Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East 9781685850616

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Modernizing Women

THIRD EDITION

Modernizing Women Gender and Social Change in the Middle East Valentine M. Moghadam

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2013 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2013 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moghadam, Valentine M. Modernizing women : gender and social change in the Middle East / Valentine M. Moghadam. — Third edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-933-1 (hc : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58826-909-6 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Women—Middle East—Social conditions. 2. Muslim women— Middle East—Social conditions. 3. Women—Middle East—Economic conditions. 4. Muslim women—Middle East—Economic conditions. I. Title. HQ1726.5.M64 2013 305.420956—dc23 2013004027 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures Preface A Note on Transliteration and the Iranian Calendar

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Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

vii ix xi

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On the Determining Role of Islam: A Critical Perspective, 2 An Alternative Framework for Analysis, 9 Diversity in the Middle East, 14 Determinants: The World-System, States, Class, and Gender, 19 Social Changes and Women in the Middle East, 25 Conclusion, 34

2

Gender and Political Processes: A Historical Context

37

Nationalism, State Building, and Women, 41 Revolutions and Women’s Rights, 49 Islamist Movements and Family Law, 66 Conclusion, 72

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Globalization and Women’s Economic Citizenship

77

Global Restructuring and the Middle East, 80 Characteristics of the Female Labor Force, 84 Explanations: Oil, Industrialization, and Female Proletarianization, 93 Toward Women’s Economic Citizenship, 100 Conclusion, 103

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Gender and the Family: Patriarchy in Crisis The Family as Haven, 110 Patriarchal Society and Family, 115

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Contents

The Demographic Transition and Fertility Changes, 120 Education and Women’s Empowerment, 123 Sexuality, Cultural Change, and Backlash, 129 Conclusion, 132

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Gender, Conflict, and War: Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq

137

Palestine, 141 Afghanistan, 146 Iraq, 156 Conflict and Gender Justice, 162 Conclusion, 168

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Gender Politics and the Islamic State: The Case of Iran

175

Gender Policies over Three Periods, 175 Education: Advances and Constraints, 183 Iranian Women in the Labor Force, 185 Women, Participation, and Political Power, 192 Structural and Institutional Obstacles, 193 The Women’s Rights Movement, 201 Conclusion, 206

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Democratic Transitions: Women and the Arab Spring

211

Democracy, the State, and Gender, 213 Women and Third Wave Democratic Transitions: Some Examples, 220 Linking Women’s Rights and Democratization in the Middle East, 223 Tunisia, 228 Egypt, 231 Morocco, 234 Conclusion, 236

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Modernizing Women

243

Women in Movement: Claims and Gains, 244 Organizing Women: The Case of Algeria, 259 Conclusion: MENA Women on the Move, 272

List of Acronyms References Index About the Book

277 281 309 333

Tables and Figures

Tables 1.1 Social and Gender Indicators, Muslim-Majority Countries by Region, 2010 1.2 International Conventions Signed by Selected MENA Countries, Year of Ratification 1.3 Political Economy and Human Development in MENA, 2012 1.4 Political Systems and Women’s Representation in MENA 2.1 Gendered Revolutions: A Typology and Historical Examples 3.1 MENA Women’s Labor Force Participation Rates in Global Perspective, 1980–1985 and 2005–2010 3.2 Female Share of Total Labor Force in MENA Countries, 1990 and 2010 3.3 Average Female Unemployment Rates in Selected MENA Countries, 2000–2010 3.4 Civil, Political, and Social Rights of Citizenship: A Summary Illustration 4.1 Total Fertility Rate and Age at First Marriage in MENA, 1970–2010 4.2 Ratio of Female to Male Enrollments in Secondary and University Education in MENA, 2008–2011 4.3 Higher Education and Related Sociodemographic Features in MENA, 2011 5.1 Timeline of Conflicts and War: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq 5.2 Women’s Lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011 6.1 Women Admitted to Universities by Field of Study in Iran, 1991–1992 and 2002–2003

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7 13 16 18 52 79 86 88 101 123 126 127 139 153 180

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Tables and Figures

6.2 Internet and Facebook Usage in Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Tunisia, December 2011 6.3 Economically Active Population by Occupation and Status in Employment in Iran, 2008 6.4 Economically Active Population by Industry and Status in Employment in Iran, 2008 6.5 Total Population and Characteristics of Household Heads in Iran, 1986, 1996, 2006 6.6 Unemployment Rate by Gender, Age, and Education in Iran, 1997–2004 6.7 Political Power Indicators in Iran, 2011 6.8 Economic Indicators in Iran, 2007–2011 6.9 Attitudes Toward Women, Work, and Family in Iran, 2005 7.1 Women’s Rights Organizations in MENA and Key Demands 7.2 Factors Contributing to the Arab Spring 7.3 Gender Outcomes of Third Wave Democratic Transitions: Examples of Legal and Policy Gains and Losses 7.4 Women’s Prospects in the Democratic Transitions of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, 2010–2012 8.1 Women’s Organizations in Selected MENA Countries and Priority Campaigns, 2010 8.2 Legal and Policy Changes in Selected MENA Countries, 2005–2012

184 187 188 189 191 192 196 200 213 216 222 237 255 257

Figure 1.1 Social Structures and Principal Institutions in Contemporary Societies

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Preface

In early 2011, countless Arab citizens took to the streets of Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and elsewhere to demand political change and improved economic conditions. Governments fell in Tunisia and Egypt, and in Morocco, the king agreed to important constitutional amendments to deepen the democratic process that had been under way since the late 1990s. As new democratic elections ensued in some Arab countries, citizens in Iran—where the Green Protests questioning the validity of the June 2009 presidential election results had been met with repression—looked on with a mixture of envy and delight, but also concern. Given Iranians’ own experience with political Islam, the latter sentiment was no doubt linked to the dominant presence of Islamist parties in the new Arab parliaments. What came to be known as the Arab Spring raised new questions about the gendered nature of the political processes under way. How did women contribute to the pro-democracy movements? Would women’s participation and rights constitute a key concern of the new governments? What role would women’s rights organizations have in the reconstruction of the body politic? How would the Islamist parties address economic development, growth, and citizenship rights, including the right of women to take part in and benefit from development and social policies? And what of women elsewhere in the region, where conflicts raged or authoritarian regimes continued? This new edition of Modernizing Women takes up these questions while also providing a broad historical, economic, sociodemographic, and political context to help the reader map the possible direction(s) of change. The subject of the book is the nature of social change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA); the impact of that change on women’s legal status and social positions; and women’s varied responses to, and involvement in, change processes. It also deals with constructions of gender during conflicts and periods of social and political change. Social change is ix

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Preface

typically described in terms of modernization, revolution, cultural challenges, and social movements, and most theories of social change have resulted from experiences in Europe and North Africa. Much of the disciplinary literatures either present MENA in culturalist terms or apply formalist techniques that often obfuscate more than illuminate. In such bodies of work, myths and stereotypes regarding women, Islam, and the region are perpetuated, and variations and change are not studied in any depth. In this book I focus on the major social-change processes in the region to show how women’s lives are shaped not primarily by Islam and culture but by economic development, the state, class location, and the world system. Why the focus on women? Since this book’s first edition, it has been my contention that middle-class, educated women are consciously and unconsciously major agents of social change in the region, at the vanguard of movements for modernity, democratization, and citizenship. This proposition was confirmed by Iran’s Green Movement of 2009, Tunisia’s “Dignity Revolution” of January 2011, the political revolution in Egypt that toppled long-time leader Hosni Mubarak, and the Mouvement 20 Février in Morocco. Can there be genuine democratic transitions in the twenty-first century without the participation of women? Can the region thrive when so many women are outside the formal labor force and lack economic citizenship? My answer to both questions is a resounding no. In writing this third edition, I have benefited from discussions and collaboration with Massoud Karshenas, my favorite economist (and my spouse), as well as with Tabitha Decker, Elham Gheytanchi, Roksana Bahramitash, and Goli Rezai-Rashti, with whom I have coauthored papers. I have also drawn on observations, meeting notes, and documents acquired during my time at UNESCO (2004–2006). For comments along the way that helped refine my thinking on some of the chapters, I thank Ellen Lust, Jillian Schwedler, Graciela Di Marco, Khedija Arfaoui, Charles Kurzman, Craig Jenkins, Jackie Smith, and Chris Chase-Dunn. Students at my present institution, Northeastern University, have been wonderful research assistants. I am especially grateful to Julia Lorentsen and Allison Olender, undergraduate majors in the International Affairs Program, and Alireza Olia, political science major, for their assistance. Last but not least, I thank Lynne Rienner for her continued support of this book and Beth Partin and Shena Redmond for their invaluable editing work on the third edition. —Valentine M. Moghadam

A Note on Transliteration and the Iranian Calendar

The system of transliteration adopted in this book is a (very) modified version of that recommended by the International Journal of Middle East Studies. All the diacritical marks have been deleted, with the exception of the ayn and the hamza when they appear in the middle of a word. It is difficult to be consistent when transliteration involves standard Arabic, North African Arabic, Dari, Persian, and Pashtu, but I finally settled on the following spellings: ayatollah, burqa, gharbzadegi, Hezbollah, hijab, jihad, Khomeini, moudjahidate, mujahidin, Mutahhari, Moudawana, niqab, Pashtunwali, Quran, sharia, Taliban. The Iranian solar (shamsi) calendar year starts on March 21. An Iranian year may be converted to the international year by adding 621. Thus the Iranian year 1367 refers to the period from March 21, 1988, to March 20, 1989, or, as a shorthand, 1988. In 2013 the Iranian year was 1392.

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1

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

The study of social change has tended to regard certain societal institutions and structures as central and then to examine how they change. Family structure, the organization of markets, the state, religious hierarchies, schools, the ways elites have exploited workers and peasants to extract surpluses from them, and the general set of values that governs society’s cultural outlook are part of the list of key institutions. Social change and societal development come about principally through technological advancements, class conflict, and political action. Change in women’s social positions has come about through a combination of long-term macrolevel processes—notably industrialization, urbanization, proletarianization, the demographic transition, globalization—and forms of collective action that include national liberation movements, revolutions, and social movements. At the same time, such processes have been gendered, in that men and women have had different roles, experiences, and outcomes, while concepts of masculinity and femininity have infused a range of political processes and policies. In societies everywhere, cultural institutions and practices, economic processes, and political structures are interactive and relatively autonomous. In the Marxist framework, infrastructures and superstructures are made up of multiple levels, and there are various types of transformations from one level to another. There is also an interactive relationship between structure and agency, inasmuch as structural changes are linked to “consciousness”— whether this is class consciousness (of interest to Marxists) or gender consciousness (of interest to feminists). Each society is located within and subject to the influences of a national class structure, a regional context, and a global system of states and markets. The world-system perspective regards states and national economies as situated within an international capitalist nexus characterized by a division of labor corresponding to its constituent 1

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Modernizing Women

parts—core, periphery, and semiperiphery. As such, no major social change occurs outside the world context.1 Thus, to understand the roles and status of women or changes in the structure of the family, it is necessary to examine economic development and political change within the society—which in turn are affected by regional and global developments. As we shall see in the discussion of women’s employment, the structural determinants of worldsystem location, class location, state legal policy, and development strategy intersect to shape the pace and rhythm of women’s integration into the labor force and their access to economic resources. Figure 1.1 illustrates the institutions and structures that affect and are affected by social changes in a Marxist-feminist and world-system perspective. The institutions are embedded within a class structure (the system of production, accumulation, and surplus distribution), a set of gender arrangements and norms (roles ascribed to men and women through custom or law, cultural understandings of feminine and masculine), a regional context (e.g., the Middle East, Europe, Latin America), and a world system of states and markets characterized by asymmetries across core, peripheral, and semiperipheral countries. The study of social change is often done comparatively. Although it cannot be said that social scientists have a single, universally recognized “comparative method,” some of our deepest insights into society and culture are reached in and through comparison. In this book, I have compared women’s legal status and social positions across countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and some comparisons are made between MENA and other world regions. Because a major objective of this book is to show the changing and variable status of women in the Middle East, the most effective method is to study the subject comparatively, emphasizing the factors that best explain the differences in women’s status across the region and over time. Yet such an approach is rarely applied to the Middle East or to the “Muslim world” as a whole.2

On the Determining Role of Islam: A Critical Perspective Since the 1980s, the subject of women and gender in the Middle East has been tied to the larger issue of Islamic revival and, particularly, the emergence of fundamentalist or politicized Islamist movements. We might identify three phases or strands of scholarship on Islamism. The first sought to define concepts—such as fundamentalism, Islamism, political or radical or revivalist Islam—and identify the origins, social bases, and objectives of movements. A second phase or strand has examined the “moderation” of the early movements and their success in expanding their sphere of influ-

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa Figure 1.1

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Social Structures and Principal Institutions in Contemporary Societies

Cultural-Ideological Structure Religious institutions Educational systems Media Family Political culture

Social Formation

Political-Legal Structure (“The State”) Government Political parties Courts Military Police Economic Base System(s) of production/exchange/distribution Infrastructure/resource endowments

Class System/Gender Arrangements

Regional Context

World System of States and Markets

ence in both civil society and the political process. A third one emerged after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and focused on transnational Islamist terrorism. With respect to the early phase, Syrian Marxist philosopher Sadik al-Azm identified fundamentalism, whether Christian or Islamic, as the notion of the inerrancy or infallibility of holy texts: “The Koran is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.” Gilles Kepel has defined political Islam as the movement and ideology of a state based on Islamic law, or sharia as codified in one or another of the five schools of Islamic jurisprudence.3 In this book I use the term Islamism

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Modernizing Women

to refer to movements and ideas predicated on the expressed goal of spreading Islamic laws and norms, whether through parliamentary means or violent means. The Islamic revival has generated polemics and debates as well as numerous scholarly works, with critics and advocates holding divergent views. Those identifying most with Islamic law are convinced that Islam provides all the necessary rights for humankind and womankind, and that Islamic states—whether some as-yet-attained ideal type or an existing one such as the Islamic Republic of Iran—go the furthest in establishing those rights. In contrast, some secular feminists have tended to describe adherence to Islamic norms and laws as the main impediment to women’s advancement.4 Perhaps midway between the two, Freda Hussein stressed “complementarity of the sexes” in Islam, distinguishing “authentic Islam” from “pseudo-Islam” and asserting that the former is emancipatory. She and other Muslim feminists—Asma Barlas, Riffat Hassan, Azizah al-Hibri, Zainah Anwar, and Amina Wadud, among others—emphasize the egalitarian and emancipatory content of the Quran, which they maintain has been hijacked by patriarchal interpretations since the early Middle Ages.5 For outside observers, fundamentalism and the rise of Islamist movements reinforced stereotypes about the region, in particular the idea that Islam is ubiquitous in the culture and politics of the region, that tradition is tenacious, that the clergy have the highest authority, and that women’s status is everywhere low. Studies began to appear suggesting that a distinctive pattern of values and behavior set the Muslim world apart from, and sometimes in collision with, the West. These studies were based on culturalist arguments and emphasized the constraining impact of Islamic orthodoxy in hampering the Muslim world’s intellectual, technological, scientific, and economic progress. Others cited as principal culprits “petro Islam” in the Middle East and North Africa or Islamist movements such as those in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, and elsewhere. Samuel Huntington, the best-known proponent of the culturalist explanation, argued that modernization, interdependence, and democratization had not fostered convergence and increased cooperation among nations, but instead had resulted in growing divergence that was likely to culminate in a clash of civilizations. He was particularly concerned that the demographic surge of the Islamic world, which he saw as a source of strength, was a threat to the West.6 In the wake of the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, a new wave of commentary appeared, especially in the United States, that questioned the capacity of Muslim and especially Middle Eastern countries to establish modern, democratic, secular, and gender-egalitarian social systems. One article claimed that Muslim societies had fallen behind Western societies because of the “slow evolution of Islamic societies’ treatment of women.” A study by Ronald Inglehart and

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

5

Pippa Norris asserted that countries in the Islamic world were most resistant to the achievement of equality between women and men and that the cultural fault line dividing the West and the Islamic world had to do with gender relations, the position of women, and attitudes toward sexuality. They maintained that on issues of gender and sexuality, “Muslim nations have remained the most traditional societies in the world,” and asserted that despite surveys showing Muslims—including those in MENA—favoring democracy, their lack of “commitment to gender equality and sexual liberalization” meant that “democracy may not be sustainable in their societies.” (Inglehart and Norris included attitudes not only toward male-female equality but also “sexual liberalization,” or attitudes toward homosexuality, as an indicator of tolerance.) Some political scientists distinguished the MENA region from the rest of the Muslim world, asserting that even though democracy had been embraced in some Muslim-majority countries, it had not been implemented in MENA. The democracy deficit was also identified by the Arab Human Development Report, which has been published every two to three years since 2002, as one of the region’s three central problems, the other two being the knowledge deficit and the gender equality deficit.7 There exists, therefore, a fairly long history in the social science literature of “Muslim exceptionalism,” and especially of “Middle Eastern exceptionalism,” in terms of resistance to democracy or to gender equality. Such studies have been especially prevalent in political science, where scholars tend toward formalism borrowed from economics, applying sophisticated statistical methods or modeling techniques to large-N data sets or surveys. They often come up with conflicting findings: in some papers the main problem is oil; in others it is sharia law; in yet others the main culprit is gender inequality. There are several problems with such studies. They rely excessively on snapshots of popular attitudes and values to explain complex structural phenomena; they are often written by scholars without extensive familiarity with the MENA region or country expertise; they do not venture outside the “home” discipline to examine how other studies or scholars have tackled the question at hand; and they are devoid of any case studies or even vignettes that might illustrate the claims made. Because they are testing hypotheses and engaging in arguments with each other, such studies do not add to wider knowledge of the region. Of course, there is some basis for some of the claims made in this type of literature. But complexities are overlooked, such as exogenous influences, variations in the region, and change over time. For those who have doubted the region’s democratic impulses, the findings of the World Values Survey and the Arab Barometer—which have shown a high preference for democracy in MENA—were confirmed in the June 2009 Green Protests in Iran, the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, and the first democratic elections in Tunisia.8 Moreover, the demographic surge that so concerned Huntington turned out

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Modernizing Women

to be a challenge to entrenched regimes in MENA and a clarion call for political reforms and democratization rather than a threat to the West. The flow of migrants—illegal and otherwise—from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe might be associated with the region’s demographic surge, but it is more directly the result of economic difficulties in the region, including high unemployment among youth, limited foreign direct investment, and the neoliberal economic policy turn. The “Muslim world” is in reality quite diverse. Table 1.1 classifies the Muslim world by region, providing data for 2010. Some patterns can be discerned. The countries that granted women the right to vote earliest were the former Soviet republics; they also tend to have the highest female labor force shares. Indonesia and Malaysia likewise show relatively high rates of female labor force participation (in part a function of their adoption of an export-led manufacturing model of development), though the presence of women in parliament or other legislative bodies is less impressive. Among MENA countries, Tunisia stands out both for its female parliamentary share and its low fertility rate. The mean age at first marriage for women is relatively high for all but the poorest Muslim-majority countries, and it is highest in MENA countries. Is the Middle East and North Africa region so different from other regions? Can we understand women’s roles and status in MENA only in terms of the ubiquity of deference to Islam in the region? In fact, such conceptions are too facile. It is my contention that the position of women in the Middle East cannot be attributed to the presumed intrinsic properties of Islam. It is also my position that Islam is neither more nor less patriarchal than other major religions, especially Hinduism and the other two “Abrahamic religions,” Judaism and Christianity, all of which share the view of woman as wife and mother. Within Christianity, religious women continue to struggle for a position equal with men, as the ongoing debate over women priests in Catholicism and women bishops in the Anglican Communion attests. As late as 1998, the Southern Baptist Convention in the United States passed a resolution calling on wives to follow and obey their husbands. In Hinduism a potent female symbol is the sati, the self-immolating widow. And the Orthodox Jewish law of personal status bears many similarities to the fundamentals of Islamic law, especially with respect to marriage and divorce.9 The gender configurations that draw from religion and cultural norms to affect women’s work, political praxis, family status, and other aspects of their lives in the Middle East are not unique to Muslim or Middle Eastern countries. Religious-based law exists in the Middle East, but not exclusively in Muslim countries; it is also present in the Jewish state of Israel. Rabbinical judges are reluctant to grant women divorces, and, as in Saudi Arabia, Israeli women cannot hold public prayer services. Israeli women have far

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Social and Gender Indicators, Muslim-Majority Countries by Region, 2010 Total GDP Population ($US, (millions) billions)

Eastern Europe Albania Central Asia/ Caucasus Azerbaijan Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Uzbekistana South Asia Afghanistanb Bangladesh Pakistan Sub-Saharan Africa Chad Mali Nigeria Senegal Southeast Asia Indonesia Malaysia Middle East & North Africa Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraqc Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libyac Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Turkey Tunisia UAE Yemen

Mean Age of Female Female Year Marriage Share, Share, Women (females, Fertility Paid Labor Parliamentary Received years) Rate Force (%) Seats (%) Vote

3.14

5.66

23

1.9

33

16

1920

8.68 15.67 5.28 6.84 28.56

18.50 37.27 1.98 1.67 39.33

23 23 22 21 20

2.1 2.3 2.5 3.4 2.5

44 50 51 37 48

11 18 26 20 22

1918 1924, 1993 1918 1924 1938

34.39 160.00 166.11

17.24 73.94 108.00

18 19 23

6.3 2.3 4.0

16 20 13

27.5 19 22

1963 1935, 1972 1956

10.91 12.71 151.21 12.21

3.02 3.74 74.18 6.55

18 18 21 21

6.2 5.5 5.3 5.0

6 35 21 11

5 10 7 23

1958 1956 1958 1945

227.35 27.01

247.23 139.16

23 25

2.2 2.6

32 39

18 10

1945, 2003 1957

34.37 .78 81.53 71.96 32.9 5.91 2.73 4.19 6.4 31.61 2.79 1.28 24.65 20.58 73.91 10.33 4.48 22.92

75.28 13.16 145.59 151.80 115.4 14.62 61.4 24.38 62.3 55.16 27.20 29.27 252.63 27.37 376.87 28.34 113.77 12.86

29 26 23 24

2.4 2.3 2.9 1.8 4.5 3.1 2.2 1.9 2.4 2.4 3.1 2.4 3.3 3.3 2.1 1.9 1.9 5.2

13 10 19 16 13 16 23 14 — 21 22 13 15 16 22 25 20 6

8 3 2 3 25 6.4 8 3 8 10 0 0 0 12 9 28 23 0

1962 2002 1956 1963 1980 1974 2005 1952 1964 1959 1994, 2003 2003 — 1949, 1953 1930 1959 2006 1967, 1970

25 27 27 26 25 26 25 25 23 27 24 22

Sources: Compiled from World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2010, country profiles http://reports .weforum.org/global-gender-gap-2011/#= and from UNDP, UNIFEM, and World Bank sources (see below), accessed March 2011. Notes: a. Data for Uzbekistan from http://www.undp.uz/en/mdgs/?goal=3. b. data for Afghanistan from http:// afghanistan.unifem.org/media/pubs/factsheet/10/marriage.html; www.ipu.org; c. data for Iraq and Libya from World Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator; http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2011_EN_Tables .pdf.

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Modernizing Women

more autonomy than do women in Saudi Arabia, but the Halacha, or Jewish law, does govern marital relations such that the husband is obligated to pay for his wife’s maintenance, while she should provide household services. According to one account, “The structure of the arrangement is such that the woman is sheltered from the outside world by her husband and in return she adequately runs the home. The obligations one has toward the other are not equal but rather based on clear gender differentiation.”10 This is especially the case among ultra-Orthodox Jews. In northern India and parts of rural China, son preference leads to neglect of baby girls to such an extent that infant and child mortality is greater among females; moreover, female feticide has been well documented, leading to an adverse sex ratio (i.e., a larger male population).11 The low status of women and girls, therefore, should be understood not in terms of the intrinsic properties of any one religion or culture but of kin-ordered patriarchal and agrarian structures. Finally, it should be recalled that in all Western societies, women as a group were disadvantaged until relatively recently.12 Indeed, Islam provided women with property rights for centuries while women in Europe were denied the same rights. In India, Muslim property codes were more progressive than English law until the mid-nineteenth century. It should be stressed, too, that even in the West today there are marked variations in the legal status, economic conditions, and social positions of women. The United States, for example, lags behind northern Europe in terms of social rights for working mothers and overall security for women. Why Muslim women lag behind Western women in legal rights, mobility, autonomy, and so forth has more to do with modernization and development—the extent of urbanization, industrialization, and proletarianization, as well as the political ploys of political elites—than with religious and cultural factors. Gender asymmetry and the status of women in the Muslim world cannot be solely attributed to Islam because gender asymmetry is present in nonIslamic contexts and because adherence to Islamic precepts and the applications of Islamic legal codes differ throughout the Muslim world. For example, Turkey is a secular state, and only Iran has direct clerical rule. Morocco reformed its highly patriarchal family law in 2003–2004, granting women rights and opportunities in the home and society that women in Saudi Arabia can only dream about. And within the same Muslim-majority society, social class largely determines the degrees of sex segregation, female autonomy, and mobility. Today upper-class women have more mobility than do lowerclass women, although in the past it was the reverse: veiling and seclusion were upper-class phenomena, signs of social status. By examining changes over time and variations within societies and by comparing Muslim and nonMuslim gender patterns, one recognizes that the status of women in Muslimmajority societies is neither uniform nor unchanging nor unique.

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

9

The emphasis on the status of women in Islam does little to satisfy social science inquiry because Islam is experienced, practiced, and interpreted differently over time and space. As the Tunisian sociologist Abdelwahab Boudhiba has shown, Islam is fundamentally “plastic,” and there are varieties of Islam. Tunisia has long produced female lawyers, judges, parliamentarians, government officials, and political activists. In Syria, the first woman judge was appointed in 1975, and until the uprising of 2011–2013, about 14 percent of judges were women, primarily working as public prosecutors.13 By contrast, Saudi women lack all these advantages, and in the Islamic Republic of Iran, women have not been permitted to serve as judges. MENA countries have seen economic and social development, diverse political regimes, and a variety of social movements, including Islamist and women’s rights movements. In short, the question of whether the content of the Quran is inherently conservative and hostile toward women or egalitarian and emancipatory, although not irrelevant to social science inquiry, is less central or problematical than is often assumed. In order to understand Islam’s social implications for the status of women, it is necessary to look at the broader sociopolitical and economic order within which these are realized.14 The relationship between gender and sociopolitical processes is interactive, but gender relations broadly, and women’s legal status more specifically, have generally followed such broad social change processes as modernization, state building, and economic development, as well as dramatic political changes such as revolutions. Since the 1990s, when globalization became the term used to denote a broad set of processes operating at transnational levels, many studies have examined its impact on women’s economic conditions and political participation. In the wake of the Arab Spring of 2011, new questions were formulated regarding the prospects for gender equality following the political revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya and democratic transitions in those countries as well as in Morocco.

