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the West face, which women in the Islamic world are free from: the
compulsion to work, an inability to depend upon men to provide,
and the public exploitation of women’s bodies. Regardless of what
form expression takes, the main point is that women’s narratives
are more comfortably distributed in face-to-face conversations, in
privacy, in ways that keep information within the circles for whom
it is intended, narrowly defined. Public trust in the privacy of the
Internet is not present and questions about government monitoring
or a lack of anonymity are lingering in any user’s mind.

Layla
Layla is a prominent Kuwaiti woman in her late fifties. She is origi-
nally from England and is Kuwaiti by marriage. She has been sub-
jected to the pressures of the family matriarchs’ reserve for “foreign
imports” into the bloodlines. These experiences have made her more
vocal about women’s issues in Kuwait, and her voice has not been
one to advocate their need for liberation. On the contrary, Layla’s
narrative describes the power and control women already have over
Arab society. In her words, “Women in Kuwait aren’t in need of any
more power. It is in their nature to want to control everyone and
everything around them. Arab women are strong, and many are
mean. I’m afraid of them.” I heard versions of these observations
from many Kuwaiti men. One man told me that “You don’t under-
stand the distribution of power in Kuwaiti society if you think
women needed any more power. They already control society.” An-
other told me that Kuwaiti “women have traditionally managed so-
cial and financial day-to-day life in Kuwait, because of the heritage
of pearl diving. Men went away for months at a time to dive. Women
were left behind to take care of the community.” Layla and these
other male voices encouraged me to look beyond the rhetoric of pa-
triarchy that on the surface concealed women’s power. Underneath
these discursive chains lies a world which women rule. Women con-
trol the lives of men, and they run the country from behind closed
doors. Cartoons in the Arab world commonly poke fun at this rela-
tionship by representing a large, strong, powerful woman, hovering
over a cowering male. The caption commonly has the woman making
some demand of the man, and the man rarely is allowed to disagree.
My visit with Layla took place in her lovely home. I begin by
telling her about my research and how I hoped she could help me to
understand Kuwaiti women’s lives, and the ways that new commu-
nications technologies like the Internet might change them. My first