” future for Muslim women.
A well-documented and fresh perspective on Muslim society.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-56858-590-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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