MENA

Women's Participation in Green Growth - A Potential Fully Realised?

Citation:

Von Hagen, Markéta, and Johanna Willems. 2012. "Women's Participation in Green Growth - A Potential Fully Realised?" Donor Committee for Enterprise Development.

Authors: Markéta von Hagen, Johanna Willems

Annotation:

Summary:
The purpose of the study is threefold: (1) to shed more light on the gender dimension of green growth, especially in the context of private sector development and thereby fill an important knowledge gap in the green growth discourse; (2) to validate women’s contributions to green growth and sustainable private sector development; and (3) ultimately to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality. The overall approach of the study combines three intersecting perspectives, which are dealt with independently as well as in tandem: a gender perspective with a focus on the (potential) participation of women, a greening perspective and a private sector development perspective. The study contains case studies from Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Philippines, South Africa, Uganda and Vietnam. (Summary from Green Growth Knowledge Platform)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
 
2. Factors Influencing Women's Participation in Green Growth
 
3. Making Women's Participation in Green Growth a Reality: Two Value Chain Examples
 
4. Assessment of Potentials, Risks and Relevant Approaches for Women's Participation in the Green Economy
 
5. Recommendations

Topics: Development, Economies, Ecological Economics, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Africa, MENA, East Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, Americas, South America, Asia, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia Countries: Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Philippines, South Africa, Uganda, Vietnam

Year: 2012

Ecofeminism in Dialogue

Citation:

Vacoch, Douglas A, and Sam Mickey, eds. 2017. Ecofeminism in Dialogue. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Authors: Douglas A. Vacoch, Sam Mickey

Annotation:

Summary:
There are countless ways of thinking, feeling, and acting like an ecofeminist. Ecofeminism includes a plurality of perspectives, thriving in dialogue between diverse theories and practices involving ecological and feminist matters of concern. Deepening the dialogue, the contributors in this anthology explore critical and complementary interactions between ecofeminism and other areas of inquiry, including ecocriticism, postcolonialism, geography, environmental law, religion, geoengineering, systems thinking, family therapy, and more. This volume aims to further the cultural and literary theories of ecofeminism by situating them in conversation with other interpretations and analyses of intersections between environment, gender, and culture. This anthology is a unique combination of contemporary, interdisciplinary, and global perspectives in dialogue with ecofeminism, supporting academic and activist efforts to resist oppression and domination and cultivate care and justice. (Summary from Amazon)
 
Table of Contents:
1. Ecofeminist, Post-Colonial, and Anti-Capitalist Possibilities in Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring
Anna Bedford
 
2. “I Learnt All the Words and Broke Them Up / To Make a Single Word: Homeland”: An Eco-Postcolonial Perspective of Resistance in Palestinian’s Women’s Literature
Benay Blend
 
3. Pylons, Playgrounds, and Power Situations: Ecofeminism and Landscape in Women’s Short Fiction from Wales
Michelle Deininger
 
4. Angela Carter’s Postmodern Wolf Tales
Karen Ya-Chu Yang
 
5. “If Only I had Petals, my Situations Would be Different”: The Curious Case of Nature Reserves and Shelters for Battered Women
Edna Gorney
 
6. Leaning into the Light: Toward an Ecofeminist Model of Family Therapy
Gail Grossman Freyne
 
7. Technofeminism and Ecofeminism: An Analysis of Geoengineering Research
Tina Sikka
 
8. Weaving Ecofeminisms and Spiritualities: Reflections from Latin American Women
Ann Hidalgo
 
9. Women, Water, and Ecofeminism: A Method to Respond to the Commodification of Water
Rachel Hart Winter
 
10. Hope Over Powerlessness: McFague’s Meditation on the World as God’s Body
Rebecca Meier-Rao
 
11. Dilemmas and Possibilities of Online Activism in a Gendered Space
Jessica McLean
 
12. Mapping and Misrecognition: Ecofeminist Insights into Chicana Feminist Aesthetics
Christina Holmes
 
13. Ecofeminist Potentials for International Environmental Law
Kate Wilkinson Cross

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Domestic Violence, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gender, International Law, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation, Justice Regions: MENA, Americas, Central America, South America, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Northern Europe Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories, United Kingdom

Year: 2018

Response to and Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Iraq: The Case of Shi'a Turkmen Survivors in Tel Afar

Citation:

Bor, Güley. 2019. Response to and Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Iraq: The Case of Shi'a Turkmen Survivors in Tel Afar. London: London School of Economics Middle East Centre.