An Alternative Framework for Analysis How might we better understand and explain women’s legal status and social positions and their prospects for gender equality? A useful conceptual framework would draw on the Marxist-feminist focus on the social relations of gender and class, and world-polity theory and world-systems theory, which help to explain the spread of “modern” institutions, norms, and networks in the region as well as the persistence of inequalities and geopolitical challenges. World-system theory grew out of dependency theory, continued the latter’s critique of modernization (the theory and the practice), and posited a single capitalist world-system with an unequal system of states

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Modernizing Women

and markets, led by a hegemon, across the economic zones of core, periphery, and semiperiphery. World-polity theory is a variant of modernization theory that posits the global spread of similar institutions, standards, and organizational forms, sometimes referred to as “Western.”15 The analytical point of departure, therefore, is that the MENA region is located in a hierarchical world-system of states, economies, and cultures. Countries share common features (e.g., bureaucratic institutions and procedures, economic strategies, cultural values, and norms inscribed in the international treaties that governments have signed), but countries also have distinctive histories, resource endowments, and practices. The world-system and world culture exert considerable influence over gender relations, but women’s status is also shaped by the histories and institutions of particular nation-states. Although social and gender inequalities are products of national and global processes alike, there are pressures at both the domestic and global levels to improve gender relations and the status of women. MENA includes countries with different histories, political cultures, levels of development, and wealth. In modern times, some MENA countries were subjected to Western colonialism, which often distorted their institutions and social structures and left bitter memories. Countries that escaped colonial rule include Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey. In fact, Turkey was itself a colonial power, with the Ottoman Empire extending its rule across the Arab world and into Eastern Europe until the empire’s collapse after World War I. During the interwar period, MENA countries had diverse sociopolitical arrangements and economic resources at their disposal, and some of the contradictions of this era and the post–World War II international landscape led to revolutions in some MENA countries that overthrew monarchies and established authoritarian republican regimes. The changing nature of international relations and the emergence of the Cold War saw MENA countries positioned differently: some allied themselves with the capitalist West (e.g., Iran, Lebanon, Jordan), others with the socialist bloc (e.g., Syria, Iraq, and South Yemen), and yet others helped form the NonAligned Movement (notably, Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser). Development strategies and internal politics differed significantly across MENA, with implications for women’s participation and rights. Thus in Tunisia, the postindependence period saw the adoption of a family law that gave women more rights within the family than was the case anywhere else in the region; by contrast, Morocco adopted a very patriarchal family law that placed women under the control of male kin. As explained by Mounira Charrad, different kin-ordered structures, along with the objectives of the new political elites and the compromises they made, influenced the direction of the legal and policy frameworks in this period. The history of the “status of women” and of gender relations in the MENA region has been significantly influenced by a variety of endogenous

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

11

factors and forces, but exogenous processes cannot be overlooked. Foreign intrigues or occupations are one form of exogenous factors that generally play a negative role with respect to women and gender. Global economic restructuring—which had its origins in the core countries of the world system and then encompassed the world through a combination of force and concession—is another type of exogenous influence. “World society,” however, can have a positive impact, whether in the form of international standards and norms, the activities of transnational advocacy networks, or imperatives on governments as a result of membership in multilateral organizations. I now elaborate on this proposition. “Universal declarations” and conventions formulated within the United Nations and its specialized agencies—such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), the children’s fund UNICEF, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—are agreed upon by the world community and have created what some scholars call a set of shared values in an otherwise diverse and unequal world. Examples are the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966). In June 2011, the ILO—at its annual conference involving governments, employers’ associations, and trade unions, and some seventy years after the issue was first taken up—adopted Convention 189, which will regulate wages and working conditions of domestic workers. Other conventions and declarations promulgated by the ILO pertain to the protection and rights of working mothers and nondiscrimination in employment. Conventions and declarations pertaining to women constitute what I call the global women’s rights agenda, which includes the 1979 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (calling on governments to “seek to promote and protect the full enjoyment of all human rights and the fundamental freedoms of all women throughout the life cycle”), the Millennium Declaration and Goals of 2000 (Goal 3: to promote gender equality of girls as measured by educational attainment and political participation), and Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000 to highlight and criminalize sexualized violence against women during conflict and to ensure the participation of women, and women’s groups, in postconflict peacebuilding and reconstruction. CEDAW is very clear that its provisions obtain across cultures and religions, stating in Article 2 that “States Parties . . . undertake . . . to take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women.” Since CEDAW went into force in 1981, countries have chosen to ratify completely, or to ratify the convention with reservations (as

12

Modernizing Women

with many MENA countries, who claimed that where a CEDAW provision contradicted sharia law, the latter would take precedence), or to remain outside the convention (as with the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran). By 2012, however, nearly all countries around the world had ratified the convention (even Saudi Arabia, albeit with substantial reservations), and a number of MENA countries, notably Morocco and Tunisia, had removed the reservations they had earlier inserted. Signatories and nonsignatories to CEDAW are listed in Table 1.2, which also illustrates some of the other key international conventions that have been signed by MENA countries. The UN-originated international standards and norms have constituted a kind of moral universe and source of legitimacy for advocacy and activist groups, including human rights, labor rights, and women’s rights networks. In MENA, for example, feminist groups have sought implementation of CEDAW or the removal of reservations, along with the formulation of national action plans for women’s advancement based on the Beijing Platform for Action. They have been strong proponents of human rights, which they understand to encompass civil, political, and social rights. Many feminists would agree with the Sudanese Islamic scholar and now US-based professor Abdullahi an-Na’im that “human rights are claims we make for the protection of our vital interests in bodily integrity, material well-being, and human dignity.”16 Advocacy and activist groups have put pressure on UN bodies to more actively promote existing standards or to adopt new and more assertive ones. Women’s rights groups and scholar-activists, for example, have pushed for transparency in the reporting of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and especially for more progress in the achievement of MDG 3. Actors are individuals, groups of citizens, corporate bodies, and governments, and their insertion into various structures could influence their behavior. Since the formation of the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and other multilateral organizations, member-states have had to implement resolutions or action plans in line with those promoted or adopted by intergovernmental organizations, and these have helped to shape opportunity structures for various advocacy or activist groups within countries. Although there remain significant differences in the power and capacity of states within the world-system, with the result that peripheral countries are the most likely to be influenced by multilateral organizations, it is also the case that core and semiperipheral countries are normatively obligated to conform to the “world values” of human rights, women’s rights, and environmental protection. A conceptual framework that situates MENA countries in a world system and a world polity and acknowledges the role of domestic structures

Table 1.2

International Conventions Signed by Selected MENA Countries, Year of Ratification

Convention Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 1979 (with or without reservations) Optional Protocol, 1999 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 1995 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families, 1990 UNESCO Convention: Discrimination in education, 1960 ILO Convention 111: Discrimination in employment/ occupation, 1958 ILO Convention 100: Equal remuneration for men and women for equal work, 1951 ILO Conventions 87 & 98: Freedom of association and right to organize, 1948 ILO Convention 182: Worst forms of child labor ILO Convention 183: Maternity protection, 2000

Algeria

Morocco

Tunisia

Egypt

Jordan

Iran

1996

1993

1985

1981

1992

—

1996 Adopteda 1989a

Adopteda 1979

1996 Adopteda 1969

Adopteda 1982

Adopteda 1975

Adopteda 1975

1989 2005

1979 2003

1969 —

1982 1993

1975 —

1975 —

1968 1969

1968 1963

1969 1959

1962 1960

1976 1963

1968 1964

1962

1979

1968

1960

1966

1972

1962

—

1957

1957, 1954

1968

—

2001 —

2001 —

2000 —

2002 —

2000 —

2002 —

Sources: Compiled from “A Summary of United Nations Agreements on Human Rights,” http://www.hrweb.org/legal/undocs.html; and the International Labour Organization NORMLEX Information System on International Labour Standards, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=1000:11001:0::NO:::, accessed December 2012. Note: a. Made general and interpretative statements or expressed reservations.

13

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Modernizing Women

and actors is a fruitful way of examining stability and change. In particular, it helps to identify patterns, trends, and changes in women’s social roles in the household, the economy, the polity, and the cultural sphere. At the same time, it draws attention to women as actors. MENA women are not only the objects of historical circumstances, the passive targets of policies, or the victims of distorted development; they are also shapers and makers of social change. To paraphrase Karl Marx, women make history, though not under conditions of their own choosing.

Diversity in the Middle East The analytical framework sketched above and elaborated below helps us to recognize similarities between MENA and other regions and to identify differences. The same applies to processes within regions. In what follows, I outline some key differences within and across regions. To study the Middle East and North Africa is to recognize the diversity within the region and within the female population. Contrary to popular opinion, the Middle East is not a uniform and homogeneous region. Women are themselves stratified by class, ethnicity, education, and age. There is no archetypal Middle Eastern Woman, but rather women inserted in diverse socioeconomic and cultural arrangements. The fertility behavior and needs of a poor peasant woman are quite different from those of a professional woman or a wealthy urbanite. The rich Saudi woman who has no need for employment and is chauffeured by a Sri Lankan migrant worker has little in common with the educated Moroccan woman who needs to work to augment the family income and also acquires status with a professional position. There is some overlap in cultural conceptions of gender in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, but there are also profound dissimilarities (and driving is only one of the more trivial ones). Saudi Arabia is far more conservative than Morocco in terms of what is considered appropriate for women. Women are likewise divided ideologically and politically. Some women activists align themselves with liberal, social-democratic, or communist organizations; others support Islamist and other fundamentalist groups. Some women reject religion as patriarchal; others wish to reclaim religion for themselves or to identify feminine aspects of it. Some women eschew traditions and time-honored customs; others find identity, solace, and strength in them. More research is needed to determine whether social background shapes and can predict political and ideological affiliation, but in general women’s social positions have implications for their consciousness and activism. Certainly the civic activism of MENA women has grown in line with their educational attainment.

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

15

The countries of the Middle East and North Africa differ in their historical evolution, social composition, economic structures, and state forms. All were once under some form of colonial rule except for Iran (which nonetheless experienced Russian and especially British intervention in the nineteenth century), Turkey (which was once a colonial power itself), and Israel (which some commentators have called a settler-colonial state). All the countries are predominantly Arab except Iran, Israel, and Turkey, and all have majority Muslim populations except for Israel. Most MENA countries are largely Sunni except Iran, which is Shia; Bahrain, which has a Shia majority; and Iraq and Lebanon, whose Sunni and Shia populations are roughly equal in size. Some of the countries (Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Syria) have had sizable Christian minority populations, though far less so today than in the past; others (Iran, Iraq, Morocco) are ethnically and linguistically diverse. Some have had strong working-class movements and trade unions (Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey) or large communist organizations (Iran, Egypt, South Yemen, the Palestinians). In all the countries, the middle classes have received Western-style education. The richest countries are found among the member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Other than Israel and the most advanced GCC countries, the countries of the region are considered “developing countries,” but there are marked differences among them. Their locations in the economic zones of the world-system—whether the periphery (Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza) or semiperiphery (Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria), along with the vast differences in their resource endowments (the oil-rich and labor-importing United Arab Emirates [UAE] and Qatar versus the low-income and laborexporting Syria and Morocco)—have had implications for economic and social development, state capacity, and women’s participation and rights. At the same time, links to world society through involvement in multilateral agencies or international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), as well as the spread of the Internet, have enabled norm diffusion and demands for sociopolitical change. Economically, the countries of the region comprise oil economies poor in other resources, including population (Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE), mixed oil economies (principally Algeria, Iraq, and Iran, but also Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria), and non-oil economies (Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen). The latter two categories have a more diversified structure, and their resources include oil, agricultural land, and large populations. Some MENA countries are rich in capital and import labor, whereas others are capital-poor or are middle-income countries that export labor. Some countries have more developed class structures than others; the size and significance of the industrial working class, for example, have varied across the region, as has the strength of the modern middle

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Modernizing Women

class. There is variance in the development of skills or human capital formation, the depth and scope of industrialization, integration into the global economy, standards of living and welfare, and women’s participation and rights. The countries of the Middle East are not among the most unequal in the world; neither are their poverty rates among the highest. All, however, exhibit forms of social stratification that are both familiar and distinctive. Privilege or disadvantage is determined by class, gender, ethnicity, and national origin; religious affiliation is another significant social marker. Table 1.3 illustrates economic classification by human development. Politically, the regime types range from theocratic monarchies (Saudi Arabia) to secular republics (Turkey). Until 1992 the kingdom of Saudi Arabia had no formal constitution apart from the Quran and the sharia. Many of the states in the Middle East have experienced legitimacy problems, which became acute in the 1980s when Islamist movements spread across the region. Until then, political scientists used various terms to describe the states in the Middle East: authoritarian-socialist (for Algeria, Iraq, Syria), radical Islamist (for Iran and Libya), patriarchal-conservative (for Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia), and authoritarian-privatizing (for Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey). Most of these states now have strong capitalist features. The 1990s saw the beginnings of political liberalization and quasidemocratization, but for the most part the process stalled and many MENA states remained authoritarian, with limited citizen participation. For these reasons, I have used the term neopatriarchal state, adopted from Hisham Sharabi, as an umbrella term for the various state types in the Middle East, especially in connection with how gender and family are structured in these societies.17 In the neopatriarchal state, unlike liberal or social democratic

Table 1.3

Political Economy and Human Development in MENA, 2012 Very High Human Development

Oil economies

Bahrain, Qatar, UAE

Mixed oil economies

—

Non-oil economies

Israel

High Human Development

Medium Human Development

Low Human Development

Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia

Libya

—

Iran, Tunisia

Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, Syria

—

Lebanon, Turkey

Jordan, Morocco, Palestinian Territories

Yemen

Source: Level of human development is based on each country’s ranking in the UNDP’s 2012 Human Development Report. New York: United Nations Development Programme.

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

17

societies, the family, rather than the individual, constitutes the universal building block of the community; religion is bound to power and state authority; and women and men have distinctly separate roles, rights, and responsibilities. The neopatriarchal state, family, and family laws reflect and reinforce each other. Empirical measures such as women’s labor force participation rates, parliamentary participation, or representation in decisionmaking positions reveal the influence of such institutions, laws, and norms. (See Table 1.4 on women’s political participation and Chapter 3 for a discussion of employment.) In recent years, however, neopatriarchal structures have been undermined by sociodemographic changes such as women’s educational attainment and challenged by civil society organizations and new social movements focused on human rights, women’s rights, and democracy. In the Middle East there is a variable mix of religion and politics. Although Turkey is the only country in the region with a constitutional separation of religion and the state, Islam was not the state religion in Syria, whose Baathist-inspired constitution provided that “freedom of religion shall be preserved, and the state shall respect all religions and guarantee freedom of worship to all, provided that public order is not endangered.” Syria’s Muslim majority coexisted with a Christian minority totaling about 12 percent of the population. Christian holidays were recognized in the same way as Muslim holidays. Syria observes Friday rest, but the Baathist state allowed time off for Christian civil servants to attend Sunday religious services. The constitution guaranteed women “every opportunity to participate effectively and completely in political, social, economic, and cultural life.” Some commentators were therefore concerned that the 2011–2013 armed rebellion in Syria would usher in either a monolithic Islamist regime or a weak state unable to protect citizens—such as occurred in Libya in the immediate aftermath of its own political revolution in 2011, and earlier in Iraq, following the US invasion and the emergence of a fierce resistance and sectarian conflict. In many countries in the region, urban women, especially those who are educated and professional, enjoy a degree of freedom comparable to their counterparts in, for example, Southeast Asian and Latin American countries. But it is difficult to reconcile women’s rights with Islamic law, which remains unfavorable to women with regard to marriage, divorce, and inheritance, as codified in Muslim family law. Tunisia modernized its family law immediately after independence, further reforms were adopted in 1993, and in 2011 the new transitional government removed the remaining reservations to CEDAW. Turkey’s family law was not based on Islam but was quite conservative nonetheless, until the women’s movement forced changes in 2001. Even so, a controversy broke out in 2012 when prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the ruling Islamic AK Party,

18

Table 1.4

Political Systems and Women’s Representation in MENA Female Share of Parliamentary Seats (%)

Middle East and North Africa Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey UAE Yemen

Type of Political System Republic, multiparty Monarchy, ethnic-based Republican Islamic republic/theocracy Republic, under occupation Monarchy Monarchy Republic, multiparty, confessional Monarchy, multiparty Monarchy Monarchy Monarchy Republic, single party, secular Republic, multiparty Republic, multiparty Monarchy Republic, tribal

Year Women Received Vote

2000

2005

2010

2011–2012

1962 2002 1956 1963 — 1974 2005 1952 1959 1994, 2003 2003 — 1949, 1953 1959 1930 2006 1967, 1970

3.4 NFP 2.0 3.4 6.4 0 0 2.3 0.6 0 0 0 10.4 11.5 4.2 0 0.7

6.2 0 2.9 4.1 NFP 5.5 0 2.3 10.8 2.4 NFP 0 12 22.8 4.4 0 0.3

8 3 2 3 25 6.4 8 3 10 0 0 0 12 28 9 23 0

31.6 10 2 3 25 10.8 6.3 3 17 1 0 0 12 27 14 17.5 0

Sources: World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2011; Interparliamentary Union: http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif-arc.htm. Note: NFP means “no functioning parliament.”

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

19

announced his intention to abolish women’s right to abortion, which he likened to a mass killing. Elsewhere, family laws based on Islamic texts continue to govern the personal and family status of women and hence confer on them second-class citizenship (see also Chapter 2). Given the range of socioeconomic and political conditions, it follows that gender is not fixed and unchanging in the Middle East (and neither is culture). As I document in this book, gender norms differ throughout the region, as measured by women’s legal status, education levels, fertility trends, employment patterns, and political participation.

Determinants: The World-System, States, Class, and Gender The theoretical framework that informs this book rests on the premise that both stability and change in the status of women are shaped by a combination of structural factors that operate within the capitalist world system: economic development and state policies, class, and the gender system. Analysis of any single country or group of countries must start with their location and function within the world system of markets and states. The Capitalist World-System: States and Development As noted, world-system theory posits an unequal and hierarchical ordering of states and markets across the economic zones of core, periphery, and semiperiphery. For several centuries, the dominant economic system has been capitalist, and since the 1980s, the form has been known as neoliberal capitalism. Alternative systems of production and distribution have coexisted with capitalism, though not easily: they include socialism (1917– 1990); some precapitalist forms of production and exchange found in remote or tribal areas; and a new form known as the social or solidarity economy, premised on notions of the collective good. States are also capitalist states, here understood in the Weberian sense of the state as a set of institutions and bureaucracies with a “legitimate” monopoly over the means of violence, and in the Marxist-feminist notion of the state as representing the dominant economic class and embodying a masculinist order. States maintain power by combining force and coercion with measures to acquire legitimacy and concessions to widen their social base of support. What follows is a broad outline of the region’s economic evolution over several decades. Since the 1960s and 1970s, the MENA region has participated in a global process variously called the internationalization of capital, the new (or changing) international division of labor, global Fordism, and globalization. National development plans, domestic industrialization projects, and

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Modernizing Women

foreign investment led to significant changes in the structure of the labor force, including an expansion of nonagricultural employment. Oil revenues assisted industrial development projects, which also led to new employment opportunities and changes in the occupational structure. Historically, the Middle East has had thriving cities, but increased urbanization and ruralurban migration occurred in tandem with changes in the economy and in property relations. Property ownership patterns shifted from being based almost exclusively on land or merchant capital to being based on the ownership of large-scale industrial units and more complex and international forms of commercial and financial capital. The process of structural transformation and the near-universal shift toward the nonagrarian urban sector in economic and social terms produced new class actors and undermined (though it did not destroy) the old. Industrial workers, a salaried middle class, and large-scale capitalists have been products of and participants in economic development. Mass education and bureaucratic expansion since the 1960s led to prodigious growth in the new middle class, while the creation and absorption into the public sector of important productive, commercial, and banking assets spawned what Alan Richards and John Waterbury called a new managerial state bourgeoisie. Other classes and strata affected by economic development and state expansion were the peasantry, rural landowning class, urban merchant class, and traditional petty bourgeoisie. High population growth rates, coupled with rural-urban migration, concentrated larger numbers of semiproletarians, informal workers, and the unemployed in major urban areas.18 In the heyday of economic development, most of the large MENA countries—such as Algeria, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey—embarked on a development strategy of import-substitution industrialization (ISI), in which machinery was imported to run local industries producing consumer goods. This strategy was associated with an economic system characterized by central planning and a large public sector. State expansion, economic development, oil wealth, and the region’s increased integration into the world system combined to create educational and employment opportunities for women in the Middle East. For about ten years after the oil price increases of the early 1970s, a massive investment program by the oil-producing nations affected the structure of the labor force not only within the relevant countries but throughout the region as a result of labor migration. The urban areas saw an expansion of the female labor force, with women occupying paid positions as workers and professionals. The state played a central role in the development process. Indeed, from the 1950s to the 1980s, the third world state was a major actor in the realization of social and economic development. As such, the state had a principal part in the formulation of social policies, development

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

21

strategies, and legislation that shaped opportunities for women. Family law; affirmative action–type policies; protective legislation regarding working mothers; policies on education, health, and population; and other components of social policy designed by state managers have affected women’s status and gender arrangements. Strong states with the capacity to enforce laws may undermine customary discrimination and patriarchal structures—or they may reinforce them. The state can enable or impede the integration of women citizens into public life. As Jean Pyle found for the Republic of Ireland, state policy can have contradictory goals: development of the economy and expansion of services on one hand and maintenance of the “traditional family” on the other.19 Such contradictory goals could create role conflicts for women, who may find themselves torn between the economic need or desire to work and the gender ideology that stresses family roles for women. Conversely, economic development and state-sponsored education could have unintended consequences: the ambivalence of neopatriarchal state managers notwithstanding, there is now a generation and stratum of educated women who actively pursue employment and political participation in defiance of cultural norms and gender ideologies—or with the effect that such norms and ideologies gradually change. The positive relationship between women’s education and nonagricultural employment is marked throughout the Middle East. In the 1980s, research found that education increased the aspirations of women in certain sectors of society for a higher income and better standards of living; each increase in the level of education was reflected in a corresponding increase in the level of women’s nonagricultural employment and a decrease in fertility.20 Education also served to weaken the restrictive barriers of traditions and increased the propensity of women to join the labor force and public life. These social changes had a positive effect in reducing traditional sex segregation and female seclusion and in producing a generation of middleclass women with a degree of economic independence. At the same time, it is necessary to recognize the limits to change— including those imposed by a country’s or a region’s location within the economic zones of the capitalist world system. Development strategies and state economic policies are not formulated in a vacuum; they are greatly influenced, for better or for worse, by world-system imperatives. Although most of the large MENA countries are semiperipheral, the function of the region within the world system thus far has been to guarantee a steady supply of oil for foreign, especially core-country, markets, and to import industrial goods, especially armaments, mainly from core countries. One result has been limited economic diversification and competitiveness, especially in terms of manufactured goods for export. Another result has been limited employment opportunities for working-class women in the formal industrial sector, as

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Modernizing Women

capital-intensive industries and technologies tend to favor male labor. By 2012, the MENA region as a whole still had less female involvement in paid employment than was the case in other regions (see Chapter 3). Class and the Effects of Globalization Class constitutes a basic unit of social life and thus of social research. Class is here understood in the Marxist sense as determined by ownership or control of the means of production; social classes also have differential access to political power and the state. Class location shapes cultural practices, patterns of consumption, lifestyle, reproduction, and even worldview. As Ralph Miliband put it, class divisions “find expression in terms of power, income, wealth, responsibility, ‘life chances,’ style and quality of life, and everything else that makes up the texture of existence.”21 Class shapes women’s roles in the sphere of production, and it shapes women’s choices and behavior in reproduction. In the stratified MENA societies, social class, along with state action and economic development, acts upon gender relations and women’s social positions. Although state-sponsored education has resulted in a certain amount of upward social mobility and has increased the number of women seeking jobs, women’s access to resources, including education, is largely determined by their class location. That a large percentage of urban employed women in the Middle East are found in the services sector or in professional positions can be understood by examining class. As in other world regions where social disparities are great, upper-middle-class urban women in the Middle East can exercise a greater number of choices and thus become much more “emancipated” than lower-middle-class, workingclass, urban poor, or peasant women. In 1971, Constantina SafiliosRothschild wrote that women could fulfill conflicting professional and marital roles with the help of cheap domestic labor and the extended family network.22 In 2012 this observation was still true for women from wealthy families, especially in the GCC countries. In contrast, middle-class women in most of the large Middle Eastern countries are less likely to be able to afford domestic help and more likely to rely on a mother or mother-in-law. For women from working-class or low-income families, the absence of affordable and quality childcare facilities or paid maternity leave makes them less likely to enter or remain in the labor force. Although some states have been committed to some female participation in industrial production (such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey), the system extracts the labor of women in economic need without giving them the social supports to balance their roles in the family and the workplace. Modernization and globalization have led to the growth of the middle class, especially the salaried middle class. The middle class in MENA

Gendering the Middle East and North Africa

23

countries is internally differentiated. There exists a traditional middle class of shopkeepers, small bazaaris, and the self-employed—what Marxists call the traditional petty bourgeoisie—as well as a more modern salaried middle class comprising persons employed in the government sector or in the private sector as teachers, lawyers, engineers, bankers, administrators, secretaries, nurses, doctors, and so on. But this modern salaried middle class is itself differentiated culturally, for many of its members are children of the traditional petty bourgeoisie. The political implications are profound, for Islamist movements have recruited from the more traditional sections of the contemporary middle class: the petty bourgeoisie and conservative elements of the professional middle class. Globalization—here understood as a multifaceted process of economic, political, and cultural change where the circulation of capital, goods, services, organizations, and discourses takes on an increasingly global or transnational form—has had direct effects on social class in at least two ways. First, the form of economic globalization known as neoliberalism— with its emphasis on liberalized prices and trade, the free flow of capital, and privatization—has benefited some but created hardships for many more. Small domestic producers find it difficult to compete with the cheap prices of imported goods and go out of business; workers lose jobs when state-owned enterprises are sold off to private owners; low-income citizens and the poor lose access to healthcare, schooling, and subsidized utilities when government cutbacks or privatization schemes set in; employees increasingly find it difficult to secure stable employment with good benefits when labor markets and work contracts are increasingly “flexible.” Second, as the global economy has become more integrated—with a kind of global assembly line and commodity chains linking labor and financial markets across the world—so have the capitalist classes across the globe, such that sociologists Leslie Sklair and William I. Robinson have written of a “transnational capitalist class.” Factions of the transnational capitalist class —along with political elites and representatives of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and other representatives of the institutions of global governance— meet annually at the World Economy Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for discussions and deliberations. Such meetings always include the political and economic elites of the MENA region, especially those of the GCC countries, with their great wealth and global investments. In every society, the upper classes have benefited from free markets, imports, travel, and new jobs. The consumption patterns of the upper classes may generate some revenue, but they also generate resentment, especially when income inequalities become very wide, as they have in most parts of the world since the 1980s and especially in the twenty-first century.23 In 2011, such consumption patterns and income inequalities, at a time of global economic recession, led to anti-

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Modernizing Women

austerity riots in Europe, Occupy Wall Street in the United States, and the Arab Spring in MENA. The Gender System Marxist-feminists first used the term sexual division of labor to refer to the ideological and material ordering of roles, rights, and values in the family, the workplace, and society that have their origins in male-female sexual difference and especially in women’s reproductive capacity. They pointed out that patriarchy, a system of male dominance over women, historically has coexisted with modes of production, and that women’s status has been affected by both the sexual division of labor and class divisions corresponding to modes of production. Today the term gender is used more broadly to denote the meanings given to masculine and feminine, asymmetrical power relations between the sexes, and the ways that men and women are differently situated in and affected by social processes. Judith Lorber defines gender as “a process of social construction, a system of social stratification, and an institution that structures every aspect of our lives because of its embeddedness in the family, the workplace, and the state, as well as in sexuality, language, and culture.” Sylvia Walby writes that gender “is a relationship that reproduces itself, whether or not the individuals involved are aware of it, hence it has the key characteristics of a system, a gender regime.” Lorber, Walby and other feminists regard gender as a powerful source of social distinctions while also recognizing that gender differences are elaborated by class and, where relevant, by race and ethnicity, which Walby has theorized as “complex inequalities.” She has also written of the tendency for the gender regime to transform from a domestic, private, and familiar one to a public form.24 Combining Marxist-feminist and sociological perspectives leads to an understanding of the gender system as a cultural construct that is itself constituted by social structure. That is to say, gender systems are differently manifested in kinship-ordered, agrarian, developing, industrialized, and postindustrial settings. Type of political regime and state ideology further influence the gender system. States that are socialist (for example, Cuba or the former German Democratic Republic), liberal democratic (the United States), social democratic (the Nordic countries), or neopatriarchal (the Islamic Republic of Iran) have had quite different laws about women and different policies on the family. The thesis that women’s relative lack of economic power is the most important determinant of gender inequalities, including those of marriage, parenthood, and sexuality, is cogently demonstrated by Rae Lesser Blumberg and Janet Chafetz, among others.25 In modern societies, the division of labor by gender at the macro (societal) level reinforces that of the house-

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hold. This dynamic is an important source of women’s disadvantaged position and of the stability of the gender system. Another important source lies in law and ideology. In most contemporary societal arrangements, the terms masculine and feminine are defined by law and custom; men and women have unequal access to political power and economic resources, and cultural images and representations of women are fundamentally distinct from those of men—even in societies formally committed to social (including gender) equality. Many governments do not take an active interest in improving women’s status and opportunities, and not all countries have active and autonomous women’s organizations to protect and further women’s interests and rights. Where textbooks and official and popular discourses stress sexual differences rather than legal equality, an apparatus exists to create stratification based on gender. The legal system, education system, and labor market are all sites of the construction and reproduction of gender inequality. Contemporary gender systems are often designed by ideologues and inscribed in law, justified by custom and reflected in policy, sustained by processes of socialization, and reinforced through distinct institutions. But gender differences are not the only “fault lines”; they operate within a larger matrix of other socially constructed distinctions, such as class, ethnicity, religion, and age, which give them their specific dynamics in a given time and place. Gender is thus not a homogeneous category. To paraphrase Michael Mann, gender is stratified and stratification is gendered.26 Nor is the gender system static. In the Middle East, the gender system, while retaining patriarchal features, has undergone considerable change. In the section that follows, I examine in more detail the gender dynamics of social change in the region—and, by extension, the organization of this book.

