Domesticity is a social, cultural, and historical construction with multiple layers of meaning, including a type of space, a kind of work (paid or unpaid), and a relationship of power or organization (Hansen 1992). Constructions of domesticity in Iran and Afghanistan in the mid-nineteenth century to the present were shaped by broad economic developments and social and cultural practices, such as urbanization, the emergence of a middle class, state-building, and nationalist and missionary ideologies.

Differences among women based on ethnic and tribal group, region, soc…