Research:
From stigma to overt discrimination, Muslim women are confronted with various mechanisms of exclusion and inequality at work, at school, and in their intimate lives. Using ethnographic methods, my research investigates how women marginalized on account of their gender, race, or economic status, grapple with such mechanisms. Focusing on understudied contexts and populations, such as middle-class and elite women from the Global South, it asks how differently situated groups of Muslim women contest bias, forge alliances and cultivate inclusion at work and in their intimate lives. In doing so, this research contributes new tools and concepts for understanding the structural barriers to Muslim women's equality and well-being both in Muslim majority and minority contexts, and expands the broader sociological conversation around agency, equity, inclusion and dignity.
Book Synopsis:
The Stigma Matrix: Purdah, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan's Frontline Women
As developing states adopt neoliberal policies, more and more working-class women find themselves pulled into new jobs and roles in the public sphere. They are pressed into wage work by a privatizing and unstable job market that makes it increasingly difficult for working-class families to survive on a single income. And they are pulled into public roles by the gender mainstreaming policies that developing states must sign on to, in order to receive transnational aid. Their inclusion into the political economy is very beneficial for society, but is it also beneficial for women?
Fauzia Husain spent 14 months documenting the experiences of policewomen, lady health workers, and airline attendants— frontline workers who help the Pakistani state (and its global allies) address, surveil and discipline veiled women citizens, who would otherwise remain beyond the state’s reach. She found that frontline women must confront the stigma matrix, a complex of local and global, historic, and contemporary factors that work together to complicate women’s integration into public life.
The Stigma Matrix follows three groups of Pakistani women who work in public service positions that are locally seen as inimical to women’s modesty. Their experiences reveal that inclusion requires more than quotas or special seats. Drawing on detailed observations of the women’s experiences, as well as 150 interviews across the three sites, Husain advances critical feminist and sociological frameworks on stigma by highlighting the women’s agency as they grapple with global forces and work to sanitize their reputations. Both stigma and agency, this book shows, draw on multiple layers of meaning and relating, and are tangled up with elite projects of hegemony.
As developing states adopt neoliberal policies, more and more working-class women find themselves pulled into new jobs and roles in the public sphere. They are pressed into wage work by a privatizing and unstable job market that makes it increasingly difficult for working-class families to survive on a single income. And they are pulled into public roles by the gender mainstreaming policies that developing states must sign on to, in order to receive transnational aid. Their inclusion into the political economy is very beneficial for society, but is it also beneficial for women?
Fauzia Husain spent 14 months documenting the experiences of policewomen, lady health workers, and airline attendants— frontline workers who help the Pakistani state (and its global allies) address, surveil and discipline veiled women citizens, who would otherwise remain beyond the state’s reach. She found that frontline women must confront the stigma matrix, a complex of local and global, historic, and contemporary factors that work together to complicate women’s integration into public life.
The Stigma Matrix follows three groups of Pakistani women who work in public service positions that are locally seen as inimical to women’s modesty. Their experiences reveal that inclusion requires more than quotas or special seats. Drawing on detailed observations of the women’s experiences, as well as 150 interviews across the three sites, Husain advances critical feminist and sociological frameworks on stigma by highlighting the women’s agency as they grapple with global forces and work to sanitize their reputations. Both stigma and agency, this book shows, draw on multiple layers of meaning and relating, and are tangled up with elite projects of hegemony.
Publications and Reports:
Book
"The Stigma Matrix: Purdah, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan's Frontline Women." Under contract at Stanford University Press.
Peer-reviewed publications
2020. Husain, Fauzia. “Halal Dating, Purdah and Postfeminism; What Pakistani Women’s Sexual Projects Can Tell Us About Agency.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 45:3, 629-652 https://doi.org/10.1086/706470.
2021. Husain, Fauzia. “Dead Goat on the Runway. Incongruent Performance, Affective Citizenship and Gender.” Poetics Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X21001121?dgcid=author
Book chapters
2022. Husain, Fauzia. “Veiled Sociology. The Epistemologies of Purdah and Two-Boat Ethnography.” Invited book chapter in Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries. Edited by Smitha Radhakrishnan and Gowri Vijayakumar.
Manuscripts under review
Articles
"Discretion and Interpersonal Work in Crisis."
Works in progress
Articles
Other publications:
- Husain, Fauzia. 2020. "Postcolonial Though and Social Theory by Julian Go." Invited Book Review. Social Forces.
- Husain, Fauzia. 2018. Invited Essay: “Corruption, Gender, And The Violation Of Public-Private Boundaries.” Organizations, Occupations and Work, Newsletter. December.
- Husain, Fauzia. 2017. Silencing Sexual Harassment Complaints in Pakistan and the US. Blog post, Sociological Images
- Husain, Fauzia. 2015. “Burka Avengers” and Pakistan’s Gender Structures Blog post, Gender and Society Blog. (Website).