Social Changes and Women in the Middle East A body of feminist scholarship has analyzed the gendered nature of various movements—notably nationalist and fundamentalist movements—and their impact on women’s legal status and social position. Key studies on the Muslim world have contributed to theory building by elucidating the centrality of gender and the “woman question” in constructions of national, cultural, and religious identity.27 Women have been socially constructed as symbols of the nation-state, bearers of cultural identity, and repositories of religious values. State-building has been a highly gendered phenomenon, in that notions of gender—of masculinities, femininities, and appropriate roles for women and men—are often central to state-building projects and to constructions of national identity. The democracy movements in Iran in 2009 and in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco in 2011 showed that women can

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be major participants in such movements. As we shall see, however, the gender dynamics of political movements are not necessarily in favor of women’s equality. Nationalist movements have had both positive and negative features. They may be expansive and inclusive or narrow and exclusionary. Nationalism may be imbued with concepts of inclusion and equality, modernity and progress, in which case it is often compatible with women’s participation, advancement, and rights. Or it may be infused with cultural defensiveness and nostalgia for a bygone era or invented golden age, placing on women the burden of reproducing cultural values and traditions through prescribed dress and comportment. In some cases, nationalist movements grow violent and extremist, targeting the women of the opposing collectivity while also imposing ever tougher restrictions on their own women.28 Gendered cultural constructions and practices also gain currency during times of dramatic upheavals, such as large-scale social revolutions or more limited political revolutions. In many cases, revolutions have helped to build strong, centralized states; in other cases, revolutions have resulted in chaos or decentralization. Modernizing revolutionary states have been crucial agents in the advancement of women by enacting changes in family law, providing education and employment, and encouraging women’s participation in public life. Radical measures generated by states and legitimized in political ideologies were important factors in weakening the hold of traditional kinship systems on women—even though the latter remain resilient in some parts of the MENA region. Weak states, however, may be unable to implement their ambitious programs for change. The case of Afghanistan in the 1980s is illustrative of the formidable social-structural and international hurdles that may confront a revolutionary state and of the implications of these constraints for gender and the status of women. Thus in Chapter 2, I provide a historical overview of the “woman question” in the MENA region and examine the effects of nationalism, revolutions, and Islamism. One of the most vexed issues of the region, with significant implications for the rise of Islamism and the question of women, is the continuing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A deep sense of injustice directed at Israeli actions and US foreign policy pervades the region. In Iran the 1953 CIAsponsored coup d’état against the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran and subsequent US support for the second Pahlavi monarch linger in collective memory. That the Shah had friendly relations with Israel was used against him during the Iranian Revolution. Significantly, one of the first acts of the new revolutionary regime in Iran in 1979 was to invite Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasir Arafat to Tehran and hand over the former Israeli legation building to the PLO. Throughout the region—in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Algeria—large seg-

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ments of the population find the displacement of fellow Arabs or Muslims (Palestinians) and the intrigues of Israel and the United States to be an enormous affront. Although this sense of moral outrage is common to liberals, leftists, and Islamists alike, it is typically strongest among Islamists, who make the elimination of Zionism, the liberation of Jerusalem, humiliation of the United States, and other such aspirations major goals and slogans of their movements—as we saw with al-Qaeda and the events of September 11, 2001. The implications for women are significant, inasmuch as anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist, and especially Islamist movements are preoccupied with questions of cultural identity and authenticity. Because women play a crucial role in the socialization of the next generation, they become symbols of cultural values and traditions. Some Muslim women regard this role as an exalted one and gladly assume it, becoming active participants, in some cases ideologues, in Islamist movements. Other women find it an onerous burden; they resent restrictions on their autonomy, individuality, mobility, and range of choices. In some countries, these nonconformist women pursue education, employment, and foreign travel to the extent that they can, joining women’s associations or political organizations in opposition to Islamist movements. In Algeria, the Islamist movement spurred a militant feminist movement, something that did not exist before. In other, more authoritarian countries, nonconformist women face legal restrictions on dress, occupation, travel, and encounters with men outside their own families. Their response can take the form of resentful acquiescence, passive resistance, or self-exile. In the 1980s, middle-class Iranian women responded in all three ways, although in the 1990s women began to challenge the gender system and patriarchal Islamist norms more directly. To veil or not to veil has been a recurring issue in Muslim countries. Polemics surrounding hijab (modest Islamic dress for women) abound in every country. During the era of early modernization and nation building, national progress and the emancipation of women were considered synonymous. This viewpoint entailed discouragement of the veil and encouragement of schooling for girls. The veil was associated with national backwardness, as well as female illiteracy and subjugation. But a paradox of the 1980s was that more and more educated women, even working women (especially in Egypt), took to the veil. It is true that the veil has been convenient for militants and political activists. For example, in the Algerian war for independence against the French and the Iranian Revolution against the Shah, women used the chador, or all-encompassing veil, to hide political leaflets and arms. But is veiling always a matter of individual choice, or does social pressure also play a part? In the case of compulsory veiling in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan under the Taliban, the answer is clear. But what of the expansion of veiling in Algeria, Egypt,

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Modernizing Women

and Turkey and among the Palestinians? After the downfall of Tunisia’s Ben Ali government in early 2011, salafists—bearded men and heavily veiled women who seek implementation of a fundamentalist form of Islam— appeared on the streets and in the media demanding strict adherence to Islamic laws and norms.29 How would the new wave of Islamization—this time under ostensibly democratic conditions—affect women’s rights? Chapter 2 takes up these questions as well. One of the ways that societies influence each other economically, politically, and culturally is through international labor migration, which also has distinct gender-specific effects. In the MENA region, oil-fueled development encouraged labor migration from labor-surplus and capital-poor economies to capital-rich and labor-deficit oil economies. For example, there was substantial Tunisian migrant labor in Libya, Egyptian and Palestinian migrant labor in the Gulf emirates, and Yemeni labor in Saudi Arabia. This migration affected, among other things, the structure of populations, the composition of households, and the economies of both sending and receiving countries. Many of the oil-rich Gulf states came to have large populations of noncitizens, and female-headed households proliferated in the labor-sending countries. During the years of the oil boom, roughly until the mid-1980s, workers’ remittances helped to secure not only the welfare of families and households but also the fortunes of economies such as Jordan’s and Egypt’s. Labor migration to areas outside the Middle East has been undertaken principally by North Africans and Turks. Historically, North Africans have migrated to French cities, although large populations of Moroccans have settled in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain as well. Turkish “guest workers” were an important source of labor for (West) German capital starting in the 1950s. Labor migration may improve the economies of the host country (in that it receives cheap labor) and the sending country (in that unemployment goes down and capital inflows increase because of workers’ remittances); emigration, especially of professionals (the so-called brain drain), may also be advantageous to receiving countries. Like exile, however, labor migration and emigration have other consequences, including social-psychological, cultural, and political effects. In the case of Iran—characterized by the brain drain of Iranian professionals following the coup d’état engineered by the CIA in 1953 and supported by the UK government, the massive flow of students to the West in the 1960s and 1970s, a second wave of emigration and exile following Islamization, and the proliferation of draft-dodgers in the mid-1980s—the society became fractured and contentious. When, in 1979, tens of thousands of Iranian students in the United States and Europe returned en masse to help construct the new Iran, they brought with them both organizational and leadership skills learned in the anti-Shah student movement and a secular, left-wing, political-cultural orientation that put

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them at odds with the Islamists. Most Iranian students abroad were members of the Confederation of Iranian Students, one of the largest and best-organized student movements anywhere.30 Exile, emigration, and refugee status almost always change attitudes and behavior, but whether these changes improve or worsen women’s lot depends on many intervening factors. In the refugee camps on the AlgeriaMorocco border, where tens of thousands of Sahrawis have lived for some three decades, contesting Moroccan control over the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara, the women who make up three-quarters of the adult population have played a central role in running the camps from the time of their arrival. They set up committees for health, education, local production, social affairs, and provisions distribution. 31 Janet Bauer informs us that among Algerian Muslim immigrants in France, women have a strong role in maintaining religious rituals and symbolic meanings that are important in preserving cultural identity and adaptation. The same is true for many Turkish residents in Germany. The situation for Iranian refugees, exiles, and immigrants after 1979 seems to differ, however, as they may be ambivalent about the very traditions and religious rituals from which individuals are said to seek comfort in times of crisis or change. Socioeconomic status and political ideology may also explain differences between Algerian, Turkish, and Iranian immigrants.32 A key element of social change is economic structure and, tied to that, class and property relations. The major source of social change in the Middle East in the post–World War II period has been the dual process of economic development and state expansion. As discussed above, the economic systems of the region have undergone development and growth, with implications for social structure (including the stratification system), the nature and capacity of the state, and the position of women. Much of this economic modernization was based on income from oil, and some came from foreign investment and capital inflows. Modernization and globalization alike have altered the social conditions of women in different ways across nations and classes. How women have been involved in and affected by development and globalization is the subject of Chapter 3. Because the state is the manager of economic development in almost all cases, and because state economic and legal policies shape women’s access to employment and economic resources, this chapter underscores the government’s role in directing development and its impact on women. It also examines shifting state policies in an era of globalization, and their effects on women’s economic participation and rights—or their economic citizenship. One important dimension of social change in the region has been the weakening of the patriarchal family and traditional kinship systems. Demographic changes, including patterns of marriage and fertility behavior, have followed from state-sponsored economic development, legal reforms, and

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women’s educational attainment. Industrialization, urbanization, and proletarianization have disrupted kinship-based structures and gender and age hierarchies, while economic and employment opportunities have accelerated fertility decline. In some cases, revolutionary states have undermined patriarchal structures, or attempted to do so, through legislation aimed at weakening traditional rural landlord structures or the power of tribes. Often this type of change comes about coercively. Whether changes to patriarchal family structures come about gradually and nonviolently or rapidly and coercively, the implications for the status of women within the family and in the society are profound. Yet most MENA states have been ambivalent about transforming women and the family. They have sought the apparently contradictory goals of economic development and strong families. The latter objective is often a bargain struck with more conservative social elements, such as religious leaders or traditional local communities. Changes in the patriarchal social structure, the contradictory role of the neopatriarchal state, and the profound changes occurring to the structure of the family are examined in Chapter 4. Political conflict and war can also bring about social change, including opportunities and risks for women. Change in the economic and political status of women, a heightened sense of gender awareness, and political activism on the part of women constitute one set of changes; another is the spread of hypermasculinity and controls over women. World War II has been extensively analyzed in terms of gender and social change. Wartime conditions radically transformed the position of women in the workforce. Postwar demobilization rapidly restored the prewar sexual division of labor, and American culture redefined woman’s place in terms of the now-famous “feminine mystique.” Still, female labor force participation rose rapidly in the postwar decades, and some authors suggest a strong link between the wartime experience and the emergence, two decades later, of the second wave of feminism.33 The Middle East has endured numerous wars and political conflicts since the 1950s, with varying implications for societies and for women. In some cases, an unexpected outcome of economic crisis caused by war is higher education and employment opportunities for women. In a study I undertook of women’s employment patterns in postrevolutionary Iran in 1986, I was surprised to discover that, notwithstanding the exhortations of Islamist ideologues, women had not been driven out of the workforce, and their participation in government employment had slightly increased relative to 1976. This I attributed to the imperatives of the wartime economy, the personnel needs of the expanding state apparatus, and women’s resistance to subordination. A subsequent study by Maryam Poya confirmed my hypothesis. She found that the mobilization of men at the war front and the requirements of gender segregation had resulted in an increased need for

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female teachers and nurses. In Iraq the mobilization of female labor accelerated during the war with Iran, though that was apparently coupled with the contradictory exhortation to produce more children. Another study conducted at Lebanese University found that Lebanese parents felt more strongly than before that educating their daughters was now a good investment, as higher education represented a financial asset. Such a sentiment is now widely shared across the region. In addition to offering good work opportunities and qualifications for a “better” husband, a degree acts as a safety net should a woman’s marriage fail or should she remain single.34 Wars are gendered, and they may reinforce the power of the state and its gender ideology. During the Iran-Iraq War, Iranian women were constantly harassed by zealots if they did not adhere strictly to Islamic dress and manner. Those women who complained about hijab or resisted by showing a little hair or wearing bright-colored socks were admonished to “feel shame before the corpses of the martyrs of Karbala”—a reference to an incident in religious history as well as to the fallen soldiers in the battle with Iraq. Similar dynamics have been observed in other MENA countries. In Palestine, expulsion by Zionists or flight from the villages during periods of strife caused profound changes in rural Palestinian life and the structure of the family. During the first intifada, Palestinian women made gains in social and political participation, but the second intifada had more negative effect. In Afghanistan, a left-wing government tried to make schooling compulsory but was defeated. The Afghan case places the Marxist-inspired reforms of 1978 in proper historical and social context and shows how the subversion of a modernizing state by an Islamist group financed by an international coalition of states led straight to the Taliban, and how the United States and international military intervention since 2001 has not created security, stability, or development in Afghanistan. In the case of Iraq, the combination of wars, international sanctions, and Saddam Hussein’s own flawed policies and priorities resulted in the deterioration of women’s status and conditions, but the US invasion and occupation caused development setbacks, infrastructural damage, and serious socio-psychological harm.35 What is more, although MENA countries have always had high rates of military spending and have spent far more on the military than on the social sectors, the new century has seen spectacular amounts expended on arms purchases, largely by US allies in the region. In Chapter 5, I look at the effect of conflict and war on gender dynamics. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had a profound effect on the region, in that the victory of the Islamic forces inspired Islamist movements throughout MENA and indeed across the Islamic world. Islamization and the new regime’s repression caused deep rifts within Iranian society, leading many into self-exile, asylum, or—in the case of young men—flight from military service during the dreadful years of the war with Iraq. In her study of

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Iranian immigrants in France, Vida Nassehy-Behnam stated: “Since the initiation of ‘theocracy,’ Iranian emigration in general has been partly motivated by the pervasiveness of a religious ideology which impinges so dramatically upon individual lifestyles.” She then offered two categories of emigrants: (1) political emigrants—that is, those whose exodus began in February 1979, including monarchists, nationalists, communists, and the Organization of Iranian People’s Mojahedin and (2) sociocultural emigrants, defined as those Iranians who were not politically active to any great extent but left the country out of fear over an uncertain future for their children or because of the morose atmosphere that prevailed in Iran, especially for women and youth. In their study of Iranian exiles and immigrants in Los Angeles, Mehdi Bozorgmehr and Georges Sabagh showed that some 65 percent of immigrants and 49 percent of exiles had four or more years of college. They noted that these findings for Iranians stood in contrast to the figures for many other migration streams. Another difference between Iranian exiles, refugees, and immigrants and those of North Africa and Turkey is the greater preponderance of religious minorities—Christians, Jews, and Baha’is—among Iranians. Such minorities are especially prevalent within the Iranian exile group in Los Angeles. Bozorgmehr and Sabagh offer these religious patterns as an explanation for why the Iranian exiles they surveyed perceived less prejudice than other groups, which may contain a larger share of Muslims.36 These factors—socioeconomic status, education, and political ideology—shape the experience of female exiles, immigrants, and refugees. Bauer notes that although women in Middle Eastern Muslim societies are rarely described as migrating alone, many Iranian women after 1979 did go into exile alone. The women she interviewed in Germany typically had been involved in secular-left political and feminist activities in Iran and had high school or college education. She elaborates: “Some married young in traditional marriages; others were single or divorced. Some were working class; others middle or upper middle class . . . but most of those I interviewed did come into exile with some ideas about increasing personal autonomy and choice.”37 Can emigration lead to emancipation? Bauer notes the growing feminist consciousness of Iranian exiles and writes that among those she interviewed, there was a general feeling that the traumatic events of 1979–1982 had initiated cross-class feminist cooperation among women and rising consciousness among all Iranians on the issue of gender relations. She adds that larger political goals may be lost, however, as people put aside notions of socialist revolution, social transformation, and political activity and wrap themselves in introspection and their individual lives. Although that was true for the early 1990s, a repoliticization occurred in the latter part of the 1990s, in tandem with the emergence of a movement for political reform

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within Iran. Expatriate Iranians regained their political identity and aspirations, although they held different perspectives on the reform movement, “Islamic feminism,” prospects for “Islamic democracy,” secularism, and other political alternatives. The Iranian state’s control over society, however considerable, is not of a “totalitarian” kind, and there have been many forms of resistance to its ideological control and social restrictions, including those by youth, women, and dissident intellectuals. Moreover, the state has not barred women from education, and in the twenty-first century women began to surpass men in higher education enrollments. Meanwhile, Iranian women themselves are making major demands for the modernization of family law and for greater political participation. The focus of Chapter 6 is on social changes in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. During the 1990s and into the next century, much ink was spilled about the question of whether MENA could overcome authoritarian rule to develop democratic political systems. It was claimed that the Middle East was unique among developing regions in not experiencing democratic transition, with various strands of the literature attempting to explain why. As noted earlier in this chapter, studies that reinforce the myth of Middle Eastern exceptionalism have focused on cultural explanations, that is, the idea that Arab culture or Islam or both are incompatible with democracy, and that the region lacks the prerequisites for democracy and suffers from a defective political culture that somehow favors autocracy and repression. Some political analyses have presumed the endurance of authoritarianism in the region and the absence of democratization but explained it in terms of the nature of the opposition or the state. Ellen Lust-Okar, for example, attributed it to the weakness and nature of the opposition vis-à-vis the regimes. Similarly, Eva Bellin argued that the region’s exceptionalism lay in conditions and institutions that fostered robust authoritarianism, including politically tenacious coercive apparatuses. Other studies examined civil society and trends in the popular classes. Many surveys quoted in the literature have pointed to the compatibility of public attitudes in the region with democracy and their similarity to other people’s aspirations. Asef Bayat noted that myths of Muslim or Middle Eastern exceptionalism have neglected the politics of ordinary people, particularly the youth, which were a key mobilizing force in the 2011 uprisings. In Bahgat Korany’s volume, several authors similarly emphasized that the region’s youth bulge seemed eager for change.38 And since the 1993 edition of this book, I have argued that “modernizing women” are the main advocates and agents of democratization. Contra the proponents of Middle Eastern exceptionalism, the Arab Spring and regime change in Tunisia and Egypt launched the two countries on the path of democratic transition, whereas Morocco, which had started a slower, more gradualist transition in 1998, approved constitutional changes in

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the referendum of July 2011 that limited some of the vast powers of the king. The path to democratic consolidation, however, is replete with obstacles, including hard-line Islamism and external interference. The pro-democracy movements of the region and the prospects for successful democratic transitions that are inclusive of women constitute the subject of Chapter 7.

Conclusion Women are actively involved in movements for social change—revolution, national liberation, human rights, women’s rights, and democratization. Besides national groupings, there are region-wide organizations and networks within which women are active, such as the Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité, the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, and the Arab Human Rights Organization; such groups also have links to transnational feminist networks such as Women Living Under Muslim Laws; the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace; and Women in Development Europe (WIDE). Women also actively support and oppose Islamist and fundamentalist movements. Islamist women are discernible by their dress, the Islamic hijab. Anti-fundamentalist women are likewise discernible by their dress, which is Western, and by their liberal or left-wing political views. In between are Muslim women who may veil but are also opposed to second-class citizenship for women. All in all, women in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan have participated in political organizations, social movements, and revolutions, as well as productive processes and economic development. Whether as peasants, managers of households, factory workers, service workers, or street vendors or as teachers, nurses, or other professionals, MENA women have contributed significantly to economic production and social reproduction—though their contributions are not always acknowledged, valued, or remunerated. And through their organizations and lobbying and advocacy efforts, they have succeeded in effecting significant legal and policy reforms. In Chapter 8, I discuss the activities of women’s organizations and their contributions to civil society, democratization, and citizenship rights. This book, therefore, is an exploration of the causes, nature, and direction of change in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly as those have affected women’s status and social positions. I underscore the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of change and highlight the unintended consequences of state policies as they affect women. The chapters reveal the contradictions and paradoxes of social change, as well as its more predictable patterns and trends. In particular, the chapters draw attention to the genuinely revolutionary role of middle-class Middle Eastern women, especially secular feminists and Muslim feminists using the languages of

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socialism, liberalism, feminism, and an emancipatory Islam. These women are not simply acting out roles prescribed for them by religion, culture, or neopatriarchal states; they are questioning their roles and status, demanding social and political change, participating in movements, and taking sides in ideological battles. In particular, they stand at the center of the new social movements for democratization, civil society, and citizenship.

Notes 1. Chirot 1983, p. 3. For an elaboration of the structuralist and Marxist approach, see Lloyd 1986, especially p. 3. On world-system theory, see Wallerstein 1979, and Chase-Dunn 1998. 2. Very useful early studies include Hajjar 1985, especially the introduction by Hajjar, the chapter on demography by Basheer Nijim, and the essay on education and political development in the Middle East by Nancy and Joseph Jabbra. See also Hopkins and Ibrahaim 1997. Charrad 2001 provides a comparative study of the evolution of women’s rights in postcolonial Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Another comparative study is Moghadam and Gheytanchi 2010. 3. al-Azm, 1993, p. 117; Kepel 2002. 4. See essays by Azar Tabari and Haleh Afshar, both in Tabari and Yeganeh 1982; Minces 1982; Ghoussoub 1987; Sabbah 1984; Moghissi 1999; Manji 2003. See also the symposium on fundamentalism and feminism in Journal of Women’s History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2001). 5. See the Introduction by Freda Hussein in Hussein 1984. Leila Ahmed once poignantly wrote, “One can perhaps appreciate how excruciating is the plight of the Middle-Eastern feminist caught between those opposing loyalties [sexual and cultural identities] forced almost to choose between betrayal and betrayal.” See her essay in Hussein 1984. See also Barlas 2002; Hassan 1996; al-Hibri 1997; Wadud 1999. 6. Huntington 1996; see also Landes 1998; Shayegan 1997; Viorst 1998; Roy 1994. 7. Landes and Landes 2001; Inglehart and Norris 2003a, esp. chap. 3. See also Huntington 2001; Fukuyama 2001 for post-9/11 commentaries on the Muslim world. On the democratic difference between MENA and the rest of the Islamic world, see Fish 2002. The Arab Human Development Report—published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and written by a group of Arab social scientists—is a more sophisticated treatment of the region. 8. Jamal 2011; Tessler 2007, 2010. 9. See contributions in Moghadam 1994. 10. Lahav 1987, p. 199. See also Aloni 1984; Tress 1994. 11. Boutalia 1985; Miller 1981; Drèze and Sen 1989, esp. chap. 4; Hudson and Den Boer 2004. 12. See Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin 1988. For a comparative study of changing family law in Western countries (from patriarchal to egalitarian), see Glendon 1977, 1989. 13. Monica C. Cardinal, comments made at the workshop Women Judges in the Muslim World, University of Oslo, December 17–18, 2012, organized by Monika Lindbekk.

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14. Boudhiba 1985. See also Ertürk 1991. 15. On world-systems, see Chase-Dunn 1998; on world society, see Meyer et al. 1997; Boli and Thomas 1997; Boli 2005. 16. an-Na’im 1999. 17. Sharabi 1988. On state types, see Hudson 1977; Richards and Waterbury 1990, 1996; Hinnebusch 2000; Brumberg 2002; Posusney and Angrist 2005. 18. Richards and Waterbury 1996; see also contributions in Gerner and Schwedler 2004. 19. Pyle 1990. 20. Chamie 1985; Azzam, Abu Nasr, and Lorfing 1985, p. 11. 21. Miliband 1989, p. 25. 22. Safilios-Rothschild 1971. 23. On the transnational capitalist class, see Sklair 2001; Robinson 2004. On the social protests across the world generated by neoliberal globalization, see Moghadam 2013a. 24. Lorber 1994, p. 5; Walby 2009. 25. Blumberg 1978; Chafetz 1984. 26. Mann 1986. 27. Jayawardena 1986; Chatterjee 1993; M. Badran 1995; Bodman and Tohidi 1998; Kandiyoti 1991; Joseph 2000; Charrad 2001; Moghadam 1994, 2003. See also Chapter 2. 28. Moghadam and Mitra 2013. 29. Hijab is the Arabic term for modest Islamic dress. Across countries and social groups, hijab encompasses the all-enveloping veil (burqa in Afghanistan, chador in Iran, niqab in Arab countries), a large headscarf and long coat (seen also in Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere), or a headscarf and modest Western dress. 30. See Matin-Asgari 2002; Moghadam 1987. 31. O’Connell 1993. 32. Klausen 2005; Cesari 2004. 33. Milkman 1987; K. Anderson 1981; Staggenborg 1998. 34. Zureik 1991; Moghadam 1988; Poya 1999; al-Khalil 1991, p. 12. 35. al-Jawaheri 2008; see also al-Ali and Pratt 2010. 36. Bozorgmehr and Sabagh 1991; Bauer 1991. 37. Bauer 1991, p. 93. 38. Bayat 2010; Korany 2010; Bellin 2004; Lust-Okar 2005.

2

Gender and Political Processes: A Historical Context

Beginning at least as early as Marianne in the French Revolution, the idealized woman has historically played a major role as a national or cultural symbol. During transitional periods in a nation’s history, women may be linked to either modernity or tradition. The “woman question” may be framed in the context of modernizing projects or in tandem with religious and moral movements; it may be raised to legitimize women or to mobilize them toward specific ends. At times of regime consolidation and state building, questions of gender, family, and male-female relations come to the fore. The state becomes the manager of gender. Cultural representations of women, and, of course, legislation on family law and women’s rights, reflect the importance of gender in politics and ideology and signal the political agenda of revolutionaries and regimes. Whether political discourses support women’s emancipation and equality or whether they glorify tradition, morality, the family, and difference, the point remains that political ideologies and practices are gendered and that social transformation and state building entail changes in gender relations as well as new class configurations and property rights. Feminist scholarship has shown that state building, lawmaking, and the construction of a national identity are far from gender-neutral processes. Rather, they may reflect and reinforce the existing system of sex and gender, or they may seek to construct and codify new gender ideologies, notions of male and female roles, and ideas about equality and difference. For example, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia provides the first historical example of sweeping legal reform in favor of women. Here the leadership adopted an official discourse of sexual equality and enacted affirmative action–type policies, including quotas and political education that many countries subsequently emulated. Later in the century, the Nordic welfare states played an important role in relieving women of the major 37

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responsibilities of childcare and other forms of caregiving by providing them with lengthy paid maternity leaves and subsidized quality childcare. As a result, Nordic women came to constitute not only half the paid labor force but also between 40 and 50 percent of parliaments and cabinet posts. Elsewhere, revolutionary movements and developmental or welfare states—both socialist and nonsocialist—have been crucial agents of the advancement of women, promoting reforms in family law, encouraging education and employment, and formulating social policies intended to facilitate women’s participation in public life. The woman question first appeared in the discourse and policies of socialist and communist movements, parties, and states, for whom the emancipation or liberation of women from patriarchal constraints—and their participation in the making of a new social order—was a major objective. As Maxine Molyneux has argued, when revolutionary governments set about reforming the position of women in the first period of social and economic transformation, they tend to focus on three goals: extending the base of the government’s political support, increasing the size or quality of the active labor force, and harnessing the family to the process of social reproduction.1 For socialist and communist movements, women’s participation was essential to the realization of those goals: women widened the movement’s or new government’s social base of support; women became part of the labor force and thus contributed to the productive process; women were central actors in the transformation of family life and its connection to wider societal processes.2 As we shall see, these elements have been present, albeit with variations, in state building and national identity construction across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as in the discourses and frames of Islamist movements. In many third world countries, including Middle Eastern ones, concepts of the emancipation of women emerged in the context of national liberation, state building, and self-conscious attempts to achieve modernity in the early part of the century, as Kumari Jayawardena noted in her 1986 book on feminisms and nationalism in the third world.3 In some cases, male feminists were instrumental in highlighting the woman question. Among the earlier generation of male women’s rights advocates are Egypt’s Qassem Amin (author of the 1901 study The New Woman) and Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905); Iran’s Mirza Malkum Khan (who in an 1890 issue of his journal, Qanun (Law), wrote an article advocating women’s education); the Iraqi Jamal Sudki Azza Khawy (who in 1911 advocated doing away with the veil); Turkey’s Ziya Gökalp and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; Afghanistan’s Mahmud Tarzi (1866–1935); and Tunisia’s Taher Haddad (author of the 1930 text Our Woman, Islamic Law, and Society). Other intellectuals, inspired by socialist or liberal political thought, advocated the emancipation of women through unveiling, elimination of seclusion, and formal educa-

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tion. In most cases, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, these ideas were used to call for revolt against corrupt feudal regimes. Anticolonialism, nation building, and modernity were elements of the emerging “master frame” of nationalism. In addition to the male reformers, women activists were crucial agents of legal and political change, including change in women’s status. In the early modern period, well-known women activists included Iran’s Tahereh Qurat-ul-ayn, the famous Baha’i leader who fought in battles and caused a scandal in the 1840s by appearing unveiled; Sediqheh Dowlatabadi, who, like Qurat-ul-ayn, was a fierce nationalist opposed to concessions to the British and publisher of the short-lived periodical Zaban-e Zanan [The Language of Women]; Egypt’s Huda Sharawi, who formed the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923 and dramatically threw her veil into the sea; and Turkey’s Halide Edip (1883–1964), a nationalist who served in Mustafa Kemal’s forces. A brief digression on the Tanzimat reforms in Ottoman Turkey illustrates the modernist and modernizing impulse of this early period. The wide-ranging reforms known as the Tanzimat (reorganization) began in 1839 under the rule of Abdul Majid and inaugurated the empire’s shift from theocratic sultanate to modern state. The security of the subject’s life, honor, and property was guaranteed, and fair public trials and a new penal code were instituted. The principle of equality of all persons of all religions before the law was considered a very bold move for the times, although it remained largely a formality. The tax structure was reformed, and a new provincial administration based on the centralized French system was set up. Primary and secondary state schools were established alongside the religious schools, and in 1847 the creation of a Ministry of Education effectively took away the ulamas’ power of sole jurisdiction over education. The reforms continued during the sultanate of Abdul Aziz and included the introduction of a new civil code in 1876, which, however, was based on the sharia. In 1871 the American College for Girls was started, although for two decades it was restricted to Christians. (The first Muslim girl to complete her studies there was Halide Edip, a future women’s leader.) A trend had started, and many women educated in this manner were to make their mark as novelists of and writers on women’s emancipation.4 In the post–World War II period, integrating women into national development was an objective for many male reformers. President Habib Bourguiba of postindependence Tunisia replaced Islamic family law based on sharia with a civil law code regulating personal and family relations and equalizing the responsibilities of the sexes. (In Tunisia and several other countries, family law is known as the personal status code.) Polygamy and unilateral male divorce were abolished, and the state assumed a strong stance in favor of female emancipation. In Syria and Iraq following the Baathist “revolutions” of the 1950s, women were granted social rights and

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encouraged to attend the new state schools and university; according to Bouthaina Shabaan, the first female member of Syria’s parliament was appointed in 1959. Nasserism as a reformist and developmentalist philosophy created unprecedented educational and employment opportunities for women in Egypt, primarily in the major cities. In Iran women were granted the right to vote in 1962, and in 1967 the Pahlavi state introduced the Family Protection Act, which limited polygamy, allowed women to initiate divorce, and increased their child custody rights after divorce or widowhood. In these cases, modern Middle Eastern states saw the participation and rights of women—however limited—to be an essential objective and a marker of modernity and development. Such movements and states enabled certain segments of the female population to take their place in the building of the new postcolonial order or the modern society. In turn, participation in revolutions, national liberation struggles, and various national campaigns gave women activists or elites the leverage needed to push for social reforms that might benefit a wider population of women. Achieving such social reforms—whether they involved the right to vote and take part in the political process or family law reform to end barriers to women’s mobility—has been arduous and highly contested. Women in the Middle East, like women in other countries, have been engaged in many forms of noninstitutional politics: revolutions, reform movements, national liberation movements, anti-imperialist struggles, religious movements, bread riots, street demonstrations, and so on. Their formal political participation has not been as extensive as that of men because they have been unfairly handicapped by existing custom and law. But precisely because of this handicap, their participation in political movements must be considered remarkable. In some cases, as a direct result of their involvement in a movement, women’s legal status improved. In other cases, women’s political activities had little or no bearing on their subsequent legal status and social positions; if anything, their legal status diminished. It is essential to recognize that women in the Middle East have been actors in political movements, that these movements have had a variable effect on their social positions, and that gender and the woman question have been central features of political movements, reforms, and revolutions. In this chapter, I provide a historical overview of the gendered nature of state building and national identity construction in the modern Middle East and North Africa. The association of women with modernity in the first part of the twentieth century is but one form of national identity construction. Another is the association of women with culture, religion, and the family, an identity project that became more prominent in the latter part of the century, with the rise of Islamist movements and Islamic governments. In all cases, notions of the “ideal society” are infused with notions

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of the “ideal woman” (and sometimes the “ideal man”), with corresponding discourses, institutions, policies, and laws. Women and gender constitute an integral part of MENA’s histories and movements, including nationalism, revolution, fundamentalism, legal reforms, and political change. I begin by examining nationalism and its relationship with women’s rights.

