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Love marriage or arranged marriage? Choice, rights, and empowerment for educated Muslim women from rural and low-income Pakistani communities

ABSTRACT Using ethnographic data collected with Muslim women teachers from rural and low-income communities in Pakistan, this article shows how empowerment for these educated women meant access to different forms of power within families and communities. The focus on the issue of choice in marriage reveals how the participants conceptualised empowerment as practice of rights that entailed right choices; choices that produced positive long-term benefits in terms of making new opportunities and roles available to them within their contexts. Through focusing on the lived experiences of educated and professional Muslim women in a specific cultural context, this analysis presents a critical analysis of the gendered concepts and practices of choice, rights, and empowerment. It disrupts the global narrative that mobilises the image of Muslim women as victims of their culture and presents education as a tool that empowers Muslim women against their patriarchal families and institutions.