Middle East

The Gender Gap in Voting in Post-Conflict Elections: Evidence from Israel, Mali and Côte D’Ivoire

Citation:

Stockemer, Daniel, and Michael J Wigginton. 2020. “The Gender Gap in Voting in Post-Conflict Elections: Evidence from Israel, Mali and Côte D’Ivoire.” Conflict Management and Peace Science, 1-23. doi: 10.1177/0738894220966577.

Authors: Daniel Stockemer, Michael J. Wigginton

Abstract:

In this article, we first formulate some theoretical expectations about the development of the gender gap in voting in post-conflict situations. Second, we test these expectations on five cases, including two civil wars, the Ivorian Civil War (2011) and the Malian Civil War (2013–2015), and three major international Israeli conflicts, the Yom Kippur War (1973) and the First and Second Lebanon Wars (1982–1985 and 2006). We do so by comparing women’s and men’s turnout before and after a conflict using individual voting data and find that the sum of the nine factors we identify (i.e. duration of war, type of warfare, end of fighting after ceasefire/peace settlement, change in workforce participation, international involvement in the peace process, international development aid, the militarization of politics and female social movement activism) explain changes in the gender gap in voting after the conflict in three of the five cases we study.

Keywords: Gender gap in voting, post-conflict situation

Topics: Gender, Men, Women, Militarization, Political Participation, Post-Conflict Regions: Africa, Asia, Middle East Countries: Côte D'Ivoire, Israel, Mali

Year: 2020

Non-territorial Autonomy and Gender Equality: The Case of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria – Rojava

Citation:

Rosa, Burç. 2020. "Non-territorial Autonomy and Gender Equality: The Case of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria – Rojava." Filozofija i drustvo 31 (3): 319-339.

Author: Burç Rosa

Abstract:

The Kurdish-led autonomous entity called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) - also known as Rojava - considers women’s liberation an imperative condition for shaping a democratic society. The practice of autonomy in NES shares strong resemblances with Non- Territorial Autonomy (NTA) models; however, it introduces a novelty in the role of women as active agents in building a plurinational democracy. This paper examines (1) the intellectual and political origins of the political role ascribed to women in autonomous administrations and (2) how the practice of autonomy in Rojava has advanced women’s rights by shedding light on both institutional implementation of women’s rights, as well as the creation of (non)-territorial spaces of women’s emancipation within the autonomous model. The argument made is that the conceptual framework of the Rojava model goes beyond the Kurdish question and can be considered an attempt to resolve a democratic deficit of liberal democratic nation-states through bringing together solutions that address the intertwined subordination of minorities and women.

Keywords: women, representation, plurinational democracy, non-territorial autonomy, Kurdish question, Syria, Rojava, minorities

Topics: Armed Conflict, Secessionist Wars, Democracy / Democratization, Governance, Political Participation, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2020

Kurdish Women as Political Agents: Kurdish Political Movement, Gender Equality, and Women’s Freedom

Citation:

Çağlayan Handan. 2020. "Kurdish Women as Political Agents: Kurdish Political Movement, Gender Equality, and Women’s Freedom." In Women in the Kurdish Movement: Mothers, Comrades, Goddesses. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author: Handan Çağlayan

Annotation:

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkarên Kurdistan, PKK) was founded in 1978 with the goal to establish an independent socialist Kurdistan state. The party has since changed radically ideologically, politically, programmatically, and organizationally. In this process, one of the most significant axes of continuity during the PKK’s history is the principle of gender equality. The PKK’s approach to this offered opportunity spaces for women’s political participation while being simultaneously transformed through their participation. It had already included women members before becoming a political party, similar to the socialist youth organizations of the 1970s. Women, although in small numbers, participated in the PKK’s founding congress in 1978 and remained involved in its subsequent activities.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Ethnic/Communal Wars, Secessionist Wars, Political Participation Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East

Year: 2020

“In My Eyes He Was a Man”: Poor and Working-Class Boy Soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War

Citation:

Ahmadi, Shaherzad R. 2018. "'In My Eyes He Was a Man': Poor and Working-Class Boy Soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 14 (2): 174-192.

Author: Shaherzad R. Ahmadi

Abstract:

During the Pahlavi period in Iran (1925–79), poor and working-class families were more likely to expect young sons to work to support the household. These boys, in turn, were more autonomous. Middle-class families, on the other hand, protected and controlled boys. Researchers have assumed that religious zealotry was the primary inspiration for boys to enlist in the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ignoring the ways in which class inflected boyhood. While religious fervor may have been a motivation for some of the poor and working-class Iranian boys (between ten and fourteen) who enlisted, the expectation that they work took precedence. Moreover, at least some of these boys were eager to participate in war-front masculine homosociality rather than remain in feminized domestic spaces. This study analyzes biographies, census data, newspaper accounts, and original oral history interviews.

Keywords: Iran-Iraq War, childhood, boy soldiers, Pahlavi Iran, class

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Class, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Male Combatants, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militaries Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran

Year: 2018

Interrogating the Constructions of Masculinist Protection and Militarism in the Syrian Constitution of 1973

Citation:

Aldoughli, Rahaf. 2019. "Interrogating the Constructions of Masculinist Protection and Militarism in the Syrian Constitution of 1973." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 15 (1): 48-74.

Author: Rahaf Aldoughli

Abstract:

This is a revisionist study of Syrian Baʾathism. At its heart is an examination of ingrained masculinist bias. This article argues that there is a reciprocal relationship between militarism and masculinity, achieved through gratifying protection for both the nation and women. While most feminist scholarship dealing with states formation in the Arab context attributes its gendered nature to dictatorship, patriarchy, and religion, there is no debate about the development of states and their relation to militarism and masculinism. This construction of militarized masculinity in Baʾath ideology ensures the preservation of gendered laws that perceive women as less equal. While teasing out this aspect, this study seeks to explore the status of women in the Syrian Constitution (1973) and laws by investigating the role of the state as a male protector in which women’s rights become challenged by the state’s paternalistic perceptions.

Keywords: militarism, masculinist protection, women, Syria, constitutions

Topics: Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Power Relations, Masculinism, Governance, Constitutions, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Syria

Year: 2019

From Guerrilla Girls to Zainabs: Reassessing the Figure of the “Militant Woman” in the Iranian Revolution

Citation:

Gordan, Arielle. 2021. "From Guerilla Girls to Zainabs: Reassessing the Figure of the "Militant Woman" in the Iranian Revolution." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 17 (1): 64-95.

Author: Arielle Gordon

Abstract:

Scholars have long accounted for representations of women in the Iranian Revolution by categorically classifying them as “devout mothers” or “heroic sisters,” embodied respectively in the Shiʾi archetypes of Fatima and Zainab. However, a closer look at images of militant women finds them residing within the traditions of their time, as part and parcel of an era of liberation movements in which the idiom of the female fighter featured prominently. This article takes a transnational look at tropes of women’s militancy and traces how they filtered into Iranian revolutionary culture. Finally, it contends that only with the consolidation of Khomeini’s power and the start of the Iran-Iraq War is this figure renamed Zainab and sustained as a central icon of the Islamic Republic.

Keywords: visual culture, revolution, transnationalism, representation, 'gender'

Topics: Armed Conflict, National Liberation Wars, Combatants, Female Combatants, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Militarism, Religion Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Iran, Iraq

Year: 2021

Ways to Come, Ways to Leave: Gender, Mobility, and Il/Legality among Ethiopian Domestic Workers in Yemen

Citation:

De Regt, Marina. 2010. “Ways to Come, Ways to Leave: Gender, Mobility, and Il/Legality among Ethiopian Domestic Workers in Yemen.” Gender & Society 24 (2): 237–60.

 

Author: Marina De Regt

Abstract:

Based on anthropological fieldwork in Yemen, this article examines the relationship between gender, mobility, and il/legality in the lives of Ethiopian domestic workers. Studies about migrant domestic workers in the Middle East often focus on abuse and exploitation, making a plea for the regulation of women’s legal status. Yet legal migration does not automatically mean that women gain more rights and become more mobile; regulation may also entail more control. The relationship between method of entry and legal status is not fixed, and the boundaries between legality and illegality are often blurred, with women moving in and out of il/legality and legal organizations following illegal practices, and vice versa. Gendered state policies and practices also affect women’s space for maneuvering, and attempts at regulation may further restrict rather than increase their mobility.

Keywords: international relations, transnational relations, migration, work, occupation

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Women, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Yemen

Year: 2010

Re-Negotiating Social Reproduction, Work and Gender Roles in Occupied Palestine

Citation:

Bargawi, Hannah, Randa Alami, and Hurriyah Ziada. 2021. “Re-Negotiating Social Reproduction, Work and Gender Roles in Occupied Palestine.” Review of International Political Economy. doi:10.1080/09692290.2020.1868017.

Authors: Hannah Bargawi, Randa Alami, Hurriyah Ziada

Abstract:

This article uncovers the crisis of social reproduction in Occupied Palestine in the context of severe economic and political turmoil by specifically highlighting the ways in which impacts have been felt differently by men and women. It does so by considering the interactions of production and reproduction. The article confirms that, as a result of economic hardship, women, particularly married women, are increasingly participating in the formal and informal labor market. These women have been forced to renegotiate their domestic and caring responsibilities alongside paid work, within a context of very limited state or private sector provision of care services. While time-use survey findings suggest little change in men and women’s time-use between 1999/2000 and 2012/13 in general, qualitative interviews provide a more nuanced picture. Furthermore, the narrative that responsibility for managing care of children and elderly relatives as well as domestic work lies solely with the wife/mother is near universal. Respondents also did not voice demands for greater investment in child and elder care services by private firms or by the state, suggesting a strong individualization of responsibility for social reproduction in Occupied Palestine today. What remains to be seen is a) how representative these findings are for other groups, particularly poorer, rural families in Palestine and b) what the longer-term consequences of these changes might bring for societal gender norms in Palestine and in other contexts.

Topics: Class, Conflict, Economies, Gender, Gender Roles, Women Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2021

Unmasking the Gaze: Unpacking Colonial Understandings of Gender Programming in Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan

Citation:

Abdelrahman, Hadiya. 2020. "Unmasking the Gaze: Unpacking Colonial Understandings of Gender Programming in Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan." PhD diss., Fordham University.

Author: Hadiya Abdelrahman

Abstract:

There have been emerging bodies of literature and research that are addressing the colonial roots of humanitarian aid. Research and literature that center humanitarianism in that history aim to disrupt the neutral and impartial framework that informs general understandings of it. In this thesis, I hope to disrupt the notion of its impartiality by contextualizing humanitarian aid, specifically around gender programming, in Zaatari Camp in Jordan through a colonial lens that further perpetuates inequality. By engaging with existing literature around colonial roots of humanitarianism and the colonial gaze around the brown (re: Muslim/Arab) bodies, I will further problematize Zaatari Camp as a space that serves as a continuum of both the roots and gaze of the colonial imagination.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Humanitarian Assistance, Race Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Jordan

Year: 2020

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