After getting a bad taste from reading Half the Sky, I needed something about women's situation with more nuance. A friend, who I knew from discussions could be quite subtle in her arguments, had written about her recent research in India, so I sought her book.

It is an academic book (sociology, anthropology, Indian and Hindu law, Women's Studies)and mostly out of my field (literature, rhetoric and composition, women's studies), so sometimes hard going. However, there were enough summaries to help me focus. And since it was partially ethnography, the stories of the real women held my attention.