Nationalism, State Building, and Women Viewing nationalism as a political, economic, and cultural project helps elucidate the vexed relationship between women’s rights and nationalism— or between “the woman question” and “the national question.” The framework presented here distinguishes the liberal or “developmental nationalism” of the early part of the twentieth century from the illiberal or “religio-cultural nationalism” of the latter period. In the discussion that follows I elaborate on this thesis. In her now-classic book, Jayawardena showed that for some Asian independence and liberation movements in the early twentieth century, women’s emancipation was an explicit objective, inasmuch as it was a necessary component of the national goal of emancipation from feudalism, illiteracy, and backwardness. Women’s activism in the anti-colonial movements was generally welcomed and resulted in their inclusion in postcolonial state-building projects, the adoption and implementation of favorable legal frameworks and social policies, and state-sponsored education for women and girls. In Turkey, Egypt, and Iran, progress and modernity were equated with women’s emancipation, and in her brief account of Afghanistan’s state-building efforts in the 1920s, Jayawardena notes the failed attempt at women’s emancipation and modernization on the part of King Amanullah. As Mansoor Moaddel has shown, liberal nationalism in Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Syria favored national integration via social and educational reforms, the promotion of a national language, and the establishment of a modern nation-state.5 Yet feminist scholars of Middle East social history have noted tensions between the goals of women’s rights and those of national liberation. In Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, literary and philanthropic “ladies’ societies” developed a political character as their activities increasingly served the nationalist struggle. But at the first and second Eastern Women’s Congresses (1930 in Damascus, 1932 in Tehran), the hostility of conservative male leaders to women’s demands—notably for political rights and for equality within the family—forced the women leaders to retreat into the more acceptable minimalist demand for access to education. Nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk granted Turkish women the right to vote in 1930, but that did not occur in Egypt, Iran, or Syria until much later. Even so,

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women’s rights leaders remained loyal to the nationalist cause. In October 1938 in Cairo, Huda Sharawi and the Egyptian Feminist Union sponsored the Eastern Women’s Conference for the Defense of Palestine.6 In the wave of decolonization that took place in the mid-twentieth century, nationalism and socialism were embraced as paths to modernity and progress; for their part, women’s rights leaders welcomed the nationalist cause as the pathway to their own liberation. In most postcolonial countries, political rights, including voting rights, were granted to women as well as to men. As the newly independent states expanded, opportunities for women’s participation became available in the sectors of education and health and in public administration, although most women remained in rural areas, working on family farms. These were the heady days of third world nationalism and modernization, which encompassed the Muslim world as well. During the 1950s and 1960s, the “social contract” adopted in various MENA countries included fairly generous social policies that were enjoyed principally by employees of the expanding state sector, in industry and the military as well as public services, although free schooling and clinics for the poor did expand the coverage of social benefits. In some countries—notably Egypt, Syria, and Iran—land reform programs were added to the panoply of policies to expand the rights of citizens, in this case, peasants.7 The Iraqi Baath regime in its radical phase (the 1960s and 1970s) undertook social transformation by introducing a land reform program that changed the conditions of the peasantry and by establishing a welfare state for the urban working classes and the poor. In its drive against illiteracy and for free education, the Baathist revolution produced one of the best-educated intelligentsias in the Arab world, giving women the right to have careers and participate in civic activities. Nevertheless, in this period there was tension between the modernizing and developmentalist goals of the new political elites and the legal status of women, especially as expressed in Muslim family law. The first modern codification of Islamic family law was the Ottoman Law of Family Rights of 1917, which was also applied to the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In the postcolonial period, and especially in the countries where tribes remained strong, new family laws placed women under the control of male kin. As Amira Sonbol notes, a new form of patriarchy based on the concept of the “family” became the basis of the law, and the state became an effective participant in enforcing personal matters that were not its business before. This is because Islam, the state religion in most countries, privileges patrilineal bonds and enjoins men to take responsibility for the support of their wives and children. In the ArabIslamic family, as explained by John Esposito and Natana DeLong Bas, the wife’s obligations are to maintain a home for her children and obey her husband, and the husband is entitled to exercise his marital authority by

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restraining his wife’s movements and preventing her from showing herself in public.8 This tension between the states’ modernizing and traditional impulses became more pronounced in the latter part of the century. The Islamic revival of the 1980s, partly inspired by the 1979 Iranian Revolution and partly the result of a complex set of endogenous and exogenous factors and forces, transformed the nationalist frame from modernist to religious. Conflicts and wars—the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Lebanese civil war, the Algerian civil conflict of the 1990s—intensified hypermasculinity and controls over women. Both Islamist movements and regional conflicts transformed the cultural environment for women. In what follows, I provide some examples from the MENA region of gendered national identity construction, with a focus on nationalist movements and state building in the twentieth century. Egypt In the late 1950s and during the administration of the late Gamal Abdul Nasser, Egypt’s public sector expanded significantly through a series of Egyptianization decrees (1956–1959) that gave the government control of foreign-owned assets such as the Suez Canal. These decrees were followed in the early 1960s by the adoption of a highly centralized development policy approach and a massive wave of nationalizations of Egyptian-owned enterprises in industry, banking, trade, and transport. At the same time, the government embarked on an employment drive that required state-owned enterprises to include among their annual targets the creation of significant numbers of new jobs; the administrative apparatus of the state was also expanded rapidly at both the central and local government levels. Equally important was the objective of spreading health and education services, bringing a corresponding growth of government employment in these services. The state’s guarantee of a job to all high school and university graduates encouraged women, including women from working-class and lowermiddle-class families, to take advantage of the government’s free education policy. A distinctive feature of the Nasser government was its political support for the education of women and their integration into national development. Labor Law 91 of 1954 guaranteed equal rights and equal wages and made special provisions for married women and mothers. As Homa Hoodfar notes, these provisions were expanded under Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, to facilitate women’s labor market participation. “This law was applied primarily in the public sector, which made jobs in this area particularly attractive to women. As a result, the state became the single most important employer of women.”9

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The Nasser era ended when Sadat introduced the policy of infitah, or economic opening, along with a change in foreign policy in favor of the United States. While his wife, Jihan, worked to broaden the social space for women, Sadat did the same for Islamists, partly as a way of undercutting his rivals on the political left. His assassination by Islamists in 1982 was thus ironic as well as tragic. As Mervat Hatem has noted, his successor, Hosni Mubarak, largely continued Sadat’s economic strategy and foreign policy but paid little attention to women’s participation and rights.10 The state was both authoritarian and neopatriarchal. Tunisia Tunisian government policy after independence prioritized women’s emancipation and integration into the economy, and the constitution and civil code reflected and reinforced that position. Staunchly secular, President Bourguiba made the participation of women in public life a major policy goal. The constitution ensured that all citizens had the same rights and obligations. Polygamy and male repudiation were outlawed, and women could petition for divorce and custody of their children. These legal reforms made Tunisia the most liberal country in the Arab world. Tunisian nationalism was constructed around notions of modernity, women’s rights, and a moderate Arab-Muslim identity. As early as 1960 a law gave the minority of women who were members of the social insurance system—mainly those employed in industry, handicrafts, and services, with the exception of domestic workers—the right to pregnancy leave: six weeks before delivery and six weeks afterward. During this period, 50 percent of monthly wages were to be paid. Subsequently, the length of maternity leave was set at thirty days, apparently as part of government policy to lower the birthrate. Public employees were also entitled to childcare leave.11 Law no. 81-6 of February 1981 introduced a social security scheme for wage-earning agricultural workers and those engaged in cooperative undertakings. The following year this scheme was extended to cover small farmers and the self-employed—a law that would benefit women as well. In the 1980s, the distribution of the female labor force was more balanced in Tunisia than in many other Middle Eastern countries: 26 percent in agriculture, 48 percent in manufacturing, 21 percent in services. The female share of government employment was 24.5 percent in 1987; of the country’s magistrates, 13.5 percent were women; of medical personnel, 20.6 percent; of paramedical personnel, 48 percent; of the country’s teachers, 31.5 percent. Women’s participation in formal politics matched the trends in employment. In 1981 there were seven female deputies in parliament; in

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1983 there were 50,000 female members of the ruling social-democratic Neo-Destour Party and 57,000 members of the National Union of Tunisian Women; and in 1985 some 492 women were elected municipal councilors nationwide.12 The following years saw economic problems that encouraged Islamist forces and threatened women’s gains. In May 1989 Islamists competed openly in Tunisia’s parliamentary elections, winning 14 percent of the total vote and 30 percent in Tunis and other cities and relegating the main secular opposition party, the Movement of Democratic Socialists, to third place.13 After the removal of Habib Bourguiba by Zein el-Abedin Ben Ali, more mosques were built and Quranic universities restored, though the Tunisian state remained opposed to Islamist political aspirations. Still, the state remained formally committed to the advancement of women and their full involvement in economic development, and President Ben Ali saw himself as a champion of women’s participation and rights. Indeed, a women’s policy agency, CREDIF, was formed in the early 1990s to carry out policy-oriented research on women; the studies were often commissioned by the planning ministry for purposes of integrating women into development. 14 A cadre of professional women worked with low-income women on development projects that provided microcredit services, vocational training, job counseling, and environmental education and “promote[d] active exercise of citizenship.”15 Women’s rights advocates were able to form a number of impressive organizations, such as the Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche et Développement (AFTURD) and the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD) to promote further reforms for women’s equality, though they occasionally met with state repression. Despite the authoritarian political environment, therefore, Tunisian women were able to enjoy an array of professional and occupational choices, although they also came to face daunting unemployment rates. Iraq During the 1960s and 1970s, the Baath Party in Iraq had an interest both in recruiting women into the labor force to alleviate a labor shortage and in wresting women’s allegiance away from kin, family, or ethnic group and shifting it to the party-state. The Free Education Law of 1975 benefited women as well as men. The 1978 Personal Status Law, although limited in its objectives, aimed to reduce the control of extended families over women. In November 1977 the government conducted a census to determine the characteristics of the illiterate: of 2.2 million illiterates aged fifteen to forty-five, 70 percent were women. The government then passed

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laws requiring attendance at adult literacy classes and made extensive use of trade unions and other “popular organizations” and daily use of television and radio. Different textbooks were prepared for peasants, workers, and housewives.16 Women were recruited into state-controlled agencies and put through public education as well as vocational training and political indoctrination. By 1979, 51 percent of Baghdad University’s first-year medical school class was female, as were 75 percent of students in the English translation department at Mustansiriyah University. The General Federation of Iraqi Women grew in importance, even organizing sports events for women athletes. The ruling Baath Party encouraged a wide range of employment for women, who by the late 1970s accounted for 29 percent of the country’s medical doctors, 46 percent of dentists, 70 percent of pharmacists, 46 percent of teachers and university lecturers, 33 percent of the staff of government departments, 26 percent of workers in industry, and 45 percent of farm employees.17 Maternity leave was generous, and jobs of pregnant women were protected. Many young Iraqi women traveled abroad and studied on scholarships. The onset of the war with Iran brought about a toughening of the state’s position on women, and progress stalled under Saddam Hussein. The 1980–1988 war between Iraq and Iran—based in part on competing narratives of secular Arab nationalism (Baathist Iraq) and revolutionary Shiism (the Islamic Republic of Iran)—reinforced hypermasculinity and the “protection,” or control, of women in both countries. In April 1982 the Iraqi government issued a regulation stating that married women were not allowed to travel unless accompanied by their husbands; unmarried women were required to have the written consent of their fathers or guardians. Women were told that it was their patriotic duty to fill jobs vacated by men now at the war front; according to one account, their participation in the formal labor force more than doubled in the 1980s.18 But women also were told that they should bear five children to narrow the gap between Iraq’s population (then 15 million people) and Iran’s (47 million); in 1986 birth control devices disappeared from pharmacy shelves. During the 1990s, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait led to the destructive coalition war against Iraq and a harsh sanctions regime that resulted in the deterioration of the country’s physical and social infrastructure and a serious decline in the population’s wellbeing.19 What began as a forward-looking program for socioeconomic development and women’s rights in the 1960s and 1970s encountered setbacks in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of misguided state actions and punitive international measures. We can conclude that nationalism had both positive and negative effects on Iraqi women’s legal status and social participation. War, sanctions, and occupation, however, undermined the earlier gains. (See also Chapter 5.)

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Palestine Palestinian women have been long mobilized as part of the broader national struggle, though largely in ways consistent with their traditional responsibilities as wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters. As Deborah Gerner has explained, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, women—mostly urban, upper-class, well educated, and from activist families—opposed both increased immigration by European Zionists and the British military presence while also maintaining a focus on social welfare concerns. On October 26, 1929, several hundred representatives of religious and secular women’s organizations gathered in Jerusalem for the first Palestine Arab Women’s Conference.20 With the expansion of the armed struggle in the 1970s, some Palestinian women challenged the prescribed maternal roles and took on tasks that were similar to those performed by their male comrades within the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and al-Fatah (the armed wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization). The General Union of Palestinian Women, formed in 1965, was tied to the PLO. The latter part of the 1970s saw the expansion of women’s groups, mostly affiliated with the political parties, which sought the political emancipation and formal equality of Palestinian women in employment and education as part of their official mandate. For example, in 1978, female cadres from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine founded the first women’s committee, the Women’s Working Committee. In March 1981, women affiliated with the Palestinian Communist Party founded the Union of Palestinian Working Women’s Committees. These and two other women’s committees became the backbone of the neighborhood popular committees that were responsible for everything from garbage pickup in the refugee camps to increasing Palestinian economic self-sufficiency. The Higher Women’s Committee, established in December 1988, served as an umbrella organization uniting the four national women’s committees. It played an important role during the first intifada, or uprising against occupation (1988–1993), through its nonviolent civil disobedience and voluntary service work.21 This first phase of the Palestinian national liberation movement had a positive impact on women’s roles, inasmuch as women were able to participate politically in what was then the most secular and democratic movement in the Arab world. Internationally, the best-known Palestinian women were the guerrilla fighter Leila Khaled, the negotiator and professor of English Hanan Ashrawi, and the PLO ambassador to the European Union Leila Shahid—three contrasting examples of roles available to Palestinian women in their national movement. In the 1970s, Palestinian women’s political activity, social welfare work, and participation in resistance groups

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expanded, whether in Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, universities, or refugee camps. And during the first intifada (1988–1991), Palestinian women organized themselves into impressive independent political groups and economic cooperatives. With the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s, women’s groups sought to insert women’s rights in the Basic Laws. During the latter part of the 1980s, however, another trend emerged among the Palestinians, especially in the impoverished Gaza Strip: Islamist vigilantes who insisted that women cover themselves when appearing in public. The rise of an Islamist movement and its 1988–1989 hijab campaign, along with the delayed and half-hearted response of the United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), suggested that women’s participation, rights, and equality would continue to be contested terrain.22 The frustrations of daily life, the indignities of occupation, and the inability of the secular and democratic project to materialize may explain this shift. Feminist interventions in the areas of constitution writing and social policy experienced setbacks toward the end of the 1990s, as the West Bank and Gaza faced Islamization and continued Israeli occupation. 23 As noted by Zahira Kamal, a leading figure in the women’s movement, “Palestinian women are prisoners of a concept of ‘women and the intifada.’”24 Not all national or state-building projects in MENA were motivated by notions of progress and modernity. In contrast to the examples above, Saudi Arabia established a state that was tribal based, inspired by the Wahhabi movement of the 1800s, and ruled by the powerful family of al-Saud. Concepts of progress and modernity were not at the center of state building; rather, given its location within the birthplace of Islam, politics, the law, and religion were fused. Indeed, Saudi Arabia had nothing resembling a modern constitution. Elements of Saudi culture—devotion to Islam, extended-family values, the segregated status of women, and the al-Saud monarchic hegemony—were formulated in an increasingly deliberate fashion into a new political culture that acted as a screen to ensure that technological and human progress remained within acceptable bounds. The first private school for girls opened in the late 1950s, initiated by a princess. Fifteen private girls’ schools subsequently opened in four Saudi Arabian cities. In 1960 the female education system was placed under the auspices of the government, with supervision by the religious order. Expatriate teachers were employed to start with and then replaced progressively by Saudi female teachers. By the 1980s, nearly a million female students were enrolled at various levels and constituted nearly 45 percent of the national student population. Until 2002, girls’ education was overseen by religious authorities, rather than the Ministry of Education, to appease conservative interests.25 Sex segregation in education remained the norm.

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Professional education included medicine, pharmacy, teaching, commerce, and the social sciences. However, the percentage of Saudi women who worked outside the home, mainly in the sphere of education, was about 5 percent in the 1980s and 10 percent in the late 1990s. Very few occupations and professions were deemed acceptable for women. Nursing, for example, was seen as culturally inappropriate for Saudi women, hence the importation of nurses from Egypt, the Philippines, India, and elsewhere. On the other hand, Saudi women trained as physicians to treat women patients. Nonetheless, the gender ideology was and remains patriarchal, promoting the ideal of the male breadwinner and female homemaker. Spatial segregation and severe restrictions on women’s mobility have always characterized Saudi culture and gender policy. Restrictions on women became even tighter in the 1970s, when the ruling family faced an Islamist uprising. In response, the Saudi ruling class gave the religious police even greater powers to oversee the people’s adherence to strict Wahhabi precepts. This included laws and norms to reproduce traditional familial relations, sex segregation in education and employment, and the veiling of women outside the home. In the wake of the Gulf crisis following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Saudi authorities called for wider participation of women in the labor force “in the area of human services and medical services within the context of fully preserving Islamic and social values.”26 In November 1990 a group of forty Saudi women, most of them university lecturers, took this opportunity to demonstrate their desire for change by driving their own cars through the streets of Riyadh, an extraordinary action that stunned the country. Nonetheless, and despite the country’s enormous oil wealth, 36 percent of Saudi women over the age of fifteen were illiterate as recently as 1998. World Bank figures show that in 1997, nine years of schooling was expected for females—compared with eleven years in the Islamic Republic of Iran and fourteen years in South Korea. Over the decades, Saudi Arabia has spent far more on military acquisitions than on education. (See Chapter 5 for details on military expenditures in the region.) Gendered nation building in the MENA region, therefore, has varied in its approach to women’s participation and rights, with Tunisia and Saudi Arabia representing polar opposites. Nationalist movements themselves were largely modern, liberal, and secular in the early twentieth century but assumed a more religious form later in the century.

Revolutions and Women’s Rights Revolutions are a special case of social change that attempts to rapidly transform political and economic structures, social and gender relations,

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and societal institutions to conform to an ideology. The twentieth century has been called the century of revolutions, when many third world countries, including countries in the Middle East, experienced revolutionary change. As a large body of feminist research has shown, the woman question figured prominently in the discourse of revolutionaries and the laws of revolutionary states.27 The discussion that follows prefigures the analysis in Chapter 7 of the gendered nature of the democratic transitions that began in the Arab region in 2011. I begin by defining revolution. Scholars have distinguished wide-ranging social revolutions from more limited political revolutions, and it should be noted that both activists and scholars have sometimes used the terms national liberation and revolution interchangeably (e.g., as in the cases of Vietnam, Algeria, Yemen, Palestine). Various definitions of revolution combine notions of political change, attempts at social transformation, and concepts of the ideal society. For example: “A revolution is any attempt by subordinate groups through the use of violence to bring about (1) a change of government or its policy, (2) a change of regime, or (3) a change of society, whether this attempt is justified by reference to past conditions or to an as yet unattained future ideal.”28 For purposes of the present discussion, I define a revolution as an attempt to rapidly and profoundly change political and social structures; it involves mass participation; it usually entails violence and the use of force; it includes notions of the “ideal” society; and it has some cultural reference points. Revolutions have thus far occurred largely in semiperipheral countries or in societies undergoing the transition to modernity. The major theories of revolution—Marxist class analysis, relative deprivation, and resource mobilization—link revolution to the dynamics and contradictions of modernization or of the world-system.29 Certain conditions are necessary for the seizure of state power and the successful transformation of social structures, but these conditions vary, particularly over historical eras and types of societies. World-system openings, such as economic crises or world wars, may create opportunities for revolutionary movements, but national class and social factors determine the specifics and outcomes of revolutionary movements. Revolutionary programs are not always fulfilled, and the intentions of the revolutionary leadership and state may be subject to various constraints, such as poor resource endowments, civil war, a hostile international environment, or external intervention. There is increasing consensus among students of revolution that in addition to the state, class conflict, resource bases, and the world-system, what should also be investigated are cultural dynamics. That is, because of the complexity of causality, revolutions should be explained in terms of the interaction of economic, political, and cultural developments within national, regional, and global contexts.30

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As noted, feminist studies on the position of women in revolutionary Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iran, and elsewhere strongly suggest that gender relations constitute an important part of the culture, ideology, and politics of revolutionary societies. In my own work on revolution, I have used gender as a constitutive category of the comparative analysis of revolution and have constructed a theoretical framework to explain divergent gendered outcomes. Revolutionary outcomes for women are either patriarchal or emancipatory, and in my model there are historical precursors to the two types of revolution: the French Revolution exemplifies the Woman-in-the-Family, or patriarchal, model of revolution, whereas the Bolshevik Revolution is the quintessential Woman’s Emancipation model of revolution (see Table 2.1). In what follows, I examine two sets of cases in the MENA region. In one, national progress and societal transformation were viewed by the leadership as inextricably bound up with equality and the emancipation of women. Such movements occurred within the context of the struggle against feudalism and backwardness and were in some cases inspired by socialist ideals. Education, employment, and unveiling were encouraged as a way of integrating women into the development of the country and thereby accelerating the process of social change. This type of revolution is exemplified by the radical Kemalist reforms in Turkey during the 1920s; the 1967 revolution in South Yemen and reform of family law in what came to be called the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen; and the April 1978 Saur Revolution in Afghanistan, which issued a radical decree pertaining to marriage and the family. In the Woman-in-the-Family or patriarchal set of cases, the leadership regarded cultural identity, integrity, and cohesion as strongly dependent upon the proper behavior and comportment of women, in part as a reaction to colonial or neocolonial impositions. Veiling, modesty, and family roles were encouraged for women. The two Middle Eastern cases considered here are the Algerian Revolution and the period following independence in 1962, and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the subsequent issue of veiling. The Kemalist Revolution in Turkey Toward the end of the nineteenth century, opposition to the Ottoman sultan was manifested in the Young Turks movement, officially called the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). One of the principal tenets of the Young Turks was the need for modernization; they were also unabashedly advocates of Westernization. Closely linked to the desire for modernization through Westernization was the emancipation of women. Kumari Jayawardena reminds us that the process of Europeanization was not only ideological but also entailed the forging of economic links with the capitalist countries of

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Table 2.1

Gendered Revolutions: A Typology and Historical Examples

Type of Revolution

Socialist or Populist Revolutions

Bourgeois or Democratic Revolutions

Women’s emancipation Social participation of women is key revolutionary goal; legal and policy reforms are enacted for women’s equality and rights.

Russia, 1917 China, 1949 Cuba, 1959 Vietnam, 1945, 1975 Democratic Yemen, 1967 Ethiopia, 1975 Democratic Afghanistan, 1978 Nicaragua, 1979 El Salvador, 1980–1992

Kemalism in Turkey, 1923–1938

Patriarchal Women marginalized in new states; motherhood discourse prevails.

