Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. Today we're going to be talking about a book called Faith and Feminism in Pakistan, Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy, by Dr. Afia S. Zia. And I am thrilled to welcome to the podcast, the author of this book. Welcome, Afia.

Amy, thank you so much.

Thank you for being here. And I'd like to introduce you professionally first.

Maybe I'll just read your professional bio and then I'll ask you to introduce yourself a little more personally after that.

Sure.

Dr. Afia Zia is a feminist scholar who has taught gender studies at the University of Toronto, Canada,

and Habib University in Pakistan. She is the author of three books, and her most recent book is the one

we'll be discussing today. Again, it's faith and feminism in Pakistan, religious agency or secular

autonomy. She has authored over a dozen peer-reviewed essays in scholarly publications, and she's

contributed chapters for over 10 edited volumes, including an award-winning publication on human

rights, and she's currently a professor at Wesleyan University.

So again, welcome Dr. Zia, and I'd love it if you could just tell us a little bit more about you,

where you're from and your family and your education and what you bring to the work you do today.

Sure. Thanks, Amy. I've grown up in Pakistan. I've always lived here. I've politiced here.

I sort of have been involved in, and even my career has been here. I have two sons. They've both grown up in Pakistan as well. But I grew up in the 1990s in two different provinces.

Pakistan comprises of four provinces now, a fifth one. And they're all, Pakistan's incredibly diverse. There is tremendous diversity in terms of languages spoken in terms of ethnic background.

Of course, in terms of class.

So growing up in two provinces is significant because it means that you're exposed to very different kinds of political contexts.

And I think that enriched me tremendously.

And although I went to a private school, I went to an English speaking, sort of my mode of education was it was elite, it was certain privileged background, even though my family wasn't particularly privileged in terms of, we were not part of a landed elite, but yes, certainly in terms of our education.

And so what that meant is that we were of the 1% or even less of the elite in Pakistan. And the school that I

went to, all the students, it was based on a Cambridge system and most of my colleagues and peers went

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