They were tought cooking, laundering, needlework, hygeine, and housewife things. The chapter also gets into womens position in the twentieth century. With the expansion of the upper and middle classes in the Middle east, we see a rise in professional women take hold. The lower classes still live in a poverty type setting though. In the chapter it also goes into the liberal movements taking hold in many nations in the Middle East.
Some specfic examples are equal rights movements, and also into fundamentalist movements.
The author does a very good job of talking about the issues that have plaughed women throughout the nineteenth century. She has good points and expresses them well. The reading assigned for this discussion brought to light the complexity of the issue of women in Islam. I'll start by describing my stereotypical idea of the Islamic woman. Their role to be a mother and a wife seems utimatly dependant on the decisions of the males.