The Promise and Challenge of Party Primary Elections


Book Description

While primary elections are most often associated with presidential candidates in the United States, similar methods for selecting party leaders and candidates are becoming increasingly common in parliamentary democracies around the world. The Promise and Challenge of Party Primary Elections introduces the first comprehensive examination of both the concept and the practice of primary elections outside of the United States. By offering a clear definition of primary elections and examples of their types, the authors deliver the tools needed for comparative analysis within and across diverse party systems. Focusing their attention on Canada and Israel - two early adopters of primary elections - the authors unveil the most pressing challenges of conducting internal elections, including questions of financing, monitoring and oversight, and the recruitment of new party members. At the same time, the book highlights the democratic benefits of primaries through direct and widespread participation in internal party decision making. Drawing upon the experience of parties with a long history of primary elections, The Promise and Challenge of Party Primary Elections offers valuable lessons and insights for parties around the world in search of more open and inclusive democratic practices.




Women in Israel


Book Description

This is a comprehensive overview of discrimination in a state dominated by a patriarchal religious order, and brings fresh insights to the efficacy of the law in improving the status of women.




Between the Flag and the Banner


Book Description

Because Israel has endured perennial armed conflict, its national agenda places overriding importance on national security and family life. At the same time, Israel is a democracy that fosters equality for all its citizens. Thus Israeli women are caught in a dilemma: whether to show allegiance to the national cause or to raise the banner of feminism and focus on women's rights. This book presents a broad perspective on the political life of Israeli women, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It is the first book to explore Israeli women's political participation, political identity, and political organizations, as well as public policy toward women. Situating Israel in a comparative theoretical framework, Yael Yishai focuses on the enduring tension between women's drive for power and their desire to belong and integrate from within.




Women and the Israeli Occupation


Book Description

The state of Israel and the Palestinian nation are at a monumental juncture in their histories. Both have a chance to claim a new future but more than a quarter of a century of occupation has had significant social, political, economic, cultural, psychological and moral ramifications for Israeli and Palestinian men and women. Women and the Israeli Occupation analyses the impact of the occupier/occupied dichotomy on the lives of Palestinian, Israeli Palestinian, and Israeli Jewish women. The book argues that the Occupation has exposed internal conflicts, challenging social structures within all three societies, but has also reinforced existing loyalties as Palestinian and Jewish women have moved into public political action and worked together to end the Occupation. It suggests that although military occupation is not colonialism, there are many similarities in the Israeli/Palestinian case.




Reconstructed Lives


Book Description

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.




Israeli Women's Studies


Book Description

The purpose of the present anthology is to bring together, select, and organize the publishing work that has been done in the last two decades. The idea is to highlight current state of the art essays and point to an evolutionary trajectory from the earlier pioneering essays to the voices that define the field today.




Women in Israel


Book Description

This series of the Israel Sociological Association, whose object is to identify and clarify the major themes that occupy social research in Israel today, gathers together the best of Israeli social science investigation that was previously scattered in a wide variety of international journals. Volume VI presents a composite portrait of women's lives in Israel, analyzing their status hi the family, at work, in the military, and in political life. The editors start from the premise that Israel is simultaneously a modem industrial society and a traditional one with regard to the structure and centrality of family life. It is governed by both secular law based on the principle of equality between men and women, and religious law that imposes a different legal status between the sexes. Many of the contributors analyze the social contradictions of this paradox and how they shape women's options and experiences. This is the first compendium offering a comprehensive account of women in Israeli society. As such it should be of great interest to people hi women's studies, sociology, and Middle Eastern affairs. Contents (partial): "Economic Growth and Female Labour: The Case of Israel," "Gender, Ethnicity, and Income Inequality: The Israeli Experience," "The Status of Women in Academia," "Scientists in Organizations: Discrimination Processes in an Internal Labor Market," "Economic and Familial Roles of Women in Israel," "Is Resource Theory Equally Applicable to Wives and Husbands?" "The Social Status of War Widows," "Getting Powerful with Age: Changes in Women over the Life Cycle," "Family, Gender, and Attitudes toward Retirement," "Ritual, Morality, and Gender: The Religious Lives of Oriental Jewish Women hi Jersusalem," "Women hi Legislatures: Israel in a Comparative Perspective," "Women and Politics: The Case of Israel," "Abortion in Israel: Social Demand and Political Responses," "Role System under Stress: Sex Roles in War," "Relative Deprivation hi the Labor Market," "Women and Language in Israel," "Teachers' Selections of Boys and Girls as Prominent Pupils," "Theories of Gender Equality: Lessons from the Israeli Kibbutz," "Ethnic Identity and the Position of Women among Arabs hi an Israeli Town."




A Threshold Crossed


Book Description

"The widely held assumption that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is a temporary situation and that the 'peace process' will soon bring an end to Israeli abuses has obscured the reality on the ground today of Israel's entrenched discriminatory rule over Palestinians. A single authority, the Israeli government, rules primarily over the area between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), made-up of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Drawing on years of human rights documentation, case studies and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials and other sources, [this report] examines Israel's treatment of Palestinians and evaluates whether particular Israeli policies and practices in certain areas amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution."--Page 4 of cover.




Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

Freedom HouseOs innovative publication WomenOs Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance analyzes the status of women in the region, with a special focus on the gains and setbacks for womenOs rights since the first edition was released in 2005. The study presents a comparative evaluation of conditions for women in 17 countries and one territory: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The publication identifies the causes and consequences of gender inequality in the Middle East, and provides concrete recommendations for national and international policymakers and implementers. Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights. The project has been embraced as a resource not only by international players like the United Nations and the World Bank, but also by regional womenOs rights organizations, individual activists, scholars, and governments worldwide. WomenOs rights in each country are assessed in five key areas: (1) Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice; (2) Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person; (3) Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity; (4) Political Rights and Civic Voice; and (5) Social and Cultural Rights. The methodology is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the study results are presented through a set of numerical scores and analytical narrative reports.