Women Rising


Book Description

Groundbreaking essays by female activists and scholars documenting women’s resistance before, during, and after the Arab Spring Images of women protesting in the Arab Spring, from Tahrir Square to the streets of Tunisia and Syria, have become emblematic of the political upheaval sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. In Women Rising, Rita Stephan and Mounira M. Charrad bring together a provocative group of scholars, activists, artists, and more, highlighting the first-hand experiences of these remarkable women. In this relevant and timely volume, Stephan and Charrad paint a picture of women’s political resistance in sixteen countries before, during, and since the Arab Spring protests first began in 2011. Contributors provide insight into a diverse range of perspectives across the entire movement, focusing on often-marginalized voices, including rural women, housewives, students, and artists. Women Rising offers an on-the-ground understanding of an important twenty-first century movement, telling the story of Arab women’s activism.




Women in Saudi Arabia Today


Book Description

The book studies the social issues related to the status of women in Saudi Arabia and the extent to which Saudi Arabian women actively participate in the development of their country. It also focuses on education and work outside the home as they affect the traditional role of the Saudi woman as wife, mother and homemaker. At the same time, those factors promote the participation of women in the development of Saudi Arabia. The book examines also the quality of Saudi women's lives in a traditional society and the meaning of their social reality. Intensive interviews were held with 100 Saudi women in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from different social, economic and educational levels.




The Status of the Arab Woman


Book Description







The Women of the United Arab Emirates


Book Description

First published in 1980, this book looks at the factors which influenced the position held by women in the United Arab Emirates in the second half of the 20th century. It argues that Islamic Law has granted women rights and privileges in the spheres of family life, marriage, education and economic pursuits, which aim at improving their status in society. However, due to the interpretations of various religious scholars, influenced by local traditions and social trends, women have often not been given these rights, particularly in family life and marriage. In contrast, the book also explores how the wealth brought about by the discovery of oil has served to further strengthen the position of UAE women, principally in the fields of education, social affairs and economic activity. This book will be of interest to those studying women in Islamic society and modernisation in the Middle East.




Seeking Legitimacy


Book Description

A comparative study based on extensive fieldwork, and an original database of gender-based reforms in the Middle East and North Africa, Aili Mari Tripp analyzes why autocratic leaders in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia adopted more extensive women's rights than their Middle Eastern counterparts.




Arab Women in Arab News


Book Description

This book addresses east-west understandings of Arab women as portrayed through translated media. The vast majority of media studies on Arab women are western-based. They study the effect of western stereotypes in western media depictions of Arab women. There is a vast scholarly literature tracing western stereotypes of Arab women from medieval times to the present. From 1800, the dominant western stereotype of Arab women depicts them as passive and oppressed. Thirty years of social science media research in the west has shown that media images of Arab women reinforce this two hundred year old stereotype. Much of this research has studied silent "image bites" of Arab women, where women are pictured in veils and their own voices are replaced by western captions or voice-overs. This book sets out to answer this question. To answer it, we contracted with a global news translation service from the Middle East to collect and translate a sample of 22 months of new summaries from 103 Arab media sources belonging to 22 Arab countries. Filtering the summaries that contained one or more female keywords (e.g., woman, mother, aunt, sister, she) yielded 2, 061 summaries between September 2005 and June of 2007. Using the 2,061 summaries as input data, a coding scheme was developed for "active" and "passive" female behaviors based on verb-phrase analysis and conventions of English-language news-reporting.




Women and Power in the Middle East


Book Description

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.




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.




Women and Gender in Islam


Book Description

A classic, pioneering account of the lives of women in Islamic history, republished for a new generation This pioneering study of the social and political lives of Muslim women has shaped a whole generation of scholarship. In it, Leila Ahmed explores the historical roots of contemporary debates, ambitiously surveying Islamic discourse on women from Arabia during the period in which Islam was founded to Iraq during the classical age to Egypt during the modern era. The book is now reissued as a Veritas paperback, with a new foreword by Kecia Ali situating the text in its scholarly context and explaining its enduring influence. “Ahmed’s book is a serious and independent-minded analysis of its subject, the best-informed, most sympathetic and reliable one that exists today.”—Edward W. Said “Destined to become a classic. . . . It gives [Muslim women] back our rightful place, at the center of our histories.”—Rana Kabbani, The Guardian