Fatema Mernissi was born on 27 September 1940 in Fez, Morocco. She grew up in the harem of her affluent paternal grandmother along with various female kin and servants.[1] She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalist movement, and secondary level education in an all-girls school funded by the French protectorate. In 1957, she studied political science at the Sorbonne in Paris and later at Brandeis University in the US, where she gained her doctorate in 1974. She returned to work at the Mohammed V University and taught at the Faculté des Lettres between 1974 and 1981 on subjects such as methodology, family sociology and psychosociology. Further, she was a research scholar at the University Institute for scientific Research at the same university. Mernissi's Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society was written for her PhD thesis and later published as a book which recognizes the power of Muslim women in relation to the Islamic faith. Mernissi is known for her sociopolitical approaches towards discussing gender and sexual identities, specifically those in Morocco and other Muslim countries. She is regarded as an influential feminist figure, as she was a renowned public speaker, scholar, teacher, writer, and sociologist. Fatema Mernissi died in Rabat on 30 November 2015.