Women of Deh Koh: Lives in an Iranian Village Book

Friedl gives one of the best and most empathetic studies of traditional village women's lives. She lets the women explain their struggles, accomplishments, and frustrations, as their lives were in the 1980s. For example, she finds that many village girls went to school until about grade three, then were forced to drop out before they grew sexually attractive, to protect them from aroused males. But it seems this concern to avoid sexual abuse commonly went hand-in-hand with desire to exploit the girls for cheap or free labor:

"… locally, women are said to 'belong in the house,' yet one sees many women out on apparently legitimate errands, often all day and far from home … a girl is taken out of school after third grade because it is not right for her to be among strangers, but the next day she is working in an outpost camp in the mountains, in full view of women, men, relatives, and strangers alike." (p. 196)

Where we might expect to find retiring, victimized women, Friedl describes a host of feisty, hard-working, commonly bossy women: "in everyday life …, men commonly admit that their wives or mothers control everything in the household'being omniscient, respected, feared and loved, all at the same time'like the stereotypical Jewish mother." (p. 151)