France, 1848

American revolution, 1776 France, 1789 Mexico, 1910 Algeria, 1962 Iran, 1979 Eastern Europe, 1989

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Europe. Around this time, writer and sociologist Ziya Gökalp, who is often referred to as the theoretician of Turkish nationalism and was strongly influenced by the Comtean and Durkheimian tradition in French sociology, advocated equality in marriage and divorce and succession rights for women.31 World War I hastened the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of a new group from among the Young Turks. This faction advocated the building of a modern Turkish national state that was “republican, secular, and non-imperialist.” Mustafa Kemal, an army captain, set up a revolutionary government in Ankara in 1920, oversaw a peace treaty with the British, and established the Turkish Republic in 1923, with himself as president and leader of the Republican People’s Party. The Kemalist reforms were the most far-reaching in both intent and effect. Ataturk, as he came to be known, furthered the process of Westernization through economic development, separation of religion from state affairs, an attack on tradition, Latinization of the alphabet, promotion of European dress, adoption of the Western calendar, and the replacement of Islamic family law by a secular civil code adopted from Switzerland. The influence of the French Enlightenment and anticlericalism is clear in these reforms. By 1926 sharia had been abolished, and the civil and penal codes were thoroughly secularized. Ziya Gökalp urged the Turks, “Belong to the Turkish nation, the Muslim religion and European civilization.” Ataturk distanced himself from Islam much further than Gökalp did.32 Where the Turkish reformers diverged from their French predecessors was on the woman question. Turkish women obtained the legal right to vote in 1930, many years before French women did. Unlike the French, for whom the emancipation of women was not on the agenda, a central element of the conceptualization of Turkish nationalism, progress, and civilization was “Turkish feminism”—the exact words of Gökalp. Not only Ataturk and Gökalp but also Kemalist feminists such as nationalist fighter and writer Halide Edip and Ataturk’s adopted daughter, Afet Inan (author of The Emancipation of the Turkish Woman), played major roles in creating images of the new Turkish woman. According to Deniz Kandiyoti, the new Turkish woman was a self-sacrificing “comrade-woman” who shared in the struggles of her male peers. She was depicted in the literature as an asexual sister-inarms whose public activities never cast any doubt on her virtue and chastity. Turkish national identity was “deemed to have a practically built-in sexual egalitarianist component.”33 In this sense the image of the emancipated Turkish woman was in line with the emerging identity of the collectivity— the new Turkish nation. Why was the question of women’s rights so strategic to the selfdefinition of the Turkish reformers? It appears that Mustafa Kemal had been highly impressed by the courage and militancy of Turkish women during the Balkan wars and World War I. As Jayawardena notes, Turkish

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women had taken up new avenues of public employment as nurses on the war fronts and had worked in ammunition, food, and textile factories, as well as in banks, hospitals, and the administrative services. Political events spurred their involvement in militant activities, and as early as 1908 a women’s association formed alongside the CUP. The occupation of various parts of Turkey by European troops in 1919 aroused protests in which women joined, and women in Anatolia were part of Kemal’s army, which had launched a war against the invaders. In his speeches in later years, Kemal constantly referred to the role played by Anatolian women in the nationalist struggle. In a speech at Izmir in 1923, he said, “A civilization where one sex is supreme can be condemned, there and then, as crippled. A people which has decided to go forward and progress must realize this as quickly as possible. The failures in our past are due to the fact that we remained passive to the fate of women.” On another occasion, also in 1923, he said, “Our enemies are claiming that Turkey cannot be considered as a civilized nation because this country consists of two separate parts: men and women. Can we close our eyes to one portion of a group, while advancing the other, and still bring progress to the whole group? The road of progress must be trodden by both sexes together, marching arm in arm.”34 This sentiment has parallels with one shared by a number of Turkish writers who stressed the harmful effects the subordination of women had on individuals and the nation. Various stories and essays depicted individual women who suffered from subjugation, children who suffered because of their mother’s ignorance, households that suffered because women could not manage money properly. The solution to these individual and household problems was education for women. Other writings depicted women who descended into abject poverty when their husbands or fathers died. The solution to that particular problem was work for women. Still other stories sought to show that society and progress suffered when women were kept illiterate and subordinated to men.35 Ziya Gökalp in particular linked education and employment of women with the development of the country. One of his poems reads: Women are also human beings, and as human beings They are equally entitled to the basic rights of human beings: education and enlightenment. So long as she does not work, she will remain unenlightened, Which means, the country will suffer. If she does not rise, the country will decline. No progress is complete without her contribution.36 In answer to Kandiyoti’s question in the title of an essay, “Women and the Turkish State: Political Actors or Symbolic Pawns?” one may conclude

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that to the Turkish reformers, the women of Turkey were both participants in the political struggles and symbols of the new Turkey. The Kemalists’ antipathy toward the traditional order became the source of the processes leading to the initiation of the Turkish Enlightenment. Women’s rights and women’s emancipation were integral parts of Turkey’s transformative plan. Ataturk viewed women’s equality to men as part of Turkey’s commitment to Westernization, secularization, and republicanism. National Liberation, Revolution, and Gender in Algeria The French took over Algeria in June 1830. In contrast to their colonial policy in Morocco after 1912 and Tunisia after 1882, the French made an attempt in Algeria to dismantle Islam, its economic infrastructure, and its cultural network of mosques and schools. By the turn of the century, there were upwards of half a million French-speaking settlers in Algeria. By 1930, European competition had ruined most of the old artisan class. Small shopkeepers such as grocers and spice merchants survived, but others suffered severely from the competition of the petits colons. Industrialization in Algeria was given a low priority by Paris during the interwar period. Local development and employment generation were severely hampered, and there was considerable unemployment and male migration. Fierce economic competition, cultural disrespect, and residential segregation characterized the French administration. In this context, many Algerians regarded Islam and the Muslim family law as sanctuaries from French cultural imperialism.37 To many Algerian men, the unveiled woman represented a capitulation to the European and his culture; she was a person who had opened herself up to the prurient stares of the foreigners, a person more vulnerable to rape. The popular reaction to the mission civilisatrice was a return to the land and to religion, the foundations of the old community. Islamic norms were emphasized, the patriarchal family grew in importance, and the protection and seclusion of women were seen by Algerians as increasingly necessary. When the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) was formed, there was no provision for women to enjoy any political or military responsibilities. Nonetheless, military exigencies soon forced the officers of the Armée de Liberation Nationale (ALN) to use some women combatants. Upwards of 10,000 women participated in the Algerian Revolution. The overwhelming majority of those who served in the war were nurses, cooks, and laundresses. 38 But many women played an indispensable role as couriers, and because the French rarely searched them, women were often used to carry bombs. Among the heroines of the Algerian Revolution were Djamila Bouhired (the first woman sentenced to death), Djamila Bouazza, Jacqueline Guerroudj, Zahia Khalfallah, Baya Hocine, and Djoher Akrour. Women

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who fought and did not survive the war of liberation included twenty-yearold Hassiba Ben Bouali, killed in the Casbah, and Djennet Hamidou, who was shot and killed as she tried to escape arrest. She was seventeen. Yamina Abed, who was wounded in battle, suffered amputation of both legs. She was twenty.39 These Algerian women, like the women of Vietnam after them, are the stuff of legends. One emancipatory development during the national liberation struggle was the admittance of unmarried women into the ranks of the FLN and ALN and the emergence by default of voluntary unions, or marriage without family arrangement, presided over by an FLN officer. (This was poignantly depicted in a scene in Gillo Pontecorvo’s brilliant film Battle of Algiers.) Alya Baffoun notes that during this “rather exceptional period of struggle for national liberation,” the marriage of Djamila Bouhired to an “infidel” non-Muslim foreigner, a French lawyer, was easily accepted by her community.40 After independence the September 1962 constitution guaranteed equality between the sexes and granted women the right to vote. It also made Islam the official state religion. Ten women were elected deputies of the new National Assembly and one of them, Fatima Khemisti, drafted the only significant legislation to affect the status of women passed after independence. In this optimistic time, when heroines of the revolution were being hailed throughout the country, the Union Nationale des Femmes Algériennes (UNFA) was formed. Indeed, one consequence of the Algerian Revolution and of women’s role in it was the emergence of the Moudjahidates model of Algerian womanhood. The heroic woman fighter was an inspiration to the 1960s and 1970s generation of Algerians, particularly Algerian university women.41 But another, more patriarchal tendency was at work during and after the Algerian Revolution. One expression of this tendency was the pressure on women fighters during the liberation struggle to get married and thus prevent spurious talk about their behavior. Moreover, despite the incredible sacrifices of Algerian women and although the female militants “acceded to the ranks of subjects of history,” the Algerian Revolution was cast in terms of male exploits, and the heroic female feats did not receive nearly as much attention.42 Following independence, and in a display of authoritarianism, President Ahmed Ben Bella proceeded to ban all political parties; the Federation of the FLN in France, which had advocated a secular state, was dissolved; the new FLN general secretary, Mohammed Khider, purged the radicals— who had insisted on the right of workers to strike—from the union’s leadership. And of women, Khider said: “The way of life of European women is incompatible with our traditions and our culture. . . . We can only live

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by the Islamic morality. European women have no other preoccupations than the twist and Hollywood stars, and don’t even know the name of the president of their republic.”43 In a reversal of the political and cultural atmosphere of the national liberation struggle, exaggerated patriarchal values became hegemonic in independent Algeria. In this context, the marriage of another Algerian heroine, Dalila, to a foreigner was deemed unacceptable. Baffoun reports that Dalila’s brother abducted and confined her “with the approving and silent consent of the enlightened elite and the politically powerful.”44 Thus, notwithstanding the participation of more than 10,000 women in the Algerian Revolution, their future status was already shaped by “the imperative needs of the male revolutionaries to restore Arabic as the primary language, Islam as the religion of the state, Algeria as a fully free and independent nation, and themselves as sovereigns of the family.”45 This is why, pace the optimistic vision of Frantz Fanon, the country’s independence did not signify the emancipation of women. Indeed, the FLN organ, El Moudjahid, opposed the term emancipation (identified with the French colonizers) and preferred Muslim Woman—although Doria Cherifati-Merabtine writes that “in this context [it] had a political rather than a religious meaning.”46 Juliette Minces and Souad Khodja both wrote of the patriarchal forces limiting Algerian women’s public roles, especially in employment. Or, in Marnia Lazreg’s pithy phrase, the message of the new revolutionary state to women was, “You don’t have to work, sisters! This is socialism.”47 The government of Colonel Houari Boumediènne (1965–1978) did little to expand women’s public roles. The Boumediènne government’s policy on demographic growth was predicated on the assumption that a large population is necessary for national power. It was therefore opposed to all forms of birth control unless the mother had already produced at least four children.48 In the 1960s Algerian marriage rates soared. In 1967 some 10 percent of Algerian girls were married at fifteen years of age; at twenty years of age, 73 percent were married. The crude fertility rate was 6.5 children per woman. By the end of the Boumediènne era in December 1978, some 97.5 percent of Algerian women were without paid work. (About 45 percent of Algerian men were unemployed or underemployed.) The UNFA had become the women’s auxiliary of the FLN, devoid of feminist objectives. On the positive side, state-sponsored education had created a generation of Algerian women who became a restive force for progressive social change in Algeria. When the government of Chedli Bendjedid introduced a conservative family code in the early 1980s, educated Algerian women confronted the government, and in the 1990s they bravely stood up to the violent Islamist movement.49

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The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen In November 1967 the National Liberation Front came to power after five years of guerrilla fighting, terminating 128 years of British colonial rule in South Yemen and declaring the birth of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). In June 1969 the revolutionary government took a more radical turn that aimed at “the destruction of the old state apparatus,” the creation of a unified, state-administered legal system, and rapid social transformation. Tribal segmentation and the local autonomy of ruling shaikhs, sultans, and emirs had resulted in a country devoid of a unified national economy, political structure, and legal system. Such a social order was seen by the revolutionaries as an obstacle to economic development and social reform. At the same time, it was clear that development and change required the active participation of women. Kin control of women and the practice of seclusion consequently had to be transformed. In this context the constitution of 1970 outlined the government’s policies toward women, and a new family law was proposed in 1971 and passed in 1974. The PDRY came to be known as the “Cuba of the Middle East.” Quite unlike the Algerian FLN, the National Liberation Front of Yemen described itself as “the vanguard of the Yemen working class,” and its official doctrine was inspired by the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir I. Lenin. Article 7 of the constitution, which described the political basis of the revolution as an “alliance between the working class, the peasants, intelligentsia and petty-bourgeoisie,” went on to add that “soldiers, women, and students are regarded as part of this alliance by virtue of their membership in the productive forces of the people.”50 The constitution recognized women as both “mothers” and “producers,” consequently as forming part of the “working people.” In addition to giving all citizens the right to work and regarding work as “an obligation in the case of all able-bodied citizens,” the constitution called upon women not yet involved in “productive work” to do so. According to the preamble to the family law, the “traditional” or “feudal” family was deemed “incompatible with the principles and programme of the National Democratic Revolution . . . because its old relationships prevent it from playing a positive role in the building up of society.” As Maxine Molyneux explains, the law began by denouncing “the vicious state of affairs which prevails in the family” and proclaimed that “marriage is a contract between a man and a woman who are equal in rights and duties, and is based on mutual understanding and respect.” It established the principle of free-choice marriage, raised the minimum legal age of marriage to sixteen for girls and eighteen for boys, abolished polygamy except in exceptional circumstances such as barrenness or incurable disease, reduced the dower (mahr), stipulated that both spouses must bear the cost of sup-

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porting the family, ended unilateral divorce, and increased divorced women’s rights to custody of their children.51 As in Soviet Russia, family reform was seen as necessary to mobilize women into economic and political activity and to effect economic change and social stability. What was distinctive but also controversial about the process in the PDRY was that improvements in women’s social and legal status involved reforming codes that were derived from Islam and considered to be of divine inspiration. The introduction of the new family law in the PDRY involved challenging both the power of the Muslim clergy and orthodox interpretations of Islam. After 1969 the government sought to curb the institutional and economic base of the traditional clergy and transferred its responsibilities to agencies of the state. Religious education in schools was made the responsibility of lay teachers. Kin, class, and tribal control over women were outlawed and to some degree undermined. Women’s roles changed from sisters, wives, and mothers exclusively to workers, national subjects, and political actors. Such change in the status of women was an integral part of the restructuring of state and society; it was both a reflection of the new regime’s political agenda and the means by which it could establish its authority and carry out its revolution. The Yemeni revolutionaries encouraged women’s entry into the political realm, and women were given the vote in 1970 when universal suffrage was implemented. By 1977 women candidates were competing for electoral office, as well as working in factories, handicraft cooperatives, and local defense militias. Women were drawn into political activity through such organizations as the General Union of Yemeni Women, the party, neighborhood associations, and other mass organizations. In 1977 the women’s union had a membership of 14,296, which included 915 women workers employed in factories and workshops, 528 agricultural workers and members of co-ops and state farms, 253 employees of various government agencies, secondary school and university students, and housewives. The women’s union became especially active in the literacy campaign and in the campaign to gain support for the family law.52 The 1974 passage of the PDRY family law followed extensive debate in what was a very conservative society. Although polygamy was not banned outright, it was restricted to special cases. Men and women had equal rights when it came to divorce, and indeed there was a rise in the number of divorces immediately after the law was passed because it had become easier for women. The family law also required both spouses’ consent to the marriage; set a limit on the dower; stipulated that the cost of running the household must be shared between husband and wife; and favored the mother for custody of the children even if she remarried, although the court had to decide what was in the child’s best interest. A decade after the family law had been passed, a women’s conference held in April 1984 to

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evaluate progress concluded that there were problems in implementation.53 The government, party, and women’s union retained a commitment to integrate Yemeni women into public life. Here is how one activist described it: We cannot speak of liberating women without making them participate in social life to convince them of their role in society. In our constitution we have included a commitment to the principle of women’s liberation. It is women’s right now to work in factories. By encouraging women to work in factories and to go to school we will achieve the right orientation. . . . No text in the laws or constitution discriminates against women. If a woman wants to work in any sphere no one will stop her.54

In fact, not all women were able to enter public life. Notwithstanding some socioeconomic development and expansion of state authority, the PDRY government could not achieve its vision of a literate and productive society and emancipated women citizens. South Yemen remained poor, and there was still a cultural stigma attached to women performing incomegenerating activities outside the home. Disagreements within the party and pressures from surrounding countries forced a change on the PDRY. In 1990 it merged with its northern half, the Republic of Yemen, which was conservative and tribal-dominated. A retreat on the woman question was inevitable. With unification, the women of the south lost many of the legal rights they had gained during the PDRY era. Revolution, Islamization, and Women in Iran The Iranian Revolution against the Shah, which unfolded between spring 1977 and February 1979, was joined by countless women. Like other social groups, their reasons for opposing the Shah were varied: economic deprivation, political repression, identification with Islam. The large street demonstrations included huge contingents of women wearing the chador as a symbol of opposition to Pahlavi bourgeois or Westernized decadence. As in Algeria, the massive participation of women was vital to the success of the insurrection. Many women who wore the chador as a protest symbol did not expect hijab to become mandatory. Thus when the first calls were made in February 1979 to enforce hijab and Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini was quoted as saying that he preferred to see women in hijab, many women were alarmed. Spirited protests and sit-ins were led by middle-class leftist and liberal women, most of them members of political organizations or recently formed women’s associations. Limited support for the women’s protests came from the main political groups. As a result of the women’s protests, the ruling on hijab was rescinded—but only temporarily. With the defeat of the left and liberals in 1980 and their elimination from the politi-

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cal terrain in 1981, the Islamists were able to make veiling compulsory and to enforce it strictly.55 The idea that women had “lost honor” during the Pahlavi era was a widespread one. Anti-Shah oppositionists decried the overly made-up “bourgeois dolls”—television announcers, singers, upper-class women in the professions—of the Pahlavi era. As in Algeria, the Islamists in Iran felt that “genuine Iranian cultural identity” had been distorted by Westernization, or what they called gharbzadegi. The unveiled, publicly visible woman was both a reflection of Western attacks on indigenous culture and the medium by which they were effected. The growing number of educated and employed women frightened and offended men of certain social groups, who came to regard the modern woman as the manifestation of Westernization and imperialist culture and a threat to their own manhood. Islamists projected the image of the noble, militant, and selfless Fatemeh— daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, earlier popularized by the late radical Islamic sociologist Ali Shariati—as the most appropriate model for the new Iranian womanhood.56 It is necessary to point out that in the 1979–1980 period, the women’s movement, then quite dynamic, split: there were pro-Khomeini and antiKhomeini women, and even among Islamist women there were different perspectives on women’s rights issues, including the veil. Moreover, many women were comfortable with the veil because of the prevalence of male harassment of women in Western dress. During the 1960s and 1970s, when I was growing up in Tehran, just waiting for a taxi or shopping downtown entailed major battles with men, who variously leered, touched, made sexual remarks, or cursed at women. Women were fair game, and it is understandable that many would want to withdraw to the protective veil when in public. But the legal imposition of hijab was not about protecting women, and it was certainly not part of any struggle against sexism: it was about negating female sexuality and therefore protecting men. More profoundly, compulsory veiling signaled the (re)definition of gender rules, and the veiled woman came to symbolize the moral and cultural transformation of society. The full implications of the Islamic dress code are spelled out in a booklet titled On the Islamic Hijab by a leading Iranian cleric, Murteza Mutahhari. In the preface by the International Relations Department of the Islamic Propagation Organization, it is argued that Western society “looks at women merely through the windows of sexual passion and regards woman as a little being who just satisfies sexual desires. . . . Therefore, such a way of thinking results in nothing other than the woman becoming a propaganda and commercial commodity in all aspects of Western life, ranging from those in the mass media to streets and shops.” Mutahhari himself writes:

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Such views underpinned the early legislation pertaining to women. The 1979 constitution spelled out the place of women in the ideal Islamic society the new leadership was trying to establish: within the family, through the “precious foundation of motherhood,” rearing committed Muslims. Motherhood and domesticity were described as socially valuable, and the age of marriage for girls was lowered to puberty. Legislation was enacted to alter gender relations and make them as different as possible from gender norms in the West. In particular, the Islamic Republic emphasized the distinctiveness of male and female roles, a preference for the privatization of female roles (although public activity by women was never barred, and they retained the vote), the desirability of sex segregation in public places, and the necessity of modesty in dress and demeanor and in media images. Yet the Iranian Islamists were aware of modern sensibilities. The introduction to the constitution mentioned women’s “active and massive presence in all stages of this great struggle” and states that men and women are equal before the law. But this stated equality was belied by differential treatment before the law, particularly in the area of personal status or family law, based on sharia. In both the family law and the penal code, women and men, and Muslims and non-Muslims, are treated differently. The significance of the woman question to the Islamist revolutionaries and state builders is captured in the following passage from an editorial in Zan-e Rouz, discussed by Afsaneh Najmabadi: Colonialism was fully aware of the sensitive and vital role of woman in the formation of the individual and of human society. They considered her the best tool for subjugation of the nations. . . . In the underdeveloped countries . . . women serve as the unconscious accomplices of the powersthat-be in the destruction of indigenous culture. So long as indigenous culture persists in the personality and thought of people in a society, it is not easy to find a political, military, economic or social presence in society. . . . And woman is the best means of destroying the indigenous culture to the benefit of imperialists. . . . In Islamic countries . . . Islamic belief and culture provide people of these societies with faith and ideals. . . . Woman in these societies is armed with a shield that protects her against the conspiracies aimed at her

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humanity, honor and chastity. This shield verily is her veil. For this reason, in societies like ours, the most immediate and urgent task was seen to be her unveiling, that is, disarming woman in the face of all calamities against her personality and chastity. . . . It is here that we realize the glory and depth of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. This revolution transformed everyone, all personalities, all relations and all values. Woman was transformed in this society so that a revolution could occur [my emphasis].58

Afghanistan: The Saur Revolution and Women’s Rights The Saur Revolution represents an extreme case illustrating the problems of implementing modernizing and socialist reforms in the face of poverty and underdevelopment, precapitalist structures, counterrevolution, and the Cold War. This revolution, and the hostile international environment it faced, had profound implications for the woman question. In April 1978 the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in what came to be called the Saur (April) Revolution and established the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). Soon afterward the DRA introduced a series of rapid reforms to change the political and social structure of Afghan society, including patterns of land tenure and gender relations—and this in one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. The government of President Noor Mohammad Taraki targeted the structures and relations of “tribal-feudalism” and enacted legislation to raise women’s status through changes in family law (including marriage customs) and policies to encourage female education and employment. As in other modernizing and socialist experiments, the woman question constituted an essential part of the political project. The Afghan state was motivated by a modernizing outlook and socialist ideology that linked Afghan backwardness to feudalism, widespread female illiteracy, forced marriages, and the exchange of girls. The leadership resolved that women’s rights to education, employment, mobility, and choice of spouse would be a major objective of the “national democratic revolution.” The model of revolution and of women’s emancipation was Soviet Russia, and the Saur Revolution was considered to belong to the family of revolutions that also included Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and Nicaragua. In addition to redistributing land, canceling peasants’ debts and mortgages, and taking other measures to wrest power from traditional leaders, the government promulgated Decree no. 7, meant to fundamentally change the institution of marriage. A prime concern of the designers of the decree, which also mandated other reforms, was to reduce material indebtedness throughout the country; they further meant to ensure equal rights of women with men. In a speech on November 4, 1978, President Taraki declared: “Through the issuance of Decrees No. 6 and 7, the hard-working peasants

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were freed from bonds of oppressors and money-lenders, ending the sale of girls for good as hereafter nobody would be entitled to sell any girl or woman in this country.”59 The first two articles in Decree no. 7 forbade the exchange of a woman in marriage for cash or kind customarily due from a bridegroom on festive occasions; the third article set an upper limit of 300 afghanis (afs.), the equivalent of $10 at that time, on the mahr. President Taraki explained, We are always taking into consideration and respect the basic principles of Islam. Therefore, we decided that an equivalent of the sum to be paid in advance by the husband to his wife upon the nuptial amounting to ten “dirhams” [traditional ritual payment] according to shariat be converted into local currency which is afs. 300. We also decided that marriageable boys and girls should freely choose their future spouses in line with the rules of shariat.60

The legislation aimed to change marriage customs so as to give young women and men independence from their marriage guardians. Articles 4 to 6 of the decree set the ages of first engagement and marriage at sixteen for women and eighteen for men (in contrast to what happened in the Iranian case). The decree further stipulated that no one could be compelled to marry against his or her will, including widows. This last provision referred to the customary control of a married woman (and the honor she represents) by her husband and his agnates, who retained residual rights in the case of her widowhood. The decree also stipulated that no one who wanted to get married could be prevented from doing so. Along with the promulgation of Decree no. 7, the PDPA government embarked upon an aggressive literacy campaign. This was led by the Democratic Organization of Afghan Women (DOAW), whose function was to educate women, bring them out of seclusion, and initiate social programs. Throughout the countryside, PDPA cadres established literacy classes for men, women, and children in villages. By August 1979 the government had established 600 new schools. The PDPA’s rationale for pursuing the rural literacy campaign with some zeal was that all previous reformers had made literacy a matter of choice; male guardians had chosen not to allow their females to be educated, and thus 98 percent of all Afghan women were illiterate. It was therefore decided not to allow literacy to remain a matter of (men’s) choice, but rather a matter of principle and law.61 This was an audacious program for social change, one aimed at the rapid transformation of a patriarchal society with a decentralized power structure based on tribal and landlord authority. For the DRA, revolutionary change, state building, and women’s rights subsequently went hand in hand. The emphasis on women’s rights on the part of the PDPA reflected (1) its socialist-Marxist ideology; (2) its modernizing and egalitarian outlook; (3)

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its social base and origins—the urban middle class, professionals, and those educated in the United States, the USSR, India, and Europe; and (4) the number and position of women within the PDPA, including the impressive Anahita Ratebzad. The PDPA was attempting to accomplish what reformers and revolutionaries had done in Turkey, Soviet Central Asia, and South Yemen and to carry out what King Amanullah had attempted in the 1920s. But PDPA attempts to change marriage laws, expand literacy, and educate rural girls met with strong opposition. Decrees no. 6 and 7 deeply angered rural tribesmen and threatened the traditional power structure. In the summer of 1978, refugees began pouring into Pakistan, giving as their major reason the forceful implementation of the literacy program among their women. There was also universal resistance to the new marriage regulations, which, coupled with compulsory education for girls, raised the threat of women refusing to submit to patriarchal authority. The attempt to impose a minimum age for marriage, prohibit forced marriage, limit divorce payments, and send girls to school deeply offended what one scholar referred to as the “massive male chauvinism” of Afghan men.62 An Islamist opposition began organizing and conducted several armed actions against the government in the spring of 1979. In July 1979 the CIA began covert operations in support of the uprising. By December 1979 the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that the Soviet army intervened at the behest of the Afghan government. The 1980s saw an internationalized civil conflict and serious setbacks to the DRA’s revolutionary program. The PDPA slowed down its reform program and announced its intention to eliminate illiteracy in cities in seven years and in the provinces in ten. Unlike Soviet Russia, Turkey, or Iran, the Afghan state was not a strong one, able to impose its will through an extensive administrative and military apparatus. As a result, it was far less successful than other revolutionary regimes in carrying out its program—in Afghanistan’s case, land redistribution, literacy, and women’s rights. Nor did twelve years of civil war and a hostile international climate provide conditions propitious for progressive social change. In 1987 the name Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was changed to the Republic of Afghanistan, and the liberation of women took a backseat to national reconciliation. In 1990 the PDPA changed its name to the Homeland Party, or Hizb-e Watan. Similarly, the party made constitutional changes, dropping clauses that expressed the equality of men and women and reinstating Muslim family law. In 1992 the whole experiment collapsed, and the US-supported mujahidin set up an Islamic regime. Their very first act was to make veiling compulsory. The mujahidin movement imploded from within and was eventually defeated and replaced in 1996 by the strangely medieval Taliban, who intensified the mujahidin gender regime.

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In large measure, then, the failure of the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan was linked to its gender dynamics and the DRA’s audacious attempt to enhance the status of women—as well as to international hostility and especially US support for the tribal-Islamist opposition.

Islamist Movements and Family Law Earlier in this chapter, we noted that tensions existed between nationalism and women’s rights in the first decades of the twentieth century, but on the whole, the relationship between feminism and nationalism was compatible and solidaristic. Yet that relationship became strained and marred by mutual suspicion in the latter part of the century. Shifts in the language and objectives of both movements, along with the transition from universalizing modernity to the fragmentation and inward-looking nature of postmodernity, exacerbated the tensions of the earlier period and put second-wave feminism and religio-nationalist movements in the Middle East on a collision course. Second-wave feminism’s objectives of recognition and autonomy seemed to subvert the idea of the nation as an extended family, and its struggles for redistribution through enhanced employment and political participation came to be seen as disruptive of the social order, still dominated by men. Nationalist movements came to be driven less by welfarist and developmentalist goals and more by the assertion of cultural identity and difference, along with the deployment of religious language and symbols. The new religio-cultural face of nationalism and revolution that spread in the latter part of the twentieth century became less consistent with feminism than with patriarchy.63 In their struggles against what they saw as both internal oppression and external colonialism (or, variously, imperialism, Zionism, and Western cultural invasion), the male leaders of religio-nationalist movements expected all members of their community to join or, at least, to support the movements. But women were ambivalent about these movements. And thus feminism’s second wave asserted itself in countries such as Iran, Algeria, Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco—often in direct confrontation with fundamentalism, political Islam, and religio-nationalist trends. The new religio-nationalist projects, many of them imbued with fundamentalist notions, drew on and reinforced concepts of male-female difference. They constructed men as breadwinners and economic providers and women as housewives and mothers who were the symbols of culture and tradition and the carriers of the collective “honor.” When the new movements gained political power, as in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, they formulated rights and obligations in ways that strengthened the masculinity of the public sphere and the femininity of the private sphere.64

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Although one may say that Islam always has been important to nationalism and national identity in the Muslim world, and especially in the Arab region, the “holy warriors” of the late twentieth century wrapped themselves in “the mantle of the Prophet”65 such that other ideologies or master frames—such as socialism or feminism—were rejected as illegitimate and alien. As noted in Chapter 1, the 1980s and 1990s saw the spread of Islamism across the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world. There have been important differences among Islamist movements: some have sought state power or have used violence, whereas others have been satisfied to influence public policies or take part in governance nonviolently. In most cases, however, Islamist movements have been preoccupied with cultural identity and authenticity, which has had implications for women’s autonomy and rights. As was discussed earlier in this chapter, women’s crucial role in the socialization of the next generation makes them symbols of cultural values and traditions, and thus they are expected to behave and dress in prescribed ways. For example, in the 1990s, the Ikhwan Muslemin (Muslim Brotherhood) of Jordan issued the following exhortation to women in its newspaper Al-Ribat, as discussed by Lisa Taraki: This is a vicious, many-sided battle we are waging (against the Jews and Hebrew civilization), and you, my sister, must rise to the occasion. . . . This is a war . . . being waged against a nation (umma)—whose women look up to Khadifa, Aisha, Fatima and Asma as models. . . . My sister, if you avoid the path of God you will contribute to the success of the conspiracy, and you will be an obstacle to the liberation of Palestine. . . . How can God’s victory prevail when women adorn themselves openly and mix with men, and when defiance of God’s law continues day and night? The enemy relies on you, my sister, to strike at this nation from within, as if the stabs we receive from the outside were not enough. We do not presume that you would accept this.66

Islamist women regarded this role as an exalted one, and they gladly assumed it, becoming active participants, though rarely ideologues, in Islamist movements, encouraging heavy veiling and endorsing the full application of sharia.67 Other Muslim women have found such an injunction an onerous burden; they resent restrictions on individuality, mobility, and personal freedoms, and disapprove of orthodox interpretations of the sharia. Such nonconformist women may rebel in various ways; they may reject Islamist movements and may continue to practice their faith in their own way; they may discreetly pursue alternative lifestyles; they may leave the country and settle elsewhere; they may join or form women’s rights organizations. Yet other Muslim women have challenged political Islam through the intellectual and theological project known as “Islamic feminism.”68

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The contention between Islamism and feminism is dramatically illustrated by the case of Algeria. The first wave of the Algerian women’s movement emerged in the period following President Houari Boumediènne’s death in December 1978. This period was marked by a conservative move at women’s expense, in line with a shift away from Algerian socialism and toward a market economy and in response to the growth of political Islam and fundamentalism (intégrisme) in the region, with movements either overtly challenging the authority of governments or calling for the return of Islamic law. When the Ministry of Justice announced the creation of a commission to draft a family code just two months after the president’s death, some 200 university women convened an open meeting at the industrial workers’ union headquarters in Algiers to demand the disclosure of the identity of the members of the commission and to express their concerns and demands. Still strongly identifying with the socialist agenda, they defined themselves as workers rather than as professionals, and they regarded the draft family code as an attempt to placate a growing Islamist tendency by institutionalizing second-class citizenship for women.69 The Bendjedid government was pursuing market reforms in addition to its adoption of conservative family law. Austerity measures combined with political frustration directed at the FLN led to riots in October 1988. The riots in turn ushered in a brief period of political liberalization, which saw the increasing popularity of the Algerian Islamist movement that later called itself the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, or Islamic Salvation Front). Algerian feminists were alarmed by statements from Islamist leaders such as Ali Belhadj, who declared that “the natural place for a woman is at home” and that “the woman is the reproducer of men. She does not produce material goods, but this essential thing that is a Muslim.”70 The new feminist groups were opposed to the electoral reforms that legalized religiousbased parties, such as the FIS, contravening the constitution. The FIS proceeded to condemn the anti-fundamentalist women as “one of the greatest dangers threatening the destiny of Algeria” and brand them “the avantgarde of colonialism and cultural aggression.”71 As it happened, the fundamentalist agenda of the FIS was supported by a segment of the female population, and in April 1989 a demonstration of 100,000 women in favor of Islamism and sex segregation shocked the antifundamentalist women. But this display also spawned a network of antifundamentalist feminist groups, such as the Association pour l’Egalité des Droits entre les Femmes et les Hommes (known as “Egalité”), formed in 1985 by Khalida Messaoudi and Louisa Hanoune and officially recognized in 1989. In this second wave of the Algerian feminist movement, the struggle against fundamentalism took center stage. (See also Chapter 8.)

