Purdah or Pardaa (Hindi: पर्दा, Persian: پرده, Urdu: پردہ literally meaning "curtain") is the practice of concealing women from men. According to one definition:

Purdah is a curtain which makes sharp separation between the world of man and that of a woman, between the community as a whole and the family which is its heart, between the street and the home, the public and the private, just as it sharply separates society and the individual.[1]

This takes two forms: physical segregation of the sexes, and the requirement for women to cover their bodies and conceal their form.

Purdah exists in various forms in the Islamic world[2] and among Hindu women in parts of India.[3]

In the Muslim world, preventing women from being seen by men is closely linked to the concept of Namus.[4][5] Namus is an ethical category, a virtue, in Middle Eastern Muslim patriarchal character. It is a strongly gender-specific category of relations within a family described in terms of honor, attention, respect/respectability, and modesty. T