- Husain, Fauzia. 2015. Is there a Globalization of Commoditized Love? Blog post, Sociological Images (Website with 500,000 viewers monthly). February.
CONFERENCES AND OTHER PRESENTATIONS (SELECTED).
2021 Veiled Sociology: The Epistemologies of Purdah in Gender Segregated Ethnography
2021 Women, Public Authority and Spectacular Agency.
2021 Discretion and Interpersonal Work in Crisis.”
2021 Spectacular Agency.
2020 Gender and Police Reform (September).
2020 Gendered Authority Threats and the Interaction Order.
2020 Mavens of Mobility: Pakistani Airline Women, Circumscribed Cosmopolitanism and the
Reproduction of Inequality.
2020 Empty Agency; Gender and the Engines of Authority in the Pakistani Police.
2018 When Agency is Empty: Gender and the Engines of Authority in the Pakistani Police.
"The Stigma Matrix: Purdah, Globalization, and the Agency of Pakistan's Frontline Women." Under contract at Stanford University Press.
Peer-reviewed publications
2020. Husain, Fauzia. “Halal Dating, Purdah and Postfeminism; What Pakistani Women’s Sexual Projects Can Tell Us About Agency.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 45:3, 629-652 https://doi.org/10.1086/706470.
- Winner of the 2021 Distinguished Article Award, Sexualities Section of the American Sociological Association
- Bierstedt Prize for best graduate paper, 2018.
2021. Husain, Fauzia. “Dead Goat on the Runway. Incongruent Performance, Affective Citizenship and Gender.” Poetics Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X21001121?dgcid=author
Book chapters
2022. Husain, Fauzia. “Veiled Sociology. The Epistemologies of Purdah and Two-Boat Ethnography.” Invited book chapter in Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries. Edited by Smitha Radhakrishnan and Gowri Vijayakumar.
Manuscripts under review
Articles
"Discretion and Interpersonal Work in Crisis."
Works in progress
Articles
- Husain, Fauzia. “Hobbled Leadership; Gender and The Engines of Authority in The Pakistani Police.”
- Honorable Mention, Shils-Coleman Award, 2019. Theory section of the American Sociological Association
- Husain, Fauzia. “Decolonizing Stigma, Teaching Goffman Online and in the 21st Century classroom.”
- Husain, Fauzia. “The Sacrificial Daughter; Familial Strategies of Frontline Women in Pakistan.”
- Husain, Fauzia. “Sociological Ambivalence, A Source of Agency in Intimacy.”
Other publications:
- Husain, Fauzia. 2020. "Postcolonial Though and Social Theory by Julian Go." Invited Book Review. Social Forces.
- Husain, Fauzia. 2018. Invited Essay: “Corruption, Gender, And The Violation Of Public-Private Boundaries.” Organizations, Occupations and Work, Newsletter. December.
- Husain, Fauzia. 2017. Silencing Sexual Harassment Complaints in Pakistan and the US. Blog post, Sociological Images
- Husain, Fauzia. 2015. “Burka Avengers” and Pakistan’s Gender Structures Blog post, Gender and Society Blog. (Website).
- Husain, Fauzia. 2015. Is there a Globalization of Commoditized Love? Blog post, Sociological Images (Website with 500,000 viewers monthly). February.
CONFERENCES AND OTHER PRESENTATIONS (SELECTED).
2021 Veiled Sociology: The Epistemologies of Purdah in Gender Segregated Ethnography
- Panel “Decolonizing Sociology from South Asia,” Social Science History Association. 2021 Meeting.
2021 Women, Public Authority and Spectacular Agency.
- Panel at the 65th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) sponsored by the United Nations (UN).
2021 Discretion and Interpersonal Work in Crisis.”
- Regular Session on Policies and Institutions, Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting.
2021 Spectacular Agency.
- Roundtable. Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting.
2020 Gender and Police Reform (September).
- Appeared as a guest on a TV News talk show panel. Show: Pas-i-purdah (Behind the Veil) with guests: Afzal Ali Shigri (Former Inspector General Police in Sindh province, Pakistan) and Senator Faisal Javed (Pakistani legislator). Episode available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM-De0M_3iE
2020 Gendered Authority Threats and the Interaction Order.
- Regular Session on Gender. ASA (session cancelled due to Covid19).
2020 Mavens of Mobility: Pakistani Airline Women, Circumscribed Cosmopolitanism and the
Reproduction of Inequality.
- Roundtable. Sociologists for Women in Society Winter Meeting.
2020 Empty Agency; Gender and the Engines of Authority in the Pakistani Police.
- Invited Research Presentation. College of William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA).
2018 When Agency is Empty: Gender and the Engines of Authority in the Pakistani Police.
- Junior Theorists Symposium.