The Politics of Women's Rights in Iran is the latest valuable addition to the growing literature on the women's rights movement in Iran, arguably the largest women's movement in the Middle East and Central Asia. Through long and painstaking ethnographic fieldwork in Iran, Osanloo wants to culturally and socially map the way in which the concept of women's rights there is vernacularized on different levels of women's interactions, through a myriad of cultural practices, by various legal challenges, and in diverging and even conflicting modes of interpretation of the state laws and those of the shari'a (Islamic jurisprudence). What shines through the book's pages is the resilient and unrelenting spirit of Iranian women in challenging the often unresponsive religious patriarchy that rules their land. Osanloo shows the incremental nature of women's attainment of the rights they seek, above all those pertaining to divorce, child custody, and financial compensation. They do so not only by doing their homework (expanding and exchanging knowledge) and engaging with the (clerical) judges in the courts, but also at the legal level, by revitalizing the few privileges bestowed upon women by shari'a, which are neglected by a male-defined legal discourse.

The concluding chapter contains ominous reference to neoconservative think-tanks in the United States that advocate the support of the women's movement by way of changing the political map of the Middle-East, in effect appropriating the campaigns for women's rights for purposes they cannot achieve through other means. Osanloo's ethnographic research reveals how unrealistic those perspectives are. Rejecting the binarisms prevalent in debates regarding women's rights in the West versus the East, Osanloo shows human rights as a cultural practice, a form of female socialization in venues such as female Qur'anic meetings, in which the “rights-talk” takes place. Such venues enable lay women, religious and not, to articulate their experiences and formulate their demands. In these meetings women offer their own interpretations of the holy text—a practice officially reserved for trained Shi'i clerics. The meetings are the birthplaces of women's rights activists. As such, women infringe on one of the main tenets of Shi'i Islam, which, interestingly, allows a woman to become a mujtahed (practicing expert in jurisprudence) but does not allow the female mujtahed to have followers. From women's meetings in their homes, to the offices of the lawyers who practice family law and advocate women's and children's rights, Osanloo shows, seemingly rigid laws of the land are pushed aside to accommodate the exigencies of women's actual lives. The women emerge, collectively, as rights-bearing subjects who challenge the discriminatory laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Women who go through these campaigns and challenges pay a heavy personal price. The key question is whether such struggles can, in due time, result in a fundamental overhaul of the legal structure, an endeavor that cannot succeed without major political shifts in the country. Osanloo's valuable book provides grounds for optimism.