Author: Güley Bor

Abstract:

Conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has been widespread in Iraq during the most recent Islamic State conflict. Thousands of Yazidi and hundreds of Shiʿa Turkmen women and girls were subjected to various forms of CRSV, including sexual slavery and forced marriages. Survivors need, demand and have a right to emergency responses as well as reparations. However, an overview of the situation of Shiʿa Turkmen survivors who returned to Tel Afar demonstrates how the Government of Iraq’s inaction, together with its discriminatory laws and practices, continue to fail women, and survivors in particular. Shiʿa Turkmen survivors must be provided with timely, comprehensive and survivor-centric medical, legal, economic services and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), while community-oriented programmes must address the high levels of stigma to which survivors are subjected. To address the medical, psychological and social harms arising from CRSV, complex reparation programmes (both urgent and comprehensive) should be designed and implemented through effective survivor consultation, by ensuring that all survivors are included in their scope. While the recent reparations bill is a step in the right direction, Iraq is in urgent need for wider reform in addressing sexual violence and ensuring its non-repetition.

Topics: Conflict, Gender, Women, Girls, Governance, Health, Mental Health, Justice, Reparations, Sexual Violence, Sexual Slavery, SV against Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2019

Invisible Lives: Gender, Dispossession, and Precarity amongst Syrian Refugee Women in the Middle East

Citation:

Canefe, Nergis. 2018. "Invisible Lives: Gender, Dispossesion, and Precarity amongst Syrian Refugee Women in the Middle East." Refuge 34 (1): 39-49. 

Author: Nergis Canefe

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
This article attends to the connections between neo-liberal and neo-developmentalist labour regimes, asylum and immigration management, and the exploitation of undocumented, refugee, and migrant women, based on the experiences of Syrian refugee women in Turkey. The concept of precarity is explored as a selectively applied strategy by states to people who lack “status” or who are unable to benefit from “membership rights.” Forced migrants, illegal migrants, and asylum seekers are directly implicated in highly precarious work experiences at the bottom end of labour markets across the Global South, becoming trapped in forced labour and human trafficking arrangements. The article establishes a link between extreme forms of migrant labour exploitation in precarious life worlds and gender-based  profiling of life chances.
 
FRENCH ABSTRACT:
Cet article concerne les connexions entre les régimes de travail néo-libéraux et néo-développementistes, la gestion de l’asile et de l’immigration, et l’exploitation de femmes migrantes, réfugiées, sans papiers, à partir du vécu de réfugiées syriennes en Turquie. Le concept de précarité est exploré en tant que stratégie appliquée de manière sélective par les états aux personnes qui n’ont « pas de statut » ou ne peuvent pas bénéficier de « droits d’appartenance ». Les migrants forcés, les migrants illégaux et les demandeurs d’asile sont directement concernés par des expériences de travail fortement précaire au plus bas des marchés du travail sur l’ensemble des pays du Sud, et deviennent alors prisonnier du travail forcé et du trafic d’êtres humains. L’article établit un lien entre des formes extrêmes d’exploitation des migrants au travail dans des contextes de vie précaires et un profilage des opportunités de vie en fonction du genre.

 

Keywords: political economy of crisis, precarity, forced migration, gender and migration, gender and precarity, Middle Eastern States

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Trafficking, Human Trafficking Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Syria, Turkey

Year: 2018

Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Arab Spring: The Significance of Gender and Women's Mobilizations

Citation:

Moghadam, Valentine M. 2018. "Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Arab Spring: The Significance of Gender and Women's Mobilizations." Politics, Groups, and Identities 6 (4): 666-81.