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The FIS was committed to introducing sharia, which it claimed was superior to Western-style civil codes. Hijab would be introduced, ostensibly to free women from the prying eyes of men. According to one FIS leaflet: “The hijab is a divine obligation for the Muslim woman: It is a simple and modest way to dress, which she has freely chosen.” How something can be an obligation and freely chosen was not explained. Other leaflets claimed that women were under attack from “pernicious Westernization” and that “a woman is above all a mother, a sister, a wife or a daughter.” Even the participation of women in sports was seen as immoral and corrupting. When Hassiba Boulmerka won the 1,500 meter race at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in August 1991, becoming only the second Arab woman ever to receive a major sporting title, she was hailed by the Algerian sports minister, Leila Aslaouni, by other government officials, and by many of her compatriots. However, fundamentalist imams affiliated with the FIS united to pronounce kofr, a public disapproval of her from the nation’s mosques. The object of their disapproval was the fact that Boulmerka had run before the world’s eyes “half-naked”—that is, in regulation running shorts and vest.72 During a strike in 1991 called by the FIS, the government was told to compel women to retire early to make room for unemployed men. “Moderate” Islamists such as Abdallah Jaballah, head of the Nahda (Renaissance) Association, were willing to let women work but pointed out that they could not hold positions of judge or president.73 To the consternation of the political elite, the FIS made major electoral gains during the December 1991 parliamentary elections, and the government moved to annul the elections and ban the FIS. Bendjedid—now reviled by feminists and leftists—was removed in January 1992 and replaced by Mohamed Boudiaf, who opposed not only the fundamentalists but also corruption within the FLN. He was assassinated just five months later. In March of that year, when an Algerian court decided to ban the FIS, the court ruling was read by Judge Ziani, a woman judge who could not have held her position under an FIS government. The banning of the FIS was supported by many Algerian feminists, despite their distaste for the authoritarian government. Launching a second cycle of protests, Algerian feminists held demonstrations against the FIS and the establishment of an Islamic state. They had been alarmed when, during the latter part of the 1980s, the fundamentalists began to bully and attack women who lived alone or were unveiled. It was as if they were anticipating the terrorism that was to be carried out by Islamists in the 1990s. The cancellation of the election results was met with extreme violence, with much of the terror carried out by the Groupe Islamique Armée (GIA, or Armed Islamic Group). Algeria’s feminists were caught between “the devil and the deep blue sea”—le pouvoir et l’intégrisme. Although they

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were highly critical of the patriarchal and authoritarian state that had introduced the family code, they focused their political energies against misogynist and violent intégrisme, which they regarded as the harbinger of a fascistic theocracy. As Messaoudi put it, feminists and democrats rejected “a state based on divine law” and desired “a state based on rights.”74 * * * The influence of fundamentalist movements and political Islam generated polemics surrounding hijab in every Muslim-majority country, and (re)veiling has spread since the 1980s. Fatima Mernissi remarked that “if fundamentalists are calling for the return of the veil, it must be because women have been taking off the veil.”75 Feminist scholars have tackled the conundrum of veiling in different ways. Some emphasize the personal choice and enhanced opportunities for mobility that veiling represents, especially for women from the lower middle class or conservative families. Others stress its link to the appeal of fundamentalism and religious identity among women. Yet others point out that veiling is compulsory in some countries (notably Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran) and that elsewhere one observes social pressures on women to veil and thus achieve “respectability” or “authenticity.” Such social pressures sometimes take the form of harassment and intimidation by self-styled enforcers (males) of correct religious behavior and public morality.76 Polemics on veiling have spread to Europe, with its growing population of Muslim immigrants from Africa and Asia. In postrevolutionary and newly democratic Tunisia, salafists began to appear in public, asserting their right to influence policies and laws and to attend university wearing the all-encompassing niqab. In Egypt, veiling has been expanding since the 1980s, but the appearance of heavily veiled women in postrevolutionary Tunisia was unprecedented—as was the growing assertiveness of the new Islamist movement. All in all, veiling can be regarded as an identity marker (of piety, of tradition, or of a distinct cultural or religious group), or it can be regarded as affiliation with the values and goals of political Islam. Another outgrowth of fundamentalist movements and political Islam has been the contention around Muslim family law (MFL). Following Islamization in Iran after the 1979 revolution, MFL began to be strengthened or introduced across the Muslim world. Holdouts in the 1980s were the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, but that changed with the collapse of the communist bloc. Despite differences in its application across the Muslim world, some common patterns of MFL may be identified.77 Predicated on the principle of patrilineality, it confers privileges and authority to male kin. The highly formal Islamic marriage contract does require the consent of the wife, and in some countries women may insert stipulations into the contract, such as

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the condition that she be permitted to divorce should the husband take a second wife. Marriage, however, remains largely an agreement between two families rather than two individuals with equal rights and obligations. Moreover, marriage gives the husband the right of access to his wife’s body, and marital rape is not recognized. Men may marry up to four wives simultaneously, and only men can divorce unilaterally and without cause. Children acquire citizenship and religious status through their fathers, not their mothers. Fathers or others in the male line are the guardians of children. Muslim women may not marry non-Muslim men.78 Muslim family law also treats women as economic minors and denies them autonomy as economic agents. For example, although Islamic law gives women the right to own and dispose of property, they inherit less property than men do; brothers inherit more than sisters do, and a deceased man’s brothers or uncles have a greater claim on his property than does his widow. The groom offers a mahr to the prospective bride and must provide for her; in turn, he expects obedience and child-bearing. There is no concept of shared matrimonial property, and in the case of divorce the husband is liable only for the promised mahr. (What this means in practice is that unless a divorced woman has her own job and assets, or a rich family to which to return, she can become destitute.) Typically, the mahr is deferred partially or in full until divorce or widowhood. A woman’s right to divorce is restricted, whereas a man has unrestricted rights to divorce. Islamic law allows a wife to leave a marriage if she returns the mahr—known as a khula divorce—but the forfeiture of the mahr can be a disincentive for a woman, especially if she has no income and lacks the financial support of her natal family. Because male kin “maintain” women kin as well as children, the concept of male guardianship has evolved to mean that women are required to obtain the permission of their fathers, husbands, or other male guardians to undertake travel, including business travel, or to start a business. In some countries, certain occupations and professions, notably that of judge, are off-limits to women. Inasmuch as Islamist movements have insisted on application of sharia, the movements have had a profound effect on (re)veiling and on Muslim family law—and thus on (gendered) politics, laws, norms, and discourses. At the time of writing (2012), family law was most conservative in Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, and Jordan. It was most egalitarian in Tunisia and Turkey (as a result of long-standing secular laws) and in Morocco (following the landmark reform of the Moudawana in 2003–2004). The legal status of Algerian women improved with amendments to the family law in 2005, though women’s rights activists insisted that more needed to be done.79 Family law reform has resulted from a variety of factors, including the influence of the UN-sponsored global women’s

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rights agenda, feminist campaigns in specific countries, and government action.

Conclusion The modern history of the Middle East and North Africa has followed that of other regions, with state building, lawmaking, and social and economic development as key features. These projects have been imbued with concepts of gender and notions of masculinity and femininity, with the accompanying norms and laws regarding the rights, roles, and responsibilities of women and men. This chapter has surveyed nationalist movements, revolutions, and Islamist movements as part of gendered political projects connected with the construction of national identity and the building of states. It has shown how in some instances the projects have been compatible with women’s rights, but in other cases they have not. Women in the Middle East have participated in, and been affected by, movements aimed at national or societal emancipation and movements aimed at returning to an idealized traditional golden age. Compromises or agreements made by political elites—to tribes or opposing factions, or to international partners—also matter in the gendered outcomes. Nationalism and feminism, I have argued, were largely solidaristic and compatible in the early twentieth century, when modernization, education, and progress were key goals. When nationalist movements assumed a more religious form in the latter part of the century, the relationship became more contentious. The relationship between revolutions and women’s rights has similarly been vexed, and this chapter has distinguished modernizing or emancipatory revolutions from patriarchal ones that tie women to family roles. Even so, not all revolutionary agendas are successful. Where revolutions result in the emergence of strong, centralized states, as in Turkey, Iran, and Algeria, revolutionaries or state builders are more successful in implementing their vision of the ideal society. But where revolutions occur in underdeveloped areas, states are not strong enough to carry out their program for rapid and radical social change, as was the case in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In all cases, however, gender played a key role in the course of revolution and in the programs of state builders. For “freedom fighters” who are staunchly opposed to modernizing projects, such as the Afghan mujahidin in the 1980s, the Algerian FIS in the 1990s, or the Taliban in the 1990s, the image of the modern woman is anathema. Elsewhere, at a time of economic difficulties, social uncertainties, and confrontations with the West, the image of the traditional woman seems to promise a return to a comforting, stable, and idyllic past; she is

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seen as the repository of old values and ways of life and is linked to a more “genuine” cultural identity. The modern woman is taken to be representative of everything that appears threatening in the new and quickly changing world, of alien cultures and external subterfuge. This perception explains why not all revolutions in the latter half of the twentieth century had favorable outcomes for the status of women. Can we expect the same for the political revolutions that accompanied the Arab Spring? I take up that question in a later chapter. First, I examine another set of change processes—those pertaining to economic development and globalization— to assess their gender dynamics and relationship to women’s citizenship rights.

Notes 1. Molyneux, 1982; see also Molyneux 1986. 2. On the woman question in socialist movements, see Kruks, Rapp, and Young 1989. 3. Jayawardena 1986. 4. Jayawardena 1986, p. 29; and Lewis 1965, p. 105. 5. Moaddel 2005. 6. Fleischman 1999; Weber 2008. 7. See contributions in Karshenas and Moghadam 2006. 8. Sonbol 2003; Esposito and DeLong Bas 2001. 9. Hoodfar 1991, p. 108. 10. See Hatem 1994. 11. SIDA 1974. The information on Tunisia that follows is based on the following sources: UNFPA and Ministry of Planning 1984; UNFT 1987. See also Ben Salem 2010. 12. Data and information from UNFPA and Ministry of Planning 1984; see also UNFT 1987. 13. The Economist, July 8, 1989, p. 48. 14. At a seminar on gender and trade liberalization organized by the Center for Arab Women’s Training and Research in Tunis in May 2006, an official from the Tunisian Ministry of Planning described how the women’s policy agency CREDIF had been formed to conduct policy-oriented research on women in development and provide findings for the ministry’s national development plan. (Author notes.) See also CAWTAR 2006. 15. At a large regional conference in Cairo in March 2000, the NGO ENDA Inter-Arabe distributed a handout entitled “CRENDA: Micro-Credit Programme in the Poor Suburbs of Ettadhamen, Douar Hicher, Mnihla, Omrane Supérieur,” from which this quote is taken. At the time, ENDA Inter-Arabe was an international NGO founded in Tunis in 1990 as an autonomous regional branch of ENDA Third World, based in Dakar, Senegal. The CRENDA microcredit program was launched in 1995. 16. Richards and Waterbury 1990, p. 121. 17. ILO/INSTRAW 1985, p. 16. See also el-Dulaimy 1991. 18. Lorenz 1991. 19. See al-Ali 2007, p. 198; al-Jawaheri 2008.

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20. See Gerner 2007. 21. See Hiltermann 1991. 22. See, inter alia, Augustin 1993; Sharoni 1995; Peteet 1996; Sabbagh 1998; Rubenberg 2001. 23. Peteet 1993; Rubenberg 2001; Hammami and Johnson 1999; Morgan 1998. 24. Kamal 1998, p. 88. 25. Prokop 2003. 26. Ibrahim 1990. 27. The feminist literature on revolution includes Molyneux 1982, 1986; Kruks, Rapp, and Young 1989; Moghadam 1997; Kampwirth 2002; Shayne 2004. 28. Perez Zagorin, cited in Kimmel 1990, p. 6. Kimmel’s synthesis of the structural and purposive dimensions of revolution accords well with the analysis in the present chapter. 29. See Skocpol 1978; Boswell 1989; Foran 1997; Parsa 2000. 30. See contributions in Foran 1997. See also Selbin 2010. 31. On Gökalp, see Abadan-Unat 1981, p. 9. See also Jayawardena 1986. 32. Keyder 1979, p. 9; Jayawardena 1986, p. 34; Kandiyoti 1989, p. 141. 33. Kandiyoti 1989, pp. 141–142. 34. Kili 1991, p. 7. 35. See Dogramaci 1984, esp. chap. 3, “The Status of Women as Reflected in the Works of Namik Kemal, Huseyin Rahmi Gürpinar, Halide Edip Adirar, and Ziya Gökalp.” 36. Ibid., p. 127. 37. Knauss 1987, p. 49. 38. Knauss 1987, p. 75. 39. Cherifati-Merabtine 1995. 40. Baffoun 1982, p. 234. 41. Knauss 1987, p. 98. See also Cherifa Bouatta and Doria CherifatiMerabtine 1994. 42. Bouatta 1995. 43. Quoted in Knauss 1987, p. 99. 44. Baffoun 1982, p. 234. 45. Knauss, 1987, p. xiii. 46. Cherifati-Merabtine 1995, p. 48. 47. Lazreg 1994. See also Minces 1978; Khodja 1982. 48. Knauss 1987, p. 111. 49. See Moghadam 2011. 50. Molyneux 1985. 51. Molyneux 1985, pp. 161–162. 52. Molyneux 1987; Lobban 1998, especially pp. 34–35. 53. Hijab 1988, p. 24. 54. Noor Ba’abad, in Molyneux 1987, p. 142. 55. For early writings on the subject, see Tabari and Yeganeh 1982; Nashat 1983. Compulsory hijab in Iran meant that women had to wear the chador or roopoosh-roosari (a large headscarf covering the hair and neck, with a long coat). 56. See Tohidi 1994; Najmabadi 1994. 57. See Mutahhari 1987 (posthumous). Mutahhari, a major ideologue of the Islamic revolution, was assassinated by a shadowy Islamic group in May 1979. 58. Najmabadi 1994, p. 370. 59. Quoted in Tapper 1984, p. 292. 60. Tapper 1984.

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61. Much of this section is based on interviews I held with DRA officials at their UN offices in 1986, a research trip to Kabul in January–February 1989 and interviews with a number of PDPA officials and members of various governmentaffiliated organizations, and an array of magazines and other documents accumulated during my trip. 62. Hammond 1984, p. 71. 63. This is clear in the contributions in Moghadam 1994. 64. See Paidar 1995. 65. In Roy Mottahedeh’s apt title (Mottahedeh 2000). 66. Lisa Taraki 1995, p. 660. 67. See Afary 2001; Salime 2011. 68. On Islamic feminism, see Moghadam 2002b; Mirza 2006; Badran 2009. 69. Knauss 1987, p. 130. 70. Cited in Mahl (pseudonym), “Women on the Edge of Time,” New Internationalist, no. 270 (1995), http://newint.org/features/1995/08/05/270edge. 71. Bennoune 1995, p. 197. 72. Pat Butcher, “Running on Through the Veil of Tears,” Guardian (UK), January 11, 1992, p. 15. 73. Lazreg 1994, pp. 216–217. 74. Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, p. 142. There is no doubt that the Algerian government carried out its own killings of suspects, real or imagined. But the available evidence suggests that the terror was initially launched by the FIS. Indeed, the roots of Islamist terror may be traced back to Mustafa Bouyali’s Armed Islamic Algerian Movement, which for five years led violent attacks on the representatives of the state in the first half of the 1980s. See Malley 1996, p. 245. For details on the misogyny, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic statements of the FIS, see Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, chaps. 9–11. On the killings, kidnappings, and rapes of women during the 1990s, see also Flanders 1998. Finally, as to whether the FIS was “forced” into the position it took because its victory had been stolen, it is well it compare its response to that of Turkey’s Islamist Refah Party years later. When the Refah Party was declared dissolved by the Turkish military in 1998, the leadership chose a nonviolent and political response: to regroup under another name. In any event, the vicious verbal and physical attacks on women and girls carried out by the FIS and GIA—as well as the killings of journalists, foreigners, and priests and nuns—cannot be justified. 75. Mernissi 1987, p. iv. 76. See contributions in Moghadam 1994; Bennoune 1995; Moghadam 2001. 77. An-Naim 2002. 78. Shehadeh 1998; Welchman 2004. 79. For details, see Moghadam 2011.

3

Globalization and Women’s Economic Citizenship

Economic citizenship may be a contested and ill-defined concept— especially in the era of neoliberal globalization—but it has been conceptualized in a number of scholarly works and is contained in several international conventions. Broadly, social-economic rights constitute the third pillar of the rights of citizenship (the other two being civil rights and political rights) and include an array of social and labor rights, from the right to organize and form trade unions to the rights to education, training, health, and welfare. One of the most basic rights—the right to an occupation of one’s choice—spans civil and social-economic rights in that it entails control over one’s own body for freedom of movement and the ability to offer one’s labor power for various occupations and professions. In a capitalist world, workers are free to move from one job to another, although there are restrictions on labor mobility or migration across international borders. For women, patriarchal constraints have limited their mobility; control over their bodies and mobility by male kin or the state have effectively limited their citizenship rights, and the care work that women do across the world is typically unacknowledged as “work.” In some cultural contexts, including the MENA region, family laws continue to place women under the protection—or control—of male kin and require that they obtain the permission of their fathers or husbands to seek employment, sign a contract, or travel. As discussed in Chapter 2, Muslim family law may limit women’s portion of inherited family wealth, with the result that women are at a disadvantage, compared with males, when they try to start a business. Economic citizenship is closely tied to work and employment. The position of women within the labor market is frequently studied as an empirical measure of women’s status. Access to remunerative work in the formal sector of the economy—as distinct from informal-sector activities— 77

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is regarded by many feminists and researchers in the field of women-indevelopment (WID) and gender-and-development (GAD) as an important indicator of women’s social position and legal status. For those who argue that women’s economic dependence on men is the root cause of their disadvantaged status, the gender composition of the labor force and change in the structure of labor force rewards are key targets. Employed women tend to have greater control over decisionmaking within the family; households also benefit when women control income and spending, and the well-being of children is increasingly linked to female education and income. Many feminists regard women’s involvement in paid employment as a pathway to social and gender consciousness, autonomy, and empowerment. The societal benefits of increased female employment include diminishing fertility rates and a more skilled and competitive human resource base. Investment in women’s education and employment is increasingly understood as integral to building the national human resource base.1 At the same time, much feminist and WID-GAD scholarship has documented the adverse conditions under which many women work, particularly in developing countries with authoritarian regimes and weak labor protection laws. In the 1980s, Marxist and feminist researchers were especially critical of factory employment tied to multinational corporations (MNCs), which was associated with the exploitation of women in export processing zones (EPZs) and free trade zones. Many studies argued that the changing international division of labor was predicated upon the globalization of production and the search for cheap labor, and that the feminization of labor, especially in textiles and electronics, was the latest strategy in that search. Most of the case studies in the literature came from Latin America, especially Mexico, and from Southeast Asia, particularly South Korea and Malaysia. Ester Boserup, whose landmark study Women’s Role in Economic Development launched the field of women-in-development and showed that the process of industrialization marginalized female producers, noted later that economic development had opposite effects on different groups of women: “Whereas young women are drawn into industrial employment and increasing numbers of educated women obtain white-collar jobs in social and other services, the situation of older, uneducated women may deteriorate because the family enterprises in which they work may suffer from competition with the growing modern sector.”2 The Middle East has not figured prominently in the WID-GAD literature, partly because of the difficulty of obtaining reliable data and partly because of a common view that cultural and religious factors influence women’s lives more than do economic factors. That view has held that traditional gender relations are entrenched and women’s economic roles are insignificant, especially in the modern sector. What are some of the patterns, or comparative indicators, that support such a view?

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In 1975 the percentage of economically active females among those of working age in Muslim countries (including those in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East) was less than half of that in nonMuslim countries. Because of their industrialization strategies, Indonesia and Malaysia began to develop relatively large female labor forces, but the Muslim countries of South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa lagged behind. By 1980 the female share of the paid labor force was smaller in MENA countries than in the Southeast Asian newly industrialized countries and, of course, smaller than in the advanced industrialized countries, though not substantially different from that of Latin America or South Asia, with their huge informal sectors. But the ratio of women to men in the labor force was lowest in the Middle East (29 percent) and highest in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, where the ratio was 90 percent. In 1990, women’s share of the labor force in the MENA countries was 18.7 percent, compared with 22 percent in South Asia, 26.3 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 37.8 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, and 41.2 percent in East and Southeast Asia. And as recently as 2010, women’s activity rates were lowest in the MENA countries, when compared with other developing or middleincome regions (see Table 3.1). Such comparative data cannot be contested. But what explains the differences? According to one UN survey, “a key feature of this region [MENA] is the predominance of Islam, an influence that undoubtedly plays a major role in affecting occupational segregation by sex, as well as female labor force participation.”3 Are MENA women solely the victims of cultural and religious constraints, or does political economy, including the vagaries of the global economy, play a role? In this chapter I examine women’s employment patterns and trends and describe the specific characteristics of the paid female

Table 3.1

MENA Women’s Labor Force Participation Rates in Global Perspective, 1980–1985 and 2005–2010a

World Latin America and Caribbean East Asia and Pacific South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa North America Europe and Central Asia MENA

1980–1985

2005–2010

55.2 39.6 69.6 34.9 44.1 61.5 58.5 22.1

56.9 54.6 69.3 36.8 60.9 69.1 61.4 27.9

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: World Bank), http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do?Step=12&id=4&CNO=2, accessed April 2012. Note: a. Percentage of female population aged 15–64.

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labor force in the MENA region. In explaining the employment patterns in terms of the region’s political economy, I show that female employment growth has been constrained by both economic and noneconomic factors— including the oil economy, relatively limited industrialization, and social institutions and norms—that have served to strengthen what I call the patriarchal gender contract and prevent the realization of women’s economic citizenship. To put the current patterns, trends, and policy needs in perspective, I begin with a historical background and overview.

Global Restructuring and the Middle East In the 1960s and 1970s the Middle East was part of the global process of the internationalization of productive and financial capital—the precursor of what in the 1990s came to be known as (economic) globalization. Relationships between countries and regions changed as the old colonial division of labor—whereby the periphery provided raw materials and the core countries provided manufactured goods at very unequal pricing schemes— underwent modification. Increasingly, countries at the periphery of the world system (also known as third world countries, developing countries, or less-developed countries) established an industrial base, sought to diversify their products, and aspired to export manufactured and industrial goods to the core. The term newly industrialized country (NIC) was coined to describe countries making a significant shift in the composition of their labor force, the source of their national product, and the direction of trade. Major changes occurred in the structure of national economies and the labor force. During the 1970s and 1980s trends included the regional and global decrease in the population engaged in agriculture, the growth of the service sector, and a shift toward industrialization across the developing world. Significant factors influencing these trends were the changing structure of world labor markets, involving massive rural and international migration; the relocation of labor-intensive industries from North to South; and the spread of new technologies changing the nature of work. Particularly important for women was the relocation of labor-intensive industries from industrially developed to developing countries in search of cheap labor; the laborers came to be mostly young, unmarried, and inexperienced women. Textiles and garments were the first industries relocated, followed by food processing, electronics, and in some cases pharmaceuticals. In this process, various forms of subcontracting arrangements were made to relocate production or set up subsidiaries with foreign or partly foreign capital. Women’s economic activity rates were now exceeding 20 percent in most regions of the developing world; by the 1980s, about 40 percent of the pop-

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ulation of working-age women was employed in most countries. The highest rates of economic activity for women were found in East Asia (59 percent) and the Soviet Union (60 percent). By 1990, global trends in female employment were the proletarianization of women and their sectoral distribution in services and industry; the globalization of female labor via MNCs and female labor migration; and the feminization of poverty, with the interrelated phenomena of high unemployment rates, a growing informal sector in cities, and the proliferation of female-headed households. MNC relocation initially mainly affected women in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, where the most important areas of activity for foreign investors in the export manufacturing sector were the textile, clothing, and electronics industries. In the 1990s, China saw a growing share of foreign direct investment and MNC activity, combined with high levels of female employment in the export manufacturing sector. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the large MENA countries, notably Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and Algeria, pursued import-substitution industrialization (ISI), in which machinery was imported to run local industries producing consumer goods. This strategy was associated with an economic system characterized by central planning and a large public sector, and it opened up some employment opportunities for women, mainly in the expanded civil service but also in state-run factories or industrial plants in the private sector receiving state support and foreign investment. The increase in oil prices in the early 1970s led to a proliferation of development projects in the OPEC countries, massive intraregional male labor flows from capitalpoor to oil-rich countries, and considerable intraregional investment and development assistance. Capital investments were accompanied by increased male employment and expansion of the proportion of the labor force involved in industry and services. Among those developing MENA countries where female employment grew during the 1970s, especially high increases were reported in Tunisia and South Yemen. In a 1982 special economic report on South Yemen (the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, or PDRY), the World Bank estimated women’s employment at more than 20 percent. Between 1976 and 1984, the number of women working in the public and mixed sectors doubled in South Yemen. Massive intraregional migration of men from the labor-surplus countries of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen to better-paying jobs in the oil-rich states of the region (notably Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, or UAE) also affected female employment patterns. The migratory trend created shortages in the labor markets of the sending countries, resulting in some cases in the agricultural sector’s dependence on female workers. At least one of the laborreceiving countries also experienced a dramatic rise in female labor force

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participation. In Kuwait the number of economically active women doubled between 1970 and 1980, by which time women represented 18.8 percent of total salaried employees.4 In Iran, too, women’s employment grew during the 1970s, in modern factories as well as in the growing public services sector. For relatively well-educated women, jobs in teaching, health, and welfare offered the greatest possibilities. During the period of rapid growth (1960s–1980s), governments instituted social security programs, and protective legislation for working mothers—such as paid maternity leave and workplace nurseries—was in place in all MENA countries. This was part of the social contract between the government and the governed, or what some scholars have called the “authoritarian bargain.” That is, at a time when civil and political rights were limited, the state did provide social rights, at least for those employed in the state sector and their families.5 The degree of occupational choice that women had within the structure of employment depended on the type of industrialization the country was undergoing, the extent of state intervention, the size of the public sector, and the class background of women entering the labor force. In some places, development and state expansion afforded women a wider range of professional work opportunities than was available in many industrialized societies of the West. This breadth of options was particularly striking in Turkey, where in the 1970s the female share of teaching, banking, and medical positions reached one-third, and where one in every five practicing lawyers was female. Ayse Oncü explained that under conditions of rapid economic growth and state expansion, women from the upper reaches of the social hierarchy benefited from the elite recruitment patterns into the most prestigious and highly remunerated professions.6 In the 1980s all Middle Eastern countries were beset by economic and political difficulties, which also affected women’s economic status and employment possibilities. The economic crisis in the Middle East occurred in the context of a worldwide crisis resulting in part from the drop in real prices of primary commodities, including oil. The global oil market became very unstable, leading to fluctuating and declining prices. The near-collapse of prices in 1986 (from $28 per barrel to $7 per barrel) had repercussions throughout the region: austerity measures were introduced, the availability of development aid decreased, and major development projects were reevaluated or suspended. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 raised the price of oil again, but the damage already had been done. Countries of the Middle East, and especially North Africa, experienced low or negative economic growth rates, declining state revenues, and high levels of indebtedness to foreign creditors. In some cases (Egypt, Morocco, Algeria), debts became truly enormous in relation to the country’s eco-

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nomic capacities; Turkey was placed on the World Bank’s list of “severely indebted middle-income countries.” According to the UN, debt as a percentage of GNP for the Middle East and North Africa rose to 70 percent in 1989; during the 1980s the region’s debt increased from $4.4 billion to $118.8 billion. The most active Arab borrowers from the World Bank— Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia—had to impose austerity measures on their populations as a result of World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment policy packages, and several experienced “IMF riots.”7 In the Middle East, as elsewhere, the formal economy could not absorb all the entrants to the labor force, and the urban population grew rapidly because of natural population growth and high in-migration rates. By the 1990s, a combination of declining oil prices, mismanagement of economic resources, and expensive and destructive conflicts led to economic stagnation and indebtedness in many countries. There was less foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Middle East than in any other region in the world economy. This period also saw rising unemployment (including very high rates of women’s unemployment), the expansion of the urban informal sector, and an increase in female-headed households resulting from male migration, divorce, and widowhood. High population growth rates coupled with heavy rural-urban migration concentrated larger numbers of the unemployed in major cities. The livelihood of lower-middle-class and working-class women (and men) was adversely affected by the debt and the inflationary-recessionary cycles plaguing the region, especially in Morocco, Algeria, Iran, and Egypt. In Israel the serious economic plight was alleviated by massive US aid. But elsewhere, tough economic reforms, along with poverty, unemployment, and debt servicing—as well as political repression—served to delegitimize “Western-style” systems and revive questions of cultural identity, including renewed calls for greater control over female mobility. It was in this context of economic failures and political delegitimation that Islamist movements began to present themselves as alternatives.8 For example, by the mid-1980s the Egyptian government grappled with the difficult issue of how to reduce its commitment to job creation in the face of severe recessionary conditions. These conditions included a record level of 15.5 percent overall (open) unemployment, according to the 1986 population census (up from 7 percent in the 1976 census), and poor prospects for either the domestic productive sectors or the oil-rich Arab markets to create significant job opportunities for Egyptian workers. Moreover, high inflation effectively eroded the financial advantage of the whitecollar workforce. The recession fueled social tensions and contributed to the growth of Islamism, with its attendant ideological and social pressures on women. Employed women now felt compelled to appear in hijab at

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work, even though they would claim that the turn to Islamic dress was their own choice.9 During the economic downturn the numbers of job-seeking women increased, as did women’s unemployment, especially during the 1990s. In Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, women’s unemployment rates ranged from 20 to 25 percent; even in the rich oilproducing sheikhdoms of Bahrain and Oman, job-seeking young women experienced rates of unemployment as high as 30 percent.10 Given the low rates of female labor force participation and the small female labor force shares, it is clear that women’s unemployment rates were disproportionately high. During the 1990s, therefore, the MENA countries produced yet another distinctive feature of the female labor force, which I have referred to as the feminization of unemployment.11

Characteristics of the Female Labor Force It is important to establish at the outset the problems entailed in studying women’s economic activities in the Middle East. First, a major problem involves definitions of work and employment: much of what women perform in the urban informal sector or household is not recognized as a contribution to the national income or development but is rather perceived to be a private service to the family. Women’s agricultural work also has tended to be underreported in national accounts. This lack of recognition lies not only with statisticians and policymakers but also with ordinary men and women, who may be motivated by prevailing social norms to refrain from providing an accurate description of women’s productive activities. As a result, census data may report an extremely small economically active female population. A second problem is inconsistency in data collection across government agencies. The census bureau may report a very small female agricultural workforce, but a manpower or labor force survey or an agricultural census will account for women more properly and indicate a much larger female workforce. There is also inconsistency in data collection across countries, making comparisons difficult. Some countries count persons over the age of fifteen as part of the labor force and other countries count persons aged ten and above. A third problem is inconsistency across international data sets: figures for female labor force participation or shares might not agree, and they may also disagree with what national data sets report.12 Finally, labor force data for the oil exporters sometimes blurs the distinction between national and foreign labor. Care must be taken, then, in interpreting labor force figures for women in the MENA region. Here, I draw on data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Global Employment Trends for Women, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report.

