Women are equally starkly represented

1. Does the green sentence mean "women are represented as harsh and stark as men"?

2. Does the red "reform" has a negative meaning, that is change from a democratic to a conservative Islamic country?

Context:

In her installations, such as Rapture from 1999 Neshat projects two videos simultaneously on different walls of the gallery to depict the stark differences between men and women in what has become a fundamentalist Islamic society. Rapture juxtaposes these gender differences in starkly lyrical black-and-white images of figures in the landscape, or in (segregated) worship in a mosque. Women are equally starkly represented in these settings in that Neshat depicts them in black burkhas, but without face veils, or niqabs. In contemplating her works the viewer must necessarily shift her gaze back and forth between these images or even worlds. Neshat then makes it difficult if not impossible to come away with a cohesive picture of women in the everyday life of Muslim society. The alienated individual figures in Rapture—not only women but also men—suffer from these stark gender divisions. Neshat is then critical of certain reforms that have been realized in conservative Muslim societies.