Author: Valentine Moghadam

Abstract:

The Arab Spring has been extensively analyzed but the presence or absence of violent protests and the divergent outcomes of the uprising that encompassed the Arab region have not been explained in terms of the salience of gender and women’s mobilizations. I argue that women’s legal status, social positions, and collective action prior to the Arab Spring helped shape the nature of the 2011 mass protests as well as the political and social outcomes of individual countries. I compare and contrast two sets of cases: Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, which saw non-violent protests and relatively less repression on the part of the state; and Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, where states responded to the protests, whether violent or non-violent, with force and repression, and where women and their rights have been among the principal victims. I also show why women fared worse in Egypt than in Morocco and Tunisia.

Keywords: Arab Spring, women's rights, women's mobilizations, outcomes, violence, democratization

Topics: Democracy / Democratization, Conflict, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Nonviolence, Rights, Women's Rights, Violence Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa, Asia, Middle East Countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen

Year: 2018

A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Citation:

Jane Freedman, Zeynep Kivilcim, and Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu, eds. 2017. A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis. New York: Routledge. 

Authors: Jane Freedman, ed. , Zeynep Kivilcim, ed. , Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu, ed.

Annotation:

Summary:
The refugee crisis that began in 2015 has seen thousands of refugees attempting to reach Europe, principally from Syria. The dangers and difficulties of this journey have been highlighted in the media, as have the political disagreements within Europe over the way to deal with the problem. However, despite the increasing number of women making this journey, there has been little or no analysis of women’s experiences or of the particular difficulties and dangers they may face.
 
A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis examines women’s experience at all stages of forced migration, from the conflict in Syria, to refugee camps in Lebanon or Turkey, on the journey to the European Union and on arrival in an EU member state. The book deals with women’s experiences, the changing nature of gender relations during forced migration, gendered representations of refugees, and the ways in which EU policies may impact differently on men and women. The book provides a nuanced and complex assessment of the refugee crisis, and shows the importance of analysing differences within the refugee population.
 
Students and scholars of development studies, gender studies, security studies, politics and middle eastern studies will find this book an important guide to the evolving crisis.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Forced Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, International Organizations Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Lebanon, Syria, Turkey

Year: 2017

Smoke and Mirrors: State-Sponsored Feminism in Post-Uprising Egypt

Citation:

Allam, Nermin. 2019. "Smoke and Mirrors: State-Sponsored Feminism in Post-Uprising Egypt." Social Research 86 (1): 365-86.

 

Author: Nermin Allam

Annotation:

Summary:
"In 2012, I carried out my first round of interviews with women in Egypt. I was then studying their experiences in the 2011 uprising that led to the ousting of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The aura that surrounded the interviews at that time was marked by cautious optimism, hope, and a belief in a better future. This aura, however, was short-lived, and soon came to an end with the resurgence of gender inequality and the failure of democratic transition in Egypt. Themes of despair and disappointment became fundamental features of my interviews in 2014, and more intensely in 2017, as female participants reflected on their experiences and their expectations for change following the uprising. Participants described the sense of feeling "worthless [belā qīmah]," "exhausted [ta'banah]," and "depleted [mu'damah]." However, whenever I asked if that was the end of change and reform, they hastily responded: "Not yet." 
 
Activists often asserted that the experience of collective action had changed them and that "things" cannot return to the "old days." However, as other participants asserted during my interviews and as is still the case at the time of this writing, "things" seem by far worse in comparison to the "old days," which leaves unanswered the question of what has really changed. The answer is that the agenda of women's rights did shift in the evolving political landscape that followed the 2011 Egyptian uprising, specifically with the revival of state feminism under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 
 
Al-Sisi's regime has sought to contain women's groups through policies of state-sponsored feminism, meaning the different ways in which the regime moves to offer limited advancements in women's rights during periods of economic development (Hatem 1992). In exchange for these limited rights, the regime sanctions independent feminist initiatives while it actually restricts their autonomy (Hatem 1992). Except for the brief period immediately following the uprising, state-sponsored feminism throughout Egypt's modern history has marked and governed gender politics, ostensibly laying essential foundations for improving the lives of women. However, in the absence of a strong independent feminist movement, this foundation was vulnerable to regressive backlash as soon as the political structure changed (Kato 2017). 
 
