MarwaShalaby is the Fellow for the Middle East and Director of the Women's Rights inthe Middle East Program at James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy atRice University, USA. Her research focuses on comparative politics and researchmethodology, with a concentration on Middle Eastern politics, gender politics,and democratization.ValentineM. Moghadam is Director of the International Affairs Program, and Professor ofSociology, at Northeastern University, USA. Born in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Moghadamstudied in Canada and the U.S. She isthe author of Modernizing Women: Genderand Social Change in the Middle East (1993, 2003, 2013), Globalizing Women: Transnational FeministNetworks (2005, winner of the American Political Science Association'sVictoria Schuck Award), and Globalizationand Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement(2009, 2013).