Middle Eastern Patriarchy in Transition (original) (raw)
Related papers
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2012
The article discusses the gendered implications of recent political developments in the region. It argues that women and gender are key to both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary processes and developments and not marginal to them. It explores the signi cance of women's involvement, the historical context of women's political participation and marginalization in political transition. Theoretically, developments in the region point to the centrality of women and gender when it comes to constructing and controlling communities, be they ethnic, religious or political; the signi cance of the state in reproducing, maintaining and challenging prevailing gender regimes, ideologies, discourses and relations; the instrumentalization of women's bodies and sexualities in regulating and controlling citizens and members of communities; the prevalence of genderbased violence; the historically and cross-culturally predominant construction of women as second-class citizens; the relationship between militarization and a militarized masculinity that privileges authoritarianism, social hierarchies and tries to marginalize and control not only women but also non-normative men.
Most national constitutions contain provisions calling for the protection of equal rights universally—for all groups—and more commonly in recent years for women specifically, due to the rise of the international women’s rights regime and the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action. Yet, despite widespread promotion of equal rights, gender equality has not been fully achieved in any country. Patriarchal norms and practices are more robust in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) than in any other world region. This essay defines patriarchy, with attention to classic and modern approaches, and discusses how academics and policymakers quantify egalitarianism. Scholarly attempts to measure and explain gender inequality have limitations, in that they do not recognize patriarchy’s public and private forms—that is, its multidimensionality. This essay highlights the diversity of outcomes for women both cross-regionally, with the best outcomes for women in Tunisia, but lower egalitarianism in many parts of the Levant and Gulf. It calls for an intersectional approach which takes into account such factors as class and tribal identity in understanding the complex factors that shape women’s access to economic opportunities, health and human development, and political power.
2015. Politics of Critique: Understanding Gender in Contemporary Middle East.
This paper explores the implications of spatial production of academic knowledge on the Middle East, through the critiques of Orientalist discourses on the ''Muslim woman.'' It begins with an examination of the success of postcolonial studies and scholarship on democratization in challenging racist perceptions and politics in the West. Then it reflects on the ways in which this knowledge production travels and is reconfigured in places where power inequalities are different. This requires a consideration of the regional consequences of either an over-emphasis on differences in agencies of ''Muslim women'' or a relative silence on issues of gender inequality. The paper's suggestion is to shift the focus from representation and discourse to the structural circumstances in which ordinary men and women's agencies play out; various political mechanisms which participate in the production of acceptable cultural practices; and patterns of resistance, which may defy arguments about culturally specific definitions of agency. This is a quest for making the ''exotic'' familiar, without exoticizing the familiar.
Gender and Civil Society in the Middle East
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2003
This article explores the aims, activities and challenges of women's movements in the Middle East. It demonstrates the similarities among movements, which are related to both the historical emergence of women's movements, and in particular their close affiliation to nationalist struggles, as well as contemporary circumstances such as ambiguous government policies, repression of civil societies and prevailing authoritarian political cultures. This contribution also looks to the specific factors and conditions that shape women's movements in particular countries differently, thereby highlighting the great degree of heterogeneity among women's organizations in the Middle East. An analysis of the actual goals and activities of women's groups in various countries, such as Jordan, Egypt and Palestine reveals that women activists tend to get mobilized around issues related to modernization and development. Issues such as women's rights to education, work and political participation have traditionally been both the accepted demands of women activists as well as part of the discourses of male modernizers and reformers. However, the more sensitive issues of women's reproductive rights and violence against women, for example, have been taken up by only a few women's organizations in recent years. The relationship of women's organizations to the state is key to the analysis of women's movements in the region. Varying levels of dependence and autonomy can be detected not only in the comparison of one country with another but also within given country contexts.
Transforming North African Feminisms from Within: New Post-Arab Spring Feminist Voices
Cairo Studies in Rnglish, 2019
This article focuses onthe 2010-2011 uprisings in North Africa as a “revolution” instigated by new actors, and also by the new ambiguities that postcolonial rule in the region created. Women’s rights in North Africa have been institutionally hyper-politicized and have served all sorts of agendas from the colonialist and neo-imperialist to the anti-colonialist and post-colonialist, to the religious extremist. This institutional instrumentalization has been first problematized then contested by generations of feminists and gender experts in the region. The lenses of these contestations were civil society, politics, and academia. My argument in this articlemay be stated as follows: Whereas the institutional instrumentalization of women’s rights in North Africa has not undergone any substantial change, the issues addressed and contestation strategies and practices have dramatically changed in the post-revolution era.This is transforming feminisms and genderstudies from within and in interesting ways, although the actors themselves do not always self-identify as feminists or gender experts. I address this argument conceptually and through facts. Conceptually, I adopt an overarching theoretical framework that I call “the Center” (Sadiqi 2016),an ideological shifting framework at the crossroads of culture, religion, and politicswhere diverse gender-based discourses converse. The fact that this space is gaining in vibrance even after thesubstantial weakening of the revolution means that it answers a real need at the public -discourse level which up to the pre-revolution moment was dominated by the secularist-Islamist frontal antagonism. The Center is yielding a new mind-set which seeks to highlight difference (whether linguistic, ideological, cultural, religious, educational, class-based, or gender-oriented), transgress the state’s authority (in which it lost trust),and find new free ways of expression that are not constrained by (political) alliances. In these emerging dynamics, gender is central, both as a defining marker /discourse and a way of reconfiguring space.To understand these new developments, this articleis divided into four main sections. The first section presents the relevant aspects of the Center; the second one summarizes the salient ways in which the state instrumentalizedwomen’s rights in the pre-revolution era; the third one presents a note on methodology and the new female voices; and the fourth sectionprovides my own readings of the emerging voices. In the conclusion, I revisit the Center framework and show ways in which this framework can help us understand post-Arab Spring development.