Unlike the "first lady syndrome" (Elsadda 2011) associated with former Egyptian regimes, characterized by the first lady and her clique intervening on behalf of women's groups and championing women's rights, the president himself, in what I call "al-Sisi Syndrome," has personally taken on that responsibility. His policies have yielded significant developments and advancements but also challenges for women's rights in Egypt, including the populist discourses embraced by the regime to control the agenda of women's rights and to discredit independent feminists. 
 
The backlash against women's rights in Egypt following the 2011 uprising underscores the ways in which state-sponsored feminism as a political opportunity is a "fickle friend" (Tarrow 1998, 89). It constantly shifts and changes and can eventually turn against members that contributed to opening this space and benefited from it. I prefer the term "flickering" to "fickle" because it encompasses the possibility that even if state-sponsored feminism does not outright turn on its members, it nevertheless engenders mixed outcomes anddisappointments. It creates a unique set of opportunities and challenges for the women's movement in Egypt. These opportunities and obstacles condition the development of the movement, the resonance of women's rights discourse, and the access of different women's groups to decision-making and political participation. 
 
The policies of state-sponsored feminism under al-Sisi bear great resemblance to the gender policies of Mubarak's regime yet also entail new articulations. It is fruitful, therefore, to compare the historical and current contours of the policy and examine how the interests, identities, and strategies of different actors changed following the uprising. Doing so reveals the limitations of state-sponsored feminism in renegotiating the relationship between state institutions and civil society organizations. Such analysis also highlights the potential of state feminism to challenge gendered social norms and perceptions among the different segments in the society." (Allam 2019, 365-67)

Topics: Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Nationalism, Post-Conflict, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, MENA, North Africa, Middle East Countries: Egypt

Year: 2019

Women and Peace-Building in Iraq

Citation:

Khodary, Yasmin M. 2016. "Women and Peace-Building in Iraq." Peace Review 28, (4): 499-507.

 

Author: Yasmin M. Khodary

Annotation:

Summary:
This article reviews the literature on women and peace-building, at large, which then moves to illustrating women's roles and initiatives in peace-building in Iraq in particular. In doing so, the author employs a qualitative methodology that combines review of literature and documents with in-depth interviews with four activists and members of Iraqi women civil-society organizations. Based on the literature review and the interviews, the essay draws on a set of lessons learned to strengthen peace-building knowledge and actions.

Topics: Civil Society, Conflict, Gender, Women, International Organizations, Peacebuilding Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iraq

Year: 2016

Beyond Orientalism: Exploring the Distinctive Feminism of Democratic Confederalism in Rojava

Citation:

Shahvisi, Arianne. 2018. "Beyond Orientalism: Exploring the Distinctive Feminism of Democratic Confederalism in Rojava." Geopolitics: 1-25. doi: 10.1080/14650045.2018.1554564.

Author: Arianne Shahvisi

Abstract:

Women have been central to the revolution in Rojava, leading to widespread interest in the Kurdish women’s movement across Western contexts. Yet Western mass media representations of women combatants tend to be objectifying and superficial, glossing over the unique variety of feminism, known as “jineology,” that is core to the political system of Rojava, which operates according to the ideology of “democratic confederalism.” This paper is intended as a corrective to the inadequate representation of the theory and praxis of the women’s movement in Rojava. It approaches this task by: (a) critiquing the popular representation of women in Rojava, and (b) providing an overview of some of the features of the distinctive feminism that are in operation, with a focus on intersectionality, autonomous spaces, and combatting masculinity.

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Media Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2018

Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism: the Kurdish Political Movement in Turkey

Citation:

Al‐Ali, Nadje, and Latif Tas. 2018. "Reconsidering Nationalism and Feminism: The Kurdish Political Movement in Turkey." Nations and Nationalism 24 (2): 453-73.

Authors: Nadje Al-Ali, Latif Tas

Abstract:

Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side-lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender-based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender-based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women’s movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women’s rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement.

Keywords: ethnic nationalism, feminism, Kurdish women's movement, middle east, PKK, Turkey

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Nationalism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East, Europe, Southern Europe Countries: Turkey

Year: 2018

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