Women And Power In The Middle East

The seventeen essays in Women and Power in the Middle East analyze the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape gender systems in the Middle East and North Africa. Published at different times in Middle East Report, the journal of the Middle East Research and Information Project, the essays document empirically the similarities and differences in the gendering of relations of power in twelve countries—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. Together they seek to build a framework for understanding broad patterns of gender in the Arab-Islamic world. Challenging questions are addressed throughout. What roles have women played in politics in this region? When and why are women politically mobilized, and which women? Does the nature and impact of their mobilization differ if it is initiated by the state, nationalist movements, revolutionary parties, or spontaneous revolt? And what happens to women when those agents of mobilization win or lose? In investigating these and other issues, the essays take a look at the impact of rapid social change in the Arab-Islamic world. They also analyze Arab disillusionment with the radical nationalisms of the 1950s and 1960s and with leftist ideologies, as well as the rise of political Islamist movements. Indeed the essays present rich new approaches to assessing what political participation has meant for women in this region and how emerging national states there have dealt with organized efforts by women to influence the institutions that govern their lives. Designed for courses in Middle East, women's, and cultural studies, Women and Power in the Middle East offers to both students and scholars an excellent introduction to the study of gender in the Arab-Islamic world.

This book offers both theoretical perspectives and detailed examples which provide the analytical frameworks chosen by the Middle Eastern women themselves to explain the strategies they have chosen for liberation. The studies deal with Islam and its impact on personal and public lives of women in the region as well as their political struggles for liberation both internally and internationally.

Conceptualization and theoretical background -- Feminist anthropological perspectives on violence -- Armed conflict and gender-based violence -- Counter-narratives of Palestinian women : the construction of her-story and the politics of fear -- Gender, youth and institutional support in the occupied Palestinian territories -- Impact of armed conflict on gender roles in Lebanon -- Politics, war, and violence against women in Iraq and Afghanistan -- War and gender in Bathist Iraq -- Violence against Afghan women : tradition, religion, conflict, and war -- Religious and social violence against women -- Religious-based violence against women, and feminist responses : Iran, Afghanistan, and Algeria -- Strategy in the battles over her : Islamism and secularism -- Violence during pregnancy in Jordan : its prevalence and associated risk and protective factors -- Gender-based discrimination and legal reform -- Legal reforms on violence against women in Turkey : best practices -- Violence against women in Morocco : advances, contentions, and strategies to combat it -- Language, sexual harassment and media -- Gendered language use, hierarchization of linguistic space and state building -- Dismantling the discourses of war : Palestinian women filmmakers address violence.

Employing a broad, interdisciplinary perspective on gender relations, Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East questions long-standing stereotypes about the traditional subordination of women in the region. With essays on gender construction in Iran, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, and the Occupied Territories, this collection offers a wide-ranging exploration of tradition, identity, and power in different parts of the Middle East.Seeking to overcome monolithic Western notions of women's life in "the traditional society," the essays in Part I reexamine the assumption that such societies leave little room for female participation.Part II focuses on the reconstruction of identities by women in Iran, Turkey, Israel, and the Occupied Territories. The authors examine the complex variables that contribute to the development of identities—including gender, class, and ethnicity—in various Middle Eastern societies, questioning whether certain identities are more important to women than others. These essays also look at the issue of group identity formation versus the autonomy of the individual.Part III looks at the relationship between gender and power in everyday life in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco, showing how power relations are constantly contested and renegotiated among family members and members of a community, between nations and between men and women.WIth its collection of enlightened and diverse contemporary perspectives on women in the Middle East, Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East is an important work that will have significant impact on the way we look at gender in traditional societies.

Military occupations and interventions have a gendered impact on both those engaged in occupying, and those whose lands have been occupied, yet little has been published about this effect either historically or in contemporary times. This collection redresses this neglect by examining and analyzing the impact of occupation on men and women, both occupied and occupier, in a variety of geographical spaces from Japan to the Philippines to Iraq. The gendered perspectives offered are also intimately tied to analyses of ‘power’: how power is enacted by the occupier; how powerlessness is experienced by the occupied; how power is negotiated, shared, compromised, subverted, reclaimed; institutional power; and contested power in post-conflict societies. This collection covers a variety of geographical and period contexts in the Asia Pacific and Middle East since 1945, offering the reader a comparative view across time and space of post-WWII military occupations and interventions. The term ‘military occupation’ is interpreted broadly to include military interventions, the presence of military bases, and peacekeeping/post-conflict operations, allowing space to demonstrate that the lines between each definition are blurred. Including perspectives from established and emerging scholars, aid workers, and activists from around the world, this volume incorporates voices from those conducting research on and those with direct experience of military occupations and interventions.

Now with a new Preface and Afterword by the author “Outstanding . . . [Isobel Coleman] takes us into remote villages and urban bureaucracies to find the brave men and women working to create change in the Middle East.”—Los Angeles Times In this timely and important book, Isobel Coleman shows how Muslim women and men across the Middle East are working within Islam to fight for women’s rights in a growing movement of Islamic feminism. Journeying through Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Coleman introduces the reader to influential Islamic feminist thinkers and successful grassroots activists working to create economic, political, and educational opportunities for women. Their advocacy for women’s rights based on more progressive interpretations of Islam are critical to bridging the conflict between those championing reform and those seeking to oppress women in the name of religious tradition. Socially, culturally, economically, and politically, the future of the region depends on finding ways to accommodate human rights, and in particular women’s rights, with Islamic law. These reformers—and thousands of others—are the people leading the way forward. Featuring new material that addresses how the Arab uprisings and other recent events have affected the social and political landscape of the region, Paradise Beneath Her Feet offers a message of hope: Change is coming to the Middle East—and more often than not, it is being led by women. Praise for Paradise Beneath Her Feet “Clearly written, deeply moving, and wonderfully enlightening.”—Reza Aslan, author of No god but God “[An] engrossing portrait of real Muslim women that reveals how Islamic feminists . . . are working with and within the culture, rather than against it . . . to forge ‘a legitimate Islamic alternative to the current repressive system.’ Coleman doesn’t diminish the enormity of the struggle, but she argues convincingly that it might yet rewrite Islam’s future.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A nuanced view of Islam’s role in public life that is cautiously hopeful.”—The Economist “Eye-opening . . . Deeply religious, profoundly determined and modern in every way, these are twenty-first-century women bent on change. Hear them roar and see a future being born before our eyes.”—Booklist

Is today's changing media landscape in the Middle East empowering women? This is the first book to address the dynamics of media ecology and women's advancement in the contemporary Middle East. The book spans both the region and media forms, from Iran's women's press, via Maghrebi women filmmakers and Egyptian political films, Palestinian TV and Hezbollah's TV station, Al-Manar. It takes as its starting point the diverse experiencees and multi-layered identities of women and treats media institutions and practices as part of wider power relations in society. By analysing media production, consumption and texts, it reveals where and how gender boundaries have been erected or crossed.

Contrary to popular perceptions, newly veiled women across the Middle East are just as much products and symbols of modernity as the upper- and middle-class women who courageously took off the veil almost a century ago. To make this point, these essays focus on the "woman question" in the Middle East (most particularly in Egypt and Iran), especially at the turn of the century, when gender became a highly charged nationalist issue tied up in complex ways with the West. The last two decades have witnessed an extraordinary burst of energy and richness in Middle East women's studies, and the contributors to this volume exemplify the vitality of this new thinking. They take up issues of concern to historians and social thinkers working on the postcolonial world. The essays challenge the assumptions of other major works on women and feminism in the Middle East by questioning, among other things, the familiar dichotomy in which women's domesticity is associated with tradition and modernity with their entry into the public sphere. Indeed, Remaking Women is a radical challenge to any easy equation of modernity with progress, emancipation, and the empowerment of women. The contributors are Lila Abu-Lughod, Marilyn Booth, Deniz Kandiyoti, Khaled Fahmy, Mervat Hatem, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Omnia Shakry, and Zohreh T. Sullivan.The book is introduced by the editor with a piece called "Feminist Longings and Postcolonial Conditions," which masterfully interfaces the critical studies of feminism and modernism with scholarship on South Asia and the Middle East.