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In what follows, I summarize some of the main features of female labor force participation and employment patterns in MENA, emphasizing (1) low participation rates and female labor force shares; (2) occupational distribution; (3) administrative and managerial presence; (4) age, marital, and household headship status; and (5) high rates of unemployment. I then discuss women’s entrepreneurship and examine the special case of the countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). As we saw in Table 3.1, MENA women’s labor force participation rates are low by international standards. The average rate of female participation moved from 22 percent in 1980–1985 to about 28 percent in 2005–2010. The rates of female activity rose during the 1990s, averaging 31 percent by the end of the decade. But that was still low compared to other regions of the developing world, where women’s economic activity rates ranged from 45 to 62 percent. 13 There were variations across the region, as well as in subregions. For example, Algerian women’s labor force participation was about half the rate of Tunisian and Moroccan women until after 2000. MENA countries that reported higher participation rates than the regional average in 2000 were Turkey at 50 percent, Tunisia at 37 percent, and Morocco at 41 percent. 14 Data from the ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Women 2012 show that the female employment-topopulation ratio was much smaller in the Middle East (15.3 percent) and North Africa (19.7 percent) than for the world (47.8 percent). Even South Asia had a higher figure for women (30.4 percent). 15 Turning now to the female share of the total labor force, Table 3.2 shows that female labor force shares rose between 1990 and 2010 in most MENA countries but they declined in Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, and Turkey. The comparison of participation rates and female employment shares across countries should be treated with care because different countries may measure the participation of female members of farming households differently. That can affect the comparison of participation rates across countries, as well as trends in the same country over time, as the share of adults in rural areas declines in the process of development. However, the stark difference between the female participation rates in the MENA region and other parts of the world—as seen in Table 3.1—goes beyond what can be explained by measurement errors. Another feature pertains to occupational distribution. Employed women in MENA tend to be concentrated in professional occupations, mainly in what are known as community, social, and public services. Although the majority of the economically active female population come from the lower-income groups, those with access to paid employment tend to be educated women from the middle classes. In the 1990s, a growing proportion of public sector jobs came to be held by women: 35–39 percent in Turkey, Iran, and Kuwait and 27–31 percent in Syria and Morocco.16 In the new century, these proportions increased. Indeed, the data show a clear

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Table 3.2

Female Share of Total Labor Force in MENA Countries, (in percent) 1990 and 2010

Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey United Arab Emirates West Bank and Gaza Yemen

1990

2010

11.9 17.0 26.5 10.9 14.2 40.4 14.0 26.9 21.1 17.7 25.3 12.9 14.4 10.7 18.4 21.6 26.7 9.7 12.5 18.9

16.9 19.3 24.2 17.9 17.5 47.1 18.0 23.9 25.5 28.0 27.1 17.9 12.4 14.8 15.2 26.9 25.9 14.5 17.8 25.8

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: World Bank), http:// databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do?Step=3&id=4, accessed April 2013.

positive relationship between educational attainment and involvement in paid jobs. Women with a university education are disproportionately represented in the labor force, given that the university-educated population is small compared to the total adult population. Such large proportions of employed women with higher education attainment are found in the West Bank and Gaza (a whopping 44.2 percent), Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran (roughly 30 percent). Many of these women are employed as teachers, and in some countries, they have come to constitute high proportions of the teaching staff at universities. According to data from the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2011, high proportions are found in Tunisia (42 percent), Turkey (40 percent), and Algeria and Qatar (38 percent). At the same time, women have been conspicuously absent from certain occupations, especially in private sales and services and in the sectors of hotels, restaurants, and wholesale and retail trade, at least according to official statistics for wage employment. Lebanon may be an exception to this rule, given its traditionally large private sector and small public sector.17 Apparently, women do not wish to enter sales work and service occupations

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in the private sector. Ghazy Mujahid explained women’s avoidance of such jobs in terms of cultural norms: these occupations have the highest likelihood of indiscriminate contact with outsiders.18 It is also true that the merchant class has been typically male, and the traditional urban markets— bazaars and souks—have been the province of men. Nursing has not been considered an appropriate occupation for women in the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, and these countries have imported nurses from abroad. It is also uncommon for women to work in factories, with the exception of Tunisia and Morocco in the 1990s. According to Laeticia Cairoli, who studied the garment industry in Fez in the 1990s, the industry is overwhelmingly female, although it attracts mainly young, unmarried women.19 Clerical work, however, is common among women in Egypt and Turkey, and in recent years the presence of women clerks has increased in the Islamic Republic of Iran. A third feature is minimal female participation in administrative and managerial sectors of the economy. In the late 1990s the percentages ranged from a low of under 6 percent in Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, and Syria to 10–13 percent in Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey; Morocco, interestingly but inexplicably, reported a far higher female share of administrative and managerial positions. In 2010, Bahrain reported the highest percentage (22 percent), followed distantly by Kuwait, Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and the UAE (10–14 percent); elsewhere in the region, the proportions were 5–9 percent, with Yemen trailing behind with a mere 2 percent female share of total legislators, senior officials, and managers, according to the 2011 Global Gender Gap Report.20 A fourth feature pertains to the age, marital status, and household headship of women in the workforce. A number of quantitative studies have examined factors such as marriage and young children in relation to women and work, finding that they appear to play significant roles in preventing women from participating in the labor market. A study of Turkish working women by Ayse Gunduz-Hosgor and Jeroen Smits found that 38 percent of their sample cited “housework” or “childcare” as the main reason for economic inactivity.21 Young, unmarried women tend to dominate the workforce in Syria and Jordan, but in Egypt a higher proportion of married women can be found. This social reality seems to align with the patriarchal gender contract, as codified in Muslim family law (MFL), which holds that the man is the breadwinner and the wife is the homemaker. The dualincome household characteristic of Western countries and China is rarely found in MENA. A fifth feature is high and persistent unemployment rates among women since the mid-1990s, which I have referred to as the feminization of unemployment. Table 3.3 shows unemployment rates for the female labor force as a whole and for university-educated women, averaged over

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Table 3.3

Average Female Unemployment Rates in Selected MENA Countries, 2000–2010

Algeria Iran Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Syria Tunisia Turkey United Arab Emirates West Bank and Gaza

Total Female Unemployment

For University Educated

19.5 18.2 1.8 8.9 4.2 11.2 20.2 16.7 10.4 7.2 20.6

29.6 23.5 1.5 — — 33.3 31.2 26.6 11.7 9.7 34.7

Source: Based on World Bank, World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: World Bank).

2000–2010. As can be seen, the unemployment rates for women are very high, especially among women with university education (who, as noted, also tend to predominate in the paid labor force). The likelihood of being unemployed is considerably higher among women with university education than among those with lower educational attainments. Unemployment among college-educated women seems to be greater because their economic activity rate is higher than that of women with secondary or primary education. The relationship between education and employment has been widely discussed in the literature. Niels Spierings and Jeroen Smits show that a positive correlation exists between higher education and female labor force participation in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia (although they identify other contextual factors that shape female labor supply as well).22 Nevertheless, women with higher education attainment appear to face obstacles and barriers in the workforce that their educated male counterparts do not, such as a marginal position in some professions and higher unemployment rates. Class and gender issues are visible and salient in the data and information on labor force participation, employment, and unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa. Entrepreneurship: Travails of Female Self-Employment and Business Ownership Since the 1990s, an emphasis on the promotion of entrepreneurship has dominated policy dialogues, in part to alleviate poverty and generate employment in developing countries and in part to align with the shift from

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state-led to private sector–led development and growth. In the new century, women’s entrepreneurship came to be prioritized by international policymakers as well as many advocacy organizations. Programs and policies proposed by such organizations to promote women’s entrepreneurship have several objectives, such as alleviating poverty, increasing women’s contribution to market production, securing gender equity, and contributing to domestic economic growth. In this context, microfinance institutions mainly targeting poor women have proliferated throughout the developing world, as have programs to support women-owned businesses. Along with the expansion of female entrepreneurship, research and debates have addressed the efficacy of these programs and their role in increasing women’s income levels and control over income, although not all studies agree that microcredit is always the answer to women’s poverty or exclusion.23 It is important to distinguish between subsistence-driven microenterprises and entrepreneurship by “enterprising women” that may generate employment and revenue. Research indicates that female entrepreneurs in developing countries are confronted by a number of barriers that affect their access to markets and limit their capacity to work independently. Although male entrepreneurs, self-employed (own account) workers, or owners of small enterprises also face obstacles, women appear to be subjected to more serious constraints, including institutional and legal barriers that may originate in the social or cultural environment. Studies of MENA have suggested that gaining the approval of the family, community, and neighbors may be crucial to the success of the woman entrepreneur. Although the social barriers to female entry into the world of business are slowly declining in their severity, obstacles remain, and they include lack of credit availability and weak social networks. The literature on women and entrepreneurship suggests that, given the existence of a male-dominated business environment, women need to acquire more assets through their social networks and connections, using their social networks as “social capital”—the latter referring to the resources that are derived from people’s sociocultural networks and personal ties, which may be both formal and informal. In terms of the gender dynamics of entrepreneurship, both “masculine” and “feminine” attributes are present and indeed needed, as Nalam Yetim argued. That is, “masculine rationality”—leadership, risk taking, and initiative—is combined with qualities associated with women, notably communicating, establishing social networks, developing relations of trust, and sharing. For many women, the social networks begin with family, relatives, and community networks (or what Mark Granovetter called “strong ties”), and thus access to family wealth or community-based revolving credit associations could make a difference in their ability to set up a business. For middle-class, professional women, the main sources of social capital are extended professional connections, based on their relationships with colleagues or membership in

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professional associations (what Granovetter famously called “the strength of weak ties”).24 It may be the case that working-class and poor women, who are excluded from professional networks and ties and also may be situated in more patriarchal contexts, would have to rely more on the support of family, friends, and community. In the absence of professional ties and equal rights to family inheritance, the support of government agencies becomes especially critical for such women. Studies commissioned by Arab economic institutes—the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran, and Turkey (ERF) and the Center for Arab Women’s Training and Research (CAWTAR)—offer revealing insights into female entrepreneurship in the region. The ERF Research Program for Promoting Competitiveness in the Micro and Small Enterprise Sector in MENA was conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey between 2001 and 2005. Among the findings were that women entrepreneurs’ success was strongly related to the existence of several factors: access to funding; tailored, focused, and specialized education and training programs; the provision of nonfinancial services; conducive legal and regulatory systems; the existence of women’s organizations; strong business and industry networks; and overall gender awareness among policymakers and bankers. A set of papers was subsequently commissioned by CAWTAR to focus on the business environment while also providing profiles of both the women entrepreneurs and the enterprises, and these papers were included in a compendium prepared for a June 2012 seminar.25 Some of the findings are instructive. In Lebanon’s free market economic system, a local culture of entrepreneurship both small scale and large prevailed. The institutional-legal framework for small enterprises was formally one of gender equality manifested in free market policies and equality in entrepreneurship-related provisions and tax regulations. Nonetheless, women’s economic participation tended to be limited, characterized by gendered career choices, limited technical skills, and early exit from the labor force at marriage. In this context, enterprises led by women have developed less favorably than those led by men. A sample survey of nearly 3,000 micro- and small enterprises (8 percent of them led by women) showed that those run by women were mostly crowded together in the trade sector, tended to be very small, and experienced tougher competition than men’s businesses. Their profitability rate was two-thirds that of men’s. Women made very little use of business support services and also had more difficulty with taxes and tax administration and with customs duties. In Turkey, the majority of women entrepreneurs (76.7 percent) reported that they were empowered by managing their own business; that was especially true for the larger enterprises. Indeed, the percentage of women experiencing empowerment increased with the size of their enterprise. Fully 98 percent of the women entrepreneurs who managed

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or owned enterprises employing twenty to forty-nine persons felt that their work had an empowering effect on their status; the ratio fell to 67 percent among the sole proprietors. The study also showed that a relatively high percentage of women (46.9 percent) had access to daycare centers while raising their children. That was important, given that female entrepreneurs in Turkey were more likely to be older, married women owning very small enterprises. There were few female entrepreneurs in such fields as manufacturing and finance. In Egypt, a study found that micro-enterprises were the main kinds of businesses owned by women, who tended to live in rural areas and be in the forty-plus age group. The fact that 25 percent of female entrepreneurs (as opposed to less than 2 percent of male entrepreneurs) were either widowed or divorced could be indicative of the circumstances under which these women had resorted to self-employment, namely, that they were the main or sole provider for themselves and their children. As for constraints, the Egyptian women reported that they emanated largely from the family. By contrast, in Morocco, the majority (36.8 percent) were aged thirty to forty, were generally more educated, and ran small and medium-size businesses on rented premises. The women reported that the greatest constraints on their business activity emanated not from their families but from their communities. Training is an important factor in determining the productivity of labor and acts as a complement to education. The ERF and CAWTAR studies on entrepreneurship found that few owners of small businesses, whether male or female, had vocational or technical education. A significantly higher portion of male entrepreneurs, however, had received training related to the economic activity they pursued: in Egypt the figure was 32 percent for men and 10 percent for women. Compared to entrepreneurs in rural areas, urban entrepreneurs received more training, but on the whole women received considerably less than men. Women with larger enterprises did tend to take advantage of training services more often than men. In general, the larger the enterprise capital, the higher the level of training received, but again gender differences persist. Finally, the studies confirmed that more training seemed to be provided and received in manufacturing enterprises, as compared with those in the services or commerce sectors, where most women-run enterprises were found. Indeed, the studies found that female entrepreneurs were sectorally crowded in trade and that female participation in the services sector was less diversified than was the case for men. A minority of women entrepreneurs established enterprises providing maintenance and repair services for small appliances. These latter enterprises were more capital intensive than the rest, unlike most services provided by women. Across all sectors, most female entrepreneurs rented their premises instead of owning them, and

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almost none received business services.26 Despite a policy environment ostensibly favoring entrepreneurship, women lacked the necessary capital, training, and services, especially in the small business sector. The Case of the Oil-Rich Gulf Countries In the GCC countries, a common pattern is that almost the entire female labor force is concentrated in the public sector. Female labor force participation data show relatively high rates for some GCC countries: 43–50 percent in Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE. (Saudi Arabia is much lower, at 22 percent.) That may be because non-nationals are counted or because of the conflation of the female activity rate and the female share of public sector and civil service employment.27 Female employment in the state sector—typically in education and healthcare—ranges widely, from just under 50 percent in Kuwait and Bahrain to just over 30 percent in Qatar and Oman to a low of 16 percent in Saudi Arabia. Assuming that female nationals in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain form a larger proportion of the native-born workforce than is the case in other MENA countries (46 percent, 36 percent, and 33 percent, respectively), what might explain the variation? Higher-education enrollment and attainment might account for part of it (51 percent gross female enrollment at the university level in Bahrain, though far less in Kuwait and Qatar), but the high wages and excellent work conditions in the public sector—coupled with the presence of migrant workers to care for the household, children, and the elderly—may be the incentives that draw the female nationals to the employment sector. Indeed, Nora Ann Colton has stated that in Kuwait, on average, there are two domestic workers per home;28 however, the presence of domestic servants is not a luxury enjoyed by all professional women across MENA. In recent years, GCC governments have sought to disaggregate nationals and non-nationals. Because migrants take jobs in the private sector, which hires much more labor than the public sector, they make up a larger share of the labor force than nationals. (The public sector is reserved for citizens.) Data for 2008, for example, reveal that in Bahrain, migrants constituted nearly 77 percent of the total labor force, whereas 23 percent of workers were native-born; in Oman the figures were 74.6 percent and 26 percent, respectively; in Qatar, fully 94 percent versus 6 percent; and in Saudi Arabia, 50.6 percent and 49.4 percent. In those countries, the vast majority of labor migrants are men, and their labor force shares are higher than those of native men everywhere but Saudi Arabia. With respect to women, however, female nationals outnumber female labor migrants. In Kuwait in 2008, female nationals constituted 46 percent of the native-born labor force, whereas female migrants comprised just 23 percent of the total

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migrant labor force; in Bahrain the figures were 33 percent female share of the native-born labor force and 17 percent female labor migrant share of the total foreign labor force; and in Qatar the respective figures were 36 percent female nationals versus 8 percent female migrants. Only in Saudi Arabia were the figures for native-born and migrant women workers relatively close, as well as low: 16 percent and 14 percent, respectively.29 At the same time, GCC countries follow the pattern I identified earlier as the feminization of unemployment. In 2010–2011, female unemployment rates in Saudi Arabia and Qatar were four to six times as high as those for males. They were highest in Bahrain: according to the World Bank, 34 percent of women could not find jobs, compared to 7 percent of men. Martin Baldwin-Edwards calculated the unemployment rate of Saudi women at nearly 27 percent in 2008. Youth unemployment rates were especially striking. Even though the total unemployment rate for Saudi nationals was only 10 percent, for males aged twenty to twenty-four it was considerably higher, at nearly 30 percent. For women of the same age group, unemployment was a whopping 72 percent, and for women aged twenty-five to twenty-nine, fully 41.6 percent. There is anecdotal evidence of unemployment among nursing graduates in Saudi Arabia.30 Thus, in at least three of the GCC countries—Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain—it is typical to find high unemployment of female graduates. Only in Kuwait are unemployment rates low (under 5 percent, according to the World Bank), but women’s unemployment is still higher than men’s.

Explanations: Oil, Industrialization, and Female Proletarianization MENA women’s employment levels have risen, but, as noted, they remain low in relation to patterns in other regions. What accounts for the persistently low rates of female labor force participation in the region? Why has women’s labor incorporation been so weak in the MENA region? What are the main factors affecting female labor supply and demand? As I noted in Chapter 1, various studies have focused on the role played by Islam or culture or the rentier state.31 These studies have a number of shortcomings: they seek single-variable explanations, work entirely with aggregate data, and do not recognize variations and therefore cannot explain differentiation, much less evolution and change. Interestingly, they use similar statistical tools but come up with very different findings. In this section I examine both economic and noneconomic factors affecting women’s labor force activity—the oil economy and patterns of industrialization on the one hand and institutional barriers in the form of legal and policy frameworks on the other. In Chapter 1, I discussed the

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social-structural diversity of the Middle East, which has implications for gender relations generally and for women’s roles and status more specifically. I now examine the political economy of the region and its implications for women’s employment. In particular, I try to show the connection between patterns of industrialization and patterns of female employment. It may be helpful to begin with a typology of the region, which identifies three types of economies: • Oil economies poor in other resources, including population (GCC countries plus Libya). These states have much oil and little of anything else, including people. These are the “rentier” states par excellence, which have remained almost entirely dependent upon oil and overseas investments. The GCC countries in particular are also highly dependent on foreign labor, predominantly male, but they also employ female labor for domestic work and some professional service work. • Mixed oil economies (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria). The main features that they share are large oil exports, a substantial population, other natural resources, and the capacity to create industrial and agricultural sectors that could be sustainable over the long run. However, even in these countries manufacturing export capacity varies greatly, from less than 1 percent of all exports in Iraq to 16 percent in Syria and 29 percent in Egypt. • Non-oil economies (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey) and the agro-poor (Sudan and Yemen). The first set of countries has limited natural resources and thus has concentrated on investing in human capital and exporting skill-intensive manufactures. Like the mixed oil economies, they also have relatively good agricultural land or potential and a long experience with industrial production. Sudan and Yemen are the poorest countries of the region: for them, a strong focus on sustainable agriculture might also lead to industrial development supporting a primarily agricultural economy.32 In most cases, obstacles to the kind of industrialization that marked the success of South Korea and China include poor governance structures and periodic political or civil conflicts. MENA has been unable to develop a regional economic cooperation body—akin to, for example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—although the Gulf Cooperation Council does coordinate finance, trade, and migration of workers across the subregion. The MENA region is a late industrializer. Concerted industrialization began in Latin America and Southeast Asia earlier than it did in the Mid-

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dle East. In the case of South Korea, first Japan and then the United States played a role in expanding agricultural and industrial production as well as education. In Brazil and Mexico, foreign investment played an important role in propelling industrialization, although import-substitution industrialization remained the main development strategy. In the early 1960s, Southeast Asian countries embarked upon a state-directed export industrialization strategy that, along with the rapid expansion of world trade in the 1960s, contributed to their dramatic economic growth. In the Caribbean, where plantation agriculture and the demands of colonialism had already created a supply of female labor, foreign investment relied on female labor for export manufacturing. The pattern was different in the Middle East. The industrialization drive gained momentum when revolutionary regimes took over in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria and the Shah of Iran decided to divert oil revenues to finance industrialization, and followed a classic pattern of importsubstitution industrialization.33 How does this relate to female employment? Those countries rich in oil and poor in other resources (the first category) chose an industrial strategy based on petroleum products and petrochemicals. As I have argued since the early 1990s, a strategy relying on revenues from oil and gas, which is heavily capital-intensive and minimizes the use of labor, is not conducive to expanded female employment. The industrialization of the other MENA countries followed the typical ISI pattern, although Algeria, Iran, and Iraq remained dependent on oil revenues for foreign exchange and to finance imports and development projects. In the Middle East, unlike in Latin America, ISI did not evolve into manufacturing for export. Because of oil revenues, governments chose to extend the import-substitution process, moving into capital-intensive sectors involving sophisticated technology. For the OPEC countries in MENA, foreign exchange from oil revenues constituted the accumulation of capital, and in both the oil and mixed oil economies, the contribution of petroleum to the national income was such as to make the apparent share of other sectors appear insignificant. Oil revenues certainly were used for domestic investment purposes, and an industrial labor force in the manufacturing sector was also created. But investment in iron and steel plants, petrochemicals, car assembly plants, and similar industries turned out to be not only costly and inefficient but also not especially conducive to increased female employment.34 There is a long-standing literature on the economic and political effects of the “rentier state,” but less has been written about its gender dynamics.35 When a state depends on “rents” (state-owned oil, minerals, tourism, or waterways), it accrues vast wealth without needing to rely on income taxes. The implications are both economic, in that diversification is forestalled, and political, in that the state is less accountable to its citizenry. In MENA, oil wealth did finance economic development (including infrastructural

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development and state-owned industries), but in a lopsided fashion that also distorted the labor force. When I was researching the subject in the early 1990s, it seemed fair to conclude that across MENA, one effect of the oil economy was that women had been locked into a patriarchal family unit. If oil-based growth and capital-intensive production did not lead to a significant demand for female labor, another factor in the relatively low levels of female employment during the oil-boom era pertained to the high wages that accrued to workers in the region. An analysis of wage trends by economist Massoud Karshenas showed that workers’ wages were higher in most of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa than they were in Asian countries such as Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia. Higher wages earned by men served to limit the supply of job-seeking women during the oil-boom years. This reinforced what I have called the patriarchal gender contract—the implicit and often explicit agreement that men are the breadwinners and are responsible for financially maintaining wives, children, and elderly parents, and that women are wives, homemakers, mothers, and caregivers. The patriarchal gender contract has also justified men’s domination within the public sphere of markets and the state and women’s concentration in the private sphere of the family.36 Eventually, the non-oil economies of Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Jordan turned to an export-oriented growth strategy in manufacturing, notably in textiles, garments, and processed food. Turkey’s shift from ISI to export-led growth followed the 1980 military coup. By 1990, its manufactured exports constituted 68 percent of total exports, and in 2000 that figure grew to 81 percent. Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia similarly expanded their manufacturing sectors.37 Egypt under Sadat tried to follow the Turkish model and liberalize its economic system, attract foreign direct investment, and promote industrial exports, but was less successful. Compared to other regions of the world economy, the Middle East received relatively low levels of foreign direct investment (FDI). Despite the role played by petrodollars in global finance, the Arab world and Iran remained comparatively cut off from financial globalization, for better or for worse. (In retrospect, it was for the better, given the financial crises in Asia, Russia, and Latin America in the late 1990s and into the new century, and the 2008 global financial crisis.) Considering just the Arab region, the share of total FDI barely came to 1 percent over the period 1976–1998, with a steady downward trend, as was noted in the 2002 Arab Human Development Report. Along with the factors mentioned above (the oil economy and high wages), low FDI served to limit female proletarianization and overall participation in paid employment. The high concentrations of female labor in MNCs characteristic of Southeast Asian and some Latin American countries were not found in the Middle East, partly because export-oriented industrialization was not pursued by all the countries of the

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region and partly because of reliance on revenue and foreign exchange from oil exports. Robert Mabro wrote that Iran probably would have embarked upon an export-oriented strategy if the 1979 revolution and the war with Iraq had not arrested the process of industrial development. Indeed, in Iran a world-market factory, commencing operations in 1974 with US and West German capital investment, produced shoes, leather goods, textiles, and garments. Although at the time most of the workers were male, one can reasonably speculate that female labor would have been drawn into factory work in Iran, had the Islamic revolution and shift in economic strategy not taken place. What occurred instead was a precipitous decline in female industrial employment in the years immediately following the 1979 revolution and the stagnation in overall female employment in the Islamic Republic.38 In the twenty-first century, manufacturing exports increased across a number of MENA countries. In 2009, Turkey’s manufactured exports were 94 percent of all its exports, and the figures for other countries were Israel at 82 percent, followed by Tunisia at 40.5 percent, Lebanon at 37.5 percent, Jordan and Morocco at 32 percent, and Egypt at 29 percent.39 In 2009, the average manufacturing value added (MVA) was higher in Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt than in the developing world (excluding China). Due to its late start, however, industry in MENA countries failed to make progress comparable to that achieved in India, Brazil, South Korea, or China. No MENA country became part of the group known as the newly industrialized countries (NICs) or the most recent emerging economic powerhouses—Brazil, Russia, India, and China, known collectively as BRIC—although Turkey did gradually advance in its industrial development. Moreover, the path taken by MENA countries in the past shaped both the supply of female labor and the demand for women workers. Reliance on oil exports, capital-intensive ISI rather than manufacturing for export, relatively little foreign direct investment, and high wages for male workers meant less female proletarianization and activity in the productive sectors. This reality also helps explain the low economic activity rates of women from working-class families. Historical data show that East and Southeast Asian countries had considerably more female participation in manufacturing than was the case in MENA (except for Morocco and Tunisia). From a world-system perspective, because the region has functioned as a source of oil and petrodollars, international capital and Middle East states alike have not aggressively pursued foreign investment in the industries likely to enhance female employment. To summarize my argument thus far: although many observers have attributed MENA women’s marginal role in the labor force to religious or cultural factors, I have long argued that the oil economy plays a key role. It does so in at least three ways. First, the oil sector is male-intensive and capital-intensive. It employs relatively few workers overall, but they are

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traditionally male. Second, a state’s receipt of oil revenues from export softens the incentive to diversify the economy and open it up to labor-intensive, export-led manufacturing that favors female employment (of the kind that has been characteristic of East and Southeast Asian economies). Third, oil revenues enable high wages for male workers; at the household level, that attenuates the need for women to seek employment. Thus in my early research, I contrasted Iran and Algeria with Tunisia and Morocco, showing how the countries in the region with the largest oil sectors or highest oil revenues had a far smaller female share of paid employment (whether professional or manufacturing) than the non-oil economies. The oil-rich Gulf countries, in particular, imported women workers from the Philippines and elsewhere for work in hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and shops. But what of non-oil economies? Why is the level of female paid employment low in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria? I offer two explanations. First, the concept of a regional oil economy is a salient one, as made by a number of scholars. For although there are differences among MENA countries in terms of economic structure and natural resource endowments, labor and capital flows across the region—especially during the 1970s—constituted a more or less integrated regional oil economy. High wages accrued to male workers in non-oil economies, in part due to their ability to migrate to the oil-rich countries for employment and send back remittances. The second reason for the difference between MENA and other regions, I argue, is noneconomic, and may be summarized as a set of social institutions and norms that act as barriers to female labor supply and demand. They include what I referred to earlier as the patriarchal gender contract— the social norm of men as breadwinners and women as wives and mothers. This norm is inscribed in Muslim family law, which I identify as a distinctive institutional obstacle to the growth of female labor supply and demand and to female mobility. I examined MFL in some detail at the end of Chapter 2, but it is worth highlighting the idea that by codifying male responsibility for the maintenance of wives, female kin, and children, MFL reinforces female financial dependence in the household. Some of the associated practices are the mahr and, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the ujrat-ul-methl, or the concept of wages for housework and childcare in the event of divorce. (See also Chapter 6 for details on Iran.) Although much research has uncovered the gap between the law and the lived reality, there does seem to be a connection between the prevalence of MFL and the historically low rates of female labor force participation and involvement in paid employment in MENA. Provisions regarding obedience, maintenance, and inheritance imply that wives are economic dependents. For example, women are required to obtain the permission of their fathers, husbands, or other male guardians to undertake travel, including business travel. Although wives—at least those who are educated and polit-

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ically aware—may stipulate the condition that they are allowed to work in their marriage contracts, many wives make no such stipulations, and courts have been known to side with the husband when the issue is contested. 40 Traditional gender norms codified in MFL may discourage the adoption of policies and arrangements favorable to broad-based maternal employment, such as paid maternity leaves and childcare centers. Muslim family law has other economic implications. The unequal inheritance aspect compromises women’s economic independence but is a sensitive issue; it is seen on one level as a divine imperative revealed in the Quran and on another level as an important part of the patriarchal gender contract whereby women are provided for by their fathers, husbands, or brothers. Sons inherit twice as much as daughters, but they are also expected to look after their parents in old age. Polygamy is not practiced widely in MENA, but it does occur, along with divorce. A deceased man’s inheritance and his pension are divided among his widows, his children, and any other relatives that he may have been supporting. As a result, many widows receive insignificant pensions. Even though Islamic norms and some laws require that fathers and husbands financially support their daughters and wives, it is also the case that divorced, widowed, or abandoned women without access to jobs or a steady source of income, especially among the low-income social groups, are often left in a state of impoverishment. Indeed, for low-income women, being divorced can mean loss of children and home and a life of destitution. As in other parts of the world, MENA women’s formal rights of citizenship are based on two pillars: international treaties and norms and national legislation, including constitutions, family laws, and labor laws. As Table 1.2 makes clear, governments have signed a number of key international instruments pertaining to women’s participation and rights. However, such instruments are often weakly enforced, or they are rendered moot by virtue of their conflict with some national legislation or interpretation of sharia. Similarly, the labor laws that signify women as workers with certain rights are contradicted by Muslim family law that places women under the authority of male kin and deny women equal access to family wealth. The sociologist and theorist T. H. Marshall identified the “right to work at an occupation of one’s choice” as a key civil right, won by workers in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Later, historian Alice Kessler-Harris underscored this right as central to women’s search for equity and economic citizenship.41 Yet even though the right to an occupation of one’s choice is enshrined in the UN’s International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), it is not present in all MENA countries. In Saudi Arabia, national legal frameworks do not give women the unqualified right to work, women require the written permission of a spouse or male kin to travel, and they do not have the right to drive.

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Throughout the GCC, migrant women from across Asia are brought in to fill jobs that local women cannot or will not do: nannies, nurses, and restaurant and hotel employees. Strict application of MFL impedes women’s spatial and occupational mobility. As Mounira Charrad explained in her historical study of states, women’s rights, and kin-based solidarities in postindependence Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, patriarchal family law reflected very real social and political conditions: it was founded on the strength of kin-based relations. Even where MFL has been reformed, a cultural lag remains, and conservative social norms may prevent women from seeking paid work outside the home. The retention of conservative forms of MFL also has to do with the power of Islamist movements and the machinations of neopatriarchal states, as I discussed in Chapter 2. But it is important to regard patriarchal family laws as anachronisms, given the growth of modern middle classes, along with an expanding population of urban, educated, and employed women who are increasingly responsible for family welfare. From this population have come the women’s rights groups that call for family law reform and its transformation from patriarchal to egalitarian. (See the discussion of women’s movements and organizations in Chapter 8.) Reform is essential for the realization of women’s civil, political, and social-economic rights of citizenship.

Toward Women’s Economic Citizenship In the framework set forth by Marshall, social rights are those connected to education, training, a decent standard of living, and good work conditions. They refer to the gains made by labor movements in the early part of the twentieth century and their codification in the labor laws and social policies of welfare states, particularly regarding health, education, vocational training, and social insurance. As Marshall stated: “By the social element I mean the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society.”42 In Marshall’s historical analysis, social rights followed the civil and political rights established in the course of democratic revolutions and struggles in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A summary of the civil, political, and social rights of citizenship per Marshall, with some minor adjustments, is presented in Table 3.4. International standards and norms regarding social-economic rights can be found in the ICESCR, which recognizes the following rights: a freely chosen job; equitable and equal wages for work of equal value; dignified working and living conditions for employees and their families; profes-

Globalization and Women’s Economic Citizenship Table 3.4

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Civil, Political, and Social Rights of Citizenship: A Summary Illustration

Civil Rights Right to contract Equal treatment under the law Freedom of expression Freedom of religion Right to privacy Control over one’s body Choice of residence Choice of occupation

Political Rights Right to vote Right to run and hold office Right to form or join a political party or trade union Right to engage in fundraising Nationality rights Refugee and contract worker rights Minority rights Dissident rights

Social Rights Health services Family allowances Primary and secondary schooling Higher education Vocational education Compensation rights Social insurance Paid maternity leave and subsidized quality childcare

Sources: Adapted from T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950); and Thomas Janoski, Citizenship and Civil Society: A Framework of Rights and Obligations in Liberal, Traditional, and Social Democratic Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

sional training; equal opportunities for promotion; protection for families, especially for children; supports for working mothers (maternity protection); and protection of boys, girls, and teenagers against economic exploitation. In addition, social-economic rights can be found in conventions and declarations promoted by the International Labour Organization (ILO), notably the four core labor standards defined in eight conventions, which call for freedom of association and the prohibition of child labor, forced labor, and discrimination in employment.43 Women’s economic citizenship and social rights are defined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action, and the Charter of Women Workers Rights of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).44 They are also inscribed in the ILO conventions pertaining to maternity protection, nondiscrimination, and equal remuneration.45 Many countries have adopted these standards and inscribed them in national laws. Thus, women workers may enjoy rights to paid maternity leave, workplace nurseries where they can take nursing breaks to feed their babies, subsidized childcare facilities in the community, and a retirement age that is several years earlier than that of men. Women also may be the beneficiaries of laws against discrimination in employment and pay and against sexual harassment. In the MENA region, the oil economy and populist regimes allowed for the emergence of a social contract characterized by the provision of state-

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sponsored education and healthcare, as well as an array of subsidies. Civil and political rights, however, were limited by one-party rule or personalist monarchies or ever-present militaries. The right to form independent trade unions, political parties, or other civil society organizations largely did not exist, and women’s civil, political, and social rights were limited by law and by tradition.46 Challenges to the social contract began to emerge in the late twentieth century, first from the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s and 1990s, which led to the privatization of many social rights; then from feminist movements, which questioned women’s second-class citizenship; and finally from broad globalization processes, which diluted state authority and encouraged the growth of civil society. As noted earlier, some of the old rights and privileges—such as guaranteed public sector employment for high school and university graduates—were withdrawn in the 1990s. Although enrollment rates at all levels of education went up, the quality of education deteriorated significantly. What is more, the cost of living rose, unemployment skyrocketed (especially among college graduates), and real wages stagnated. These socioeconomic factors helped to cause the Arab Spring protests. In this chapter I have emphasized the importance of paid work for women, but employment must also consist of what the ILO calls “decent work” and should be accompanied by social and economic rights that recognize women’s double duty within the home as well as the workplace. In particular, care work—whether for children or for the elderly—should be regarded as socially useful labor that requires either monetary or in-kind support. The call for “an ethic of care” and “gender justice” is an appeal for a world “where the daily caring of people for each other is a valued premise of human existence” and for the establishment of institutions to reflect that changed value.47 Shorter working days for parents of small children and paid maternity leaves of at least six months, with additional leave for fathers, would be another way of recognizing care work as a social good, ensuring parent-child bonding, enabling women’s labor force attachment, and laying a pathway to gender equality. Such leaves could be financed through a combination of government, employee, and worker contributions. Working women should also be guaranteed the right to participate in vocational training and skills upgrading, to pursue opportunities for advancement, and to be protected from discrimination and sexual harassment. Indeed, in MENA, major campaigns have been launched by women’s rights groups against sexual harassment, and in some cases, governments have passed laws in recognition of a working woman’s right to a healthy and dignified work environment free of sexual harassment. (See the discussion in Chapter 8.) Of course, a necessary condition for the enjoyment of economic rights is the right to work and earn an income—a right that, under Muslim

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family law, women do not necessarily possess. A list of social requirements for women’s economic citizenship in MENA might include the rights to • get a job, without the need to obtain the consent of a husband or male relative; own, acquire, manage, and retain property brought into marriage and to control one’s own income from gainful employment; obtain a passport and travel abroad without permission of husband or male relative; • inherit equals shares of family wealth; confer citizenship to children or a husband; choose a residence; participate in social, cultural, community, and union activities and decisionmaking; • upgrade education and skills, including affordable adult education and vocational training; • obtain affordable healthcare and work in a healthy environment; be treated fairly by employers, including equality in hiring and promotion and equal pay for equal work; be free from sexual harassment in the workplace; • be given recognition for care work, such as paid maternity leave and paternity leave, subsidized and quality childcare, and decent wages and training for childcare and eldercare workers. Women’s economic citizenship is a prerequisite for political power. Quotas may assist, but a critical mass of women in the labor force is needed before women will aspire to political participation and gain the public’s confidence in women as political leaders. And for that to occur in the MENA region, the full range of social supports, policies, and legal reform that I have described is needed.

Conclusion This chapter has surveyed the gendered nature of economic processes and patterns of female employment since the 1960s in the modernizing countries of the Middle East and North Africa. A key objective has been to underscore the diversity of women’s positions within the region and to link women’s status and work opportunities to their class location, as well as to state policies, development strategies, the region’s political economy, and the global economy. Since the 1960s, state expansion, economic development, oil wealth, and increased integration within the world system have combined to create educational and employment opportunities for women in the Middle East. Although benefits have spread unevenly, female education and employment

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are undermining patriarchal attitudes and practices. Notwithstanding the challenges of Islamization—which appeared just as women were making inroads into public life, including the workforce—MENA women have pursued educational attainment and employment to the extent possible and have made demands on their governments for greater economic participation. Women’s entry into public life in the MENA region was facilitated by state-sponsored education and job opportunities in the expanding government sector and public services. Formal or modern-sector employment, and especially opportunities in the civil service, became an important source of status and livelihood for women and their families. The active role of the government in national development meant that many women no longer relied on a male guardian as provider, but rather on the state. In this regard, the Middle East is not so different from other countries, for around the world the public sector and government employment have provided women with jobs, benefits, and security that may elude them in the private sphere. As Fatima Mernissi once remarked, The North African woman of today usually dreams of having a steady, wage-paying job with social security and health and retirement benefits, at a State institution; these women don’t look to a man any longer for their survival, but to the State. While perhaps not ideal, this is nevertheless a breakthrough, an erosion of tradition. It also partly explains Moroccan women’s active participation in the urbanization process: they are leaving rural areas in numbers equaling men’s migrations, for a “better life” in the cities—and in European cities, as well.48

The state is not always favorable to the advancement of women and their economic empowerment, however—especially when the state is constituted by men holding patriarchal attitudes concerning women, work, and family. And some states are held hostage to international financial forces, withholding the social-economic rights of citizens in the name of an imposed neoliberal policy agenda. Female labor force participation in MENA is still low in relation to that of other regions of the world and, of course, in relation to male labor force participation. The explanatory framework I described here rests on a set of economic and noneconomic factors and forces: the oil economy and the absence of economic diversification, and conservative social norms codified in the region’s family laws. Structural and institutional factors have impeded women’s progress in salaried employment, entrepreneurship, and economic decisionmaking. Many economists, political scientists, businessmen, and policymakers have expressed concern about low levels of social development, human capital, and productivity compared with East Asia, some Latin American countries, and Eastern European countries. However, they are oblivious to women’s contributions to those countries’ progress;

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nor do they appear cognizant of MENA women’s demands for participation and rights.49 In the wake of the Arab Spring and in the context of democratic transitions, the challenges facing the new governments include the integration of an increasingly educated female population and women’s claims for economic participation in the new policy frameworks. In Chapter 4, I elaborate more on the social and political implications of women’s educational attainment.

Notes 1. The following list is by no means complete, but it is representative of the WID-GAD and sociology-of-gender perspective, which puts a premium on women’s integration into the paid labor force of the formal economy: Blumberg 1995; Chafetz 1984; Joekes 1987; Tiano 1987; Tinker 1990; Moghadam 1996b. See also various contributions in Visvanathan 2011. 2. Boserup 1990, p. 24. Boserup’s famous book is Women’s Role in Economic Development (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970). On women and global production, see: Elson and Pearson 1981; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly 1983; Fuentes and Ehrenreich 1983; ILO/INSTRAW 1985; Sen and Grown 1987; Standing 1989; Ward 1990; Kabeer 1996. 3. Anker 1998, p. 145. Anker does concede that “the status of women varies greatly across Islamic countries.” Other information and data in this paragraph come from Mujahid 1985, p. 114; UNDP 1990, tab. 23, pp. 173–75. 4. Chamie 1985, p. 3; Azzam, Abu Nasr, and Lorfing 1985, pp. 5–38. 5. Karshenas and Moghadam 2006, esp. pp. 1–30. 6. Oncü 1981, p. 189; and Kazgan 1981. 7. UNDPI 1989. See also Niblock and Murphy 1993; Harik and Sullivan 1992; Walton and Seddon 1994. 8. Moghadam 1998b, 1995b. 9. See, for example, Hoodfar 1991, p. 108. See also discussion in Chapter 2. 10. See CAWTAR 2001, esp. chap. 6. See also Moghadam 2002a. 11. Moghadam 1995a, 1996b. On regional unemployment figures and analysis of the 1990s, see also Shaban, Assaad, and Al-Qudsi 1995; World Bank 2003. 12. For example, international data sets report a female labor force share of nearly 30 percent for Iran, but Iran’s own census data report 19 percent. For enumeration problems in assessing MENA women’s employment, see Doctor and Khoury 1991, esp. pp. 21–31. 13. Data from ILO 1990, table 1, p. 60, as well as from the ILO’s Yearbook of Labour Statistics 1981, 1985, 1991, table 1. Figures for the 1990s are from the ILO’s Key Indicators of the Labour Market (ILO 1999). On Lebanon, see Al-Raida 15, no. 82 (Summer 1998), p. 16, a special issue on women in the labor force, which reported that women’s share of employment was 20 percent. See also Moghadam 1995a. 14. United Nations 2000, chart 5.2, p. 110; UNDP 2002, table 25. See also CAWTAR 2001, table A/27. 15. ILO 2012, Table 2, p. 12. 16. Standing 1999 notes the growing proportion of women in public sector jobs across countries. MENA figures come from Alachkar 1996; UNDP-Ankara 1996. On Iran, see Islamic Republic of Iran 1995, 1997.

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17. See, for example, Al-Raida 15, no. 82 (Summer 1998), a special issue on Lebanese women in the labor force. See also Doctor and Khoury 1991, p. 28; and Anker 1998, p. 166. 18. Mujahid 1985, p. 115. 19. See Cairoli 1999, 2010. 20. World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2011, online version. The 1990s figures are from UNDP, Human Development Report 1998, table 3, p. 134. 21. Gunduz-Hosgor and Smits 2008. 22. Spierings and Smits 2007. 23. See, for example, Anderson et al. 2002; Goetz and Gupta 1996; Mayoux 2001; Horn 2013. 24. Granovetter 1983; Yetim 2008, esp. p. 867. 25. CAWTAR and IFC 2007; CAWTAR 2012 (compendium of papers prepared for a June 2012 seminar at the World Bank, with which the present author was involved). See http://www.cawtar.org/evenement_details.php?code=10&evennement =175&page=1, accessed December 2012. 26. The above summary is from the following CAWTAR papers presented at the June 2012 seminar at the World Bank: Alia El Mehdi, “Women Entrepreneurs in Egypt”; Kamal Hamdan, Redha Hamdan, Lara Batlouni, and Nisrine Mansour, “Women Entrepreneurs in Lebanon”; Semsa Ozar, “Women Entrepreneurs in Turkey”; Soheil Chennouf and Taïeb Hafsi, “Women Entrepreneurs in Algeria: A Quantitative Study.” 27. Confirmed in a personal communication with Dr. George Kossaifi, formerly of ESCWA, at the conference on Democratic Transition and Development in the Arab World, Stanford University, April 26–27, 2012. For example, according to another source, although Qatari women make up at least 33 percent of government employment, they are only 14 percent of the total labor force. See Kelly and Breslin 2010, p. 412. 28. Colton 2011. Haya Aal-Mughni (in Kelly and Breslin 2010, p. 232) notes that while Kuwait’s Labour Law specifies that a working day should be restricted to eight hours, this does not apply to domestic workers, the majority of whom are women working long hours at low wages. Kuwaitis remain highly dependent on foreign labor—mostly from South and Southeast Asia—for domestic work. 29. See Baldwin-Edwards 2011, table 2, p. 9. 30. Presentation by Dr. Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi, King Saud University, at the conference on Democratic Transition and Development in the Arab World, Stanford University, April 27, 2012 (my notes). See also Baldwin-Edwards 2011. His figure for Saudi women’s unemployment rate is higher than that reported in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2011, which estimates adult female unemployment at 16 percent. See also World Bank 2010, figure 7, p. 7, where the Saudi female unemployment rate (total, not age-specific) is about 12 percent. 31. See, for example, Donno and Russett 2004; Ross 2008. 32. The classification draws on early work by Robert Mabro 1988, p. 689, and by Alan Richards and John Waterbury 1990, pp. 78–79, but has been modified and updated. See also the second edition of Richards and Waterbury 1996. 33. In addition to Richards and Waterbury, see Karshenas 1990. 34. The argument was initially made in the first edition (1993) of this book, and subsequently in the following publications: Moghadam 1995c; 1998b, esp. chap. 2; 2005b; 2005c. In 2008, Michael Ross made a similar argument, using quantitative methods.

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35. The early writings were the following: Mahdavi 1972; Katouzian 1981; Beblawi and Luciano 1987. US political scientist Michael Ross followed with a series of papers; see Ross 2001, 2008. 36. See Karshenas and Moghadam 2001; Moghadam 1998b, esp. chap. 1. 37. Data from UNDP, Human Development Report 2002, table 14, pp. 198–201. 38. See UNDP 2002; Mabro 1988; Moghadam 1988; Nomani and Behdad 2006. 39. The figures on manufacturing exports are from UNIDO, the Arab Monetary Fund, and Turkey’s national statistical office. See http://www.unido.org/index .php?id=1002110; http://www.amf.org.ae/statistics and http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/ VeriBilgi.do?alt_id=12, accessed October 2012. 40. See, for example, Sonbol 2003, esp. pp. 89–99. 41. Marshall 1950; Kessler-Harris 2001. 42. Marshall 1950, p. 72. 43. On the ICESCR see www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR .aspx. On labor rights, including protection of pregnant workers and working mothers, see www.ilo.org. Much of the discussion here is also found in Moghadam, Franzway, and Fonow 2011, especially the introductory chapter and chap. 2. 44. The ICFTU was renamed the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) following a merger with the World Confederation of Labour in November 2006. See http://www.ituc-csi.org. 45. A number of cross-national data sets measure women’s rights, including political, economic, and social rights. See, for example, the Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset, which covers 195 countries: http://www.humanrights data.org. 46. Joseph 2000; Moghadam 2003; Karshenas and Moghadam 2006. 47. Tronto 1994, p. 178. See also Eisenstein 2009, p. 228. Eisenstein points to Venezuela as a positive example of women gaining social rights and economic citizenship. The 1999 revised constitution included a provision granting social security to housewives, making the Chavez government the first in the world to respond to the wages-for-housework movement. The Chavez government also created the Women’s Development Bank, or Banmujer, a public microfinance system funded by the state that was “intended as an anti-poverty measure, not a profit-making enterprise as is the case with most microcredit programs” (pp. 224, 225). 48. Mernissi 1984. 49. I have attended numerous workshops and seminars at which women-anddevelopment issues were discussed by one or two token women researchers, if at all. Most recently, a conference in Tunis in late March 2013 sponsored by Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and focused on economic and political challenges in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia did not include any discussion of women, development, and democratization. When I asked the speakers from Egypt and Libya to elaborate on what strategy, if any, their new governments had to improve indicators on women’s economic and political participation and integrate women into plans for development and democratization, the honest response by each speaker was: “We have no strategy.”

4

Gender and the Family: Patriarchy in Crisis

The “Middle Eastern Muslim family” has long been described as a patriarchal unit, and it has been noted that Muslim family laws have served to reinforce patriarchal gender relations and women’s subordinate position within the family. However, the expansion of schooling, urbanization, the opening up of public spaces to women, and links with world society have affected the traditional family and prescribed gender roles, replacing the patrilocally extended family with the nuclear family, creating many more opportunities for women, and affecting male-female interaction and sexuality. In urbanized countries of the region, polygyny has become a statistically insignificant family form. Only Turkey and Tunisia have banned polygyny outright, but monogamy is the norm in the region; in addition, the 2003–2004 reform of family law in Morocco made it difficult for a man to obtain a second wife. Marriage patterns have changed in other ways, too. As educational attainment rates increase, early marriage becomes rare. Young women and men associate with each other freely in universities, workplaces, and other public spaces instead of waiting for their parents to choose a spouse. In some cases, young men postpone marriage because they face job insecurity or lack a diploma to guarantee access to desired jobs. Women, faced with the pragmatic necessity of counting on themselves instead of relying on a rich husband, further their formal education. And many join campaigns for women’s rights. Such social changes are significant, but they are not embraced by all segments of a society. Conservative forces in the state apparatus and in civil society contest changes to traditional norms, laws, institutions, and relationships. Thus the family remains a potent cultural trope, with conservative discourses frequently tying women’s family roles to cultural, religious, and societal cohesion. And even though changes in sexual behavior have been observed for the young in Tehran, Istanbul, and Tunis—in part because of 109

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the rising age of marriage and rising university enrollments—virginity remains an important cultural asset. In small towns and rural settings, family honor depends in great measure on the virginity and good conduct of the women in the family. The control of the sexual behavior of women and girls remains a preoccupation and a patriarchal legacy. In this chapter I describe how demographic transition, women’s increasing educational attainment, and youth subcultures generate challenges for patriarchy and the “traditional family.” I begin by examining discourses on the family in a cross-cultural perspective.

The Family as Haven The family is perhaps the only societal institution that is conceptualized as “essential” and “natural.” The biological basis of kin ties and women’s reproductive capacities historically has conferred such a status on the family. This emphasis on biology has led to reductionist and functionalist accounts of the family, accounts that transcend cultural barriers and unite Muslim and Western conservatives. Consider sociologist Talcott Parsons’s functionalist perspective. He and his colleagues argued that the modern family has two main functions: to socialize children into society’s normative system of values and inculcate appropriate status expectations, and to provide a stable emotional environment that would cushion the (male) worker from the psychological damage of the alienating occupational world. These functions are carried out by the wife and mother. It is she who plays the affective, “expressive” role of nurturance and support, and it is the husband who plays the “instrumental” role of earning the family’s keep and maintaining discipline.1 The Parsonian view is very similar to the contemporary Muslim view, which sees the family as the fundamental unit of society and stresses the mother’s role in the socialization of children—particularly in raising “committed Muslims” and transmitting cultural values. These two similar accounts of the family and women are not only descriptive but also prescriptive. Proponents of the family as a natural unit or a haven in a heartless world frequently warn of its impending death. Throughout the world, the alarm tends to be sounded by persons and groups on the right: Christian fundamentalists and Orthodox Jews in the United States, anticommunists in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Islamists in the Middle East. What are some indicators of the weakening of the family? According to Kingsley Davis, the state of marriage has become severely weakened in Western nations since the 1950s. He cites easy divorce, the postponement of marriage, a rise in the proportion of the never-married, an increase in cohabitation without marriage, and the ready availability of con-

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traception as forces that have eroded the family and compromised its ultimate function—the licensing of reproduction. In the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, high divorce rates and low birthrates led demographers to warn that these societies might not be able to reproduce themselves.2 Laments about the current condition of the family imply that at an earlier time in history, the family was more stable and harmonious than it is today. Yet despite massive research, historians have not located a “golden age of the family.” Historian Barbara Hanawalt listed these causes for the small family size in fourteenth-century England: “birth control, infanticide, high infant mortality, late marriages, infertility due to poor diet, high female mortality, and economic limitations on nuptiality.” The marriages of seventeenth-century Europe were based on family and property needs, not on choice or affection. Famously, Thomas Hobbes described life in the midseventeenth century as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” Two in ten children died in infancy, another two died before reaching puberty, and more either died before reaching marrying age or simply never married. Those who did survive and marry, as David Levine noted, spent most of their adult lives reproducing and raising the next generation. Loveless marriages, tyrannical husbands, high death rates, and the beating, abuse, and abandonment of children added up to a grim image, as historian Linda Gordon documented. Demographer John Caldwell has noted that many writers have romanticized the peasant family, even though A. V. Chayanov (according to Teodor Shanin) calculated that Russian peasant women and girls worked 1.21 times as many hours as men and boys. Teodor Shanin wrote that despite their heavy burden of labor (both housework and fieldwork) and their functional importance in the Russian peasant household, women were considered second-class members of it and were nearly always placed under the authority of males. Quarrels and tensions seem to have been endemic to the extended household and family everywhere. Amartya Sen’s model of “cooperative conflicts” within households and Hanna Papanek’s concepts of “unequal entitlements to resource shares” and “socialization for inequality” contradict idealized notions of harmony.3 But myths about golden ages are easy to construct, especially during times of rapid social change, socioeconomic difficulty, or political crisis, as Stephanie Coontz found for the United States. At times like these, the family question and its correlate, the woman question, come to the fore. These questions are tackled and answered quite differently by various social groups and political forces. For example, many conservatives feel that a major source of family dissolution is female employment. In the former Soviet Union during perestroika in the late 1980s, social problems were blamed on the “overemployment” of women and their “forced detachment” from the family under communism. The solution, according to this view, was to reduce female labor force attachment and increase women’s family

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attachment. In Eastern Europe, too, a romanticization of the family, of domesticity, and of the private sphere, combined with an emphasis on women’s maternal roles, followed the end of communist rule. Somewhat inconsistently, many writings and speeches presented the family as having been the site of resistance to the monolithic state and as having been destroyed by the communist policy of imposing public activity on women and substituting institutionalized childcare for mother’s care. Barbara Einhorn explained that postcommunist ideology included the frequently voiced opinion that politics is men’s prerogative in a return to a “natural order” in which women have privacy in the home and men in the public sphere.4 There are parallels with the ideology of the conservative movement in the United States, as described by Rebecca Klatch: The ideal society, then, is one in which individuals are integrