 The third set of cases that has attracted attention among feminist autonomy theorists are those in which agents appear to self-consciously adopt (what are alleged to be) practices of oppression (such as the Islamic practice of veiling), participate in practices of oppression that severely curtail women’s options (such as arranged marriages) or subject women to physical harm (such as ‘female circumcision’ or clitoridectomy). Adopting such practices need not be the result of accommodation or adaptation; it need not be the result of an attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance at an unconscious level, or of resigned habituation to oppressive circumstances. Rather, the practices in question can be the explicit requirements of a society or culture, and self-consciously promoted by women themselves. Uma Narayan describes a community of women in India, the Sufi Pirzadi, who “live in relative purdah (seclusion) within the home and are expected to veil when they are in public” (Narayan 2002, 420). These women acknowledge that purdah severely limits their education and mobility, and has the effect of making them dependent on male members of the community. But they also explicitly recognize benefits, for instance, that veiling signifies “womanly modesty and propriety” and their “superior standing vis-à-vis other Muslim women” (Narayan 2002, 420–1).