This book sets out to investigate ways in which women, religion and culture have interacted with each other in the context of nineteenth and twentieth-century Iran. It covers topics as seemingly diverse as the social and cultural history of Persian cuisine, the work and attitudes of nineteenth-century Christian missionaries, the impact of growing female literacy on female lives during the twentieth century, and the longer-term consequences of developments since 1979 on the position of women in contemporary Iran. Contributions are tied together by their common aim of seeking to deconstruct notions of the 'Muslim woman' as a homogeneous category, and to challenge the kinds of misconceptions that still persist as far as the experience of women living in Muslim societies in general and Iran in particular are concerned.