Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Middle East

Women in the early modern Middle East were involved in every aspect of society, from politics and commerce to manufacturing and agriculture. This chapter begins with royal women, for whom we have extensive information on their political, economic, and cultural activities from letters they wrote and buildings they designed, before turning to the lives of women of more modest means and questions of gender and sexuality. Modeled on the imperial palace, elite households were the primary site for the reproduction of political authority and important spaces for the reproduction of elite culture and identity. For most women beyond the ruling classes, their days were defined by the time‐consuming and labor‐intense tasks of feeding and clothing their families. The presence of homoeroticism in poetry, as well as homoerotic liaisons in popular theater, or the gender creativity of Karagoz dressing in women's clothing, fit within the relatively open discourse on sex and sexuality in Ottoman culture.