Feminism and feminist movements in the middle east, a preliminary exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen

Ahmed, Leila

doi:10.1016/0277-5395(82)90024-3

Cited by 57 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…14 Similarly, in Algeria, because women's seclusion in the home protected them from Western influence, veiled women were seen as important to the revolutionary movement. 15 On the one hand, then, Western attempts to "liberate" women by removing the veil simply reinscribed women's bodies as symbols of culture rather than as individual agents; it replaced one form of social control with another. On the other hand, however, it provided women with a method and language of resistance and agency.…”

Section: The Symbolic Meaning Of "The Veil"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling, and the Question of Free Agency

Hirschmann

1998

Constellations

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Western feminism has been arguing about issues of sensitivity to cultural specificity and difference for a number of years now. The horns of the dilemma involve, on the one hand, the recognition that context, specificity, and difference are all vital to a successful feminism. If feminism is dedicated to respect for women, and if women, like men, are located in various differing contexts, then the only way to respect women as individuals is to acknowledge and respect those contexts as shapers of the self. Western feminists have worked (though not always with success) to resist the cultural imperialism that adheres virtually automatically, regardless of good intentions, to a Western (particularly white) location: the blindness that privilege generates to the nuances of gender equity and women's power in other cultures. On the other hand, however, is the recognition that the cultural relativism to which this earnest effort at respect sometimes gives way does nothing to change the oppression of women, because the "culture" that is often preserved through such respect is a patriarchal one that preserves male privilege at women's expense and is defined by and for the interests of particular groups of men.This dilemma is exhibited daily not only in white, middle class feminists' interpretations (or ignorance) of the experiences of Western women of color and poor women, but also in (generally, but not exclusively, white and middle class) Western feminists' reactions to various situations that women face in non-Western cultures. In this paper, I focus on the practice of veiling. Throughout the modern era, the West has tended to view Islam as a barbaric source of women's inequality, and the veil has been seen as the ultimate symbol, if not tool, of this inequality. Fueled by media reports of the oppressive practices of the Taliban in Afghanistan, antiAmerican fury in Iran, and Saudis demanding restrictions on U.S. women soldiers, many Westerners tend to associate veiling with extreme gender oppression, even seeing the veil as the ultimate symbol of a unified, monolithic Islam. 1 This belies a great diversity in the practice, however, and completely ignores the fact that many Muslim women not only participate voluntarily in veiling, but defend it as well, indeed claiming it as a mark of agency, cultural membership, and resistance. The history and practices of veiling vary widely from country to country in terms of style -ranging from sheer-fabric robes to head scarves to dark, heavy, fulllength coverings of the entire face and body -as well as in how the practice is carried out, again running the gamut from overt coercion (state mandates and

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Section: The Symbolic Meaning Of "The Veil"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling, and the Question of Free Agency

Hirschmann

1998

Constellations

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“…Sex equality in employment was promoted through government policies shaped around the principles of 'modernization' and 'westernization' (Ozbilgin, Tatli, & Küskü, 2005). Muslim family law (polygamy, divorce, child custody, and rules related with governing marriage) became subject to challenge by the reformers in order to improve the women's position (Lewis, 1968;Ahmad, 1982;Kandiyoti, 1988;Çakir, 1994;Baykan, 1994). According to Moghadam (1993), "change in family law is a significant index of social change in the Middle East, a barometer of the internal debate within Islam, and an illustration of the capacity for Islamic reform.…”

Section: Women In Turkeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation in labor market participation of married women in Turkey

Gündüz-Hosgör

Smits

2008

Women's Studies International Forum

103

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We explore the role of paid work in women ' IntroductionThe labor market participation (LMP) of women varies much among developing countries. There are countries were over 60 percent of adult women is gainfully employed (e.g. Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Ghana), but there are also countries (e.g. Algeria, Egypt, Iran) where less than 20 percent of women is engaged in one or another form of paid labor (ILO, 2006; UN, 2007). Given the central role of work for the empowerment of women, it is important to increase our understanding of the factors that promote or hinder female employment in developing countries. In this paper, we aim to do this by studying the factors that influence women's LMP in Turkey. Turkey is a very interesting case for such a study, because it combines a low level of women's LMP with a strong polarization among the women who are employed. Whereas only one third of married women in Turkey declares themselves to be employed, and many of these women work as (often unpaid) family workers, there is also a small group of highly educated professional women who occupy high-status white collar jobs in the formal economy (ILO, 2006;Gündüz-Hoşgör, 1997; SIS, 2006;Tansel, 2002). To gain insight into the mechanisms underlying this variation, we analyze the effects of socio-economic, cultural, demographic, and geographic background factors on the employment status and occupational position of women in Turkey. Being employed is seen as a major instrument in making women less dependent on their families, which may free them from the suppressing influence of the patriarchal ideologies that stress a subordinate position of women.Central in the paper is the labor market position of married women, categorized as "housewife", "unpaid or paid farm worker", "manual worker", "lower nonmanual worker" or "upper nonmanual worker". Using a large individual-level data set, we determine the effects of characteristics of the women themselves, of their husbands and the households they are living in, and of their (family-)backgrounds on their chances of being in each of these labor market positions. We also study whether there are differences in labor market position between women living in different regions of Turkey, between women living in cities or in the countryside, and between migrant women (who Women's employment in Turkey 3 may be less influenced by their families) and woman who stayed in their region of origin.In the next section, we present an overview of the literature relevant for women's LMP in developing countries. After that, we focus on the situation in Turkey. Theoretical BackgroundRegarding the factors that may influence the labor market position of women in developing countries, several theoretical positions can be distinguished. First, there is classical modernization theory, which relates a country's rate of female LMP to the country's phase in the modernization process by which agrarian societies are transformed into post-industrial ones. Processes that go together with industrialization --like changes in the...

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“…Wartime activism or attitudes, some have argued, may not necessarily constitute a social change or carry over in a postwar environment. Women might find themselves sidelined, pushed out of public life, or made to suffer backlash against newfound freedoms once the constraints of war are lifted (Ahmed 1982;Pankhurst 2003;Viterna 2014). Similarly, while several studies highlight a substantial increase in political engagement and participation arising from violent conflict, others point out consequences such as political extremism and hostility toward minorities (Canetti-Nisim et al 2009), along with hardening attitudes toward rival out-group members (Grossman, Manekin, and Miodownik 2015).…”

Section: Toward An Integrated Theory Of Civil War and Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Anatomy of a Civil War

Gürses¹

2018

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Anatomy of a Civil War demonstrates the destructive nature of war, ranging from the physical destruction to a range of psychosocial problems to the detrimental effects on the environment. Despite such horrific aspects of war, evidence suggests that civil war is likely to generate multilayered outcomes. To examine the transformative aspects of civil war, Mehmet Gurses draws on an original survey conducted in Turkey, where a Kurdish armed group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), has been waging an intermittent insurgency for Kurdish self-rule since 1984. Findings from a probability sample of 2,100 individuals randomly selected from three major Kurdish-populated provinces in the eastern part of Turkey, coupled with insights from face-to-face in-depth interviews with dozens of individuals affected by violence, provide evidence for the multifaceted nature of exposure to violence during civil war. Just as the destructive nature of war manifests itself in various forms and shapes, wartime experiences can engender positive attitudes toward women, create a culture of political activism, and develop secular values at the individual level. Nonetheless, changes in gender relations and the rise of a secular political culture appear to be primarily shaped by wartime experiences interacting with insurgent ideology.

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Feminism and feminist movements in the middle east, a preliminary exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen

Cited by 57 publications

References 6 publications

Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling, and the Question of Free Agency

Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling, and the Question of Free Agency

Variation in labor market participation of married women in Turkey

Anatomy of a Civil War

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