The politics of gender relations, as a critical element in the construction of and resistance to power in the Age of Empire, has been the focus of a range of interdisciplinary scholarship on the Middle East, Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. Colonial officials such as Lord Cromer (in Egypt) and Lord Curzon (in India) often relied on discussions of the subjugated status of “native” women to articulate the moral imperative of the colonizer's “civilizing mission.” Meanwhile, the intersection of gender and power was a key element in the formation of anticolonial nationalist movements and in the process of state building throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Mounira M. Charrad's book makes a significant contribution to this growing body of literature.