Mounira Maya Charrad[1] (born 1942) is a Franco-Tunisian sociologist[2] who serves as associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Her research has centered on state formation, colonialism, law, citizenship, kinship, and women's rights.
Challenging explanations of politics based on a textual approach to religion, she offers instead a focus on social solidarities and where they are grounded (kinship, ethnicity, or other), as for example in her articles "Gender in the Middle East: Islam, State, Agency" and "Central and Local Patrimonialism: State Building in Kin-Based Societies".
[7] Her work has been translated into French and Arabic, and featured on websites including the International Museum of Women[8] and in the media.
[citation needed] Charrad's book States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco (University of California Press, 2001) won the following awards[citation needed]: The book is being translated into French, Arabic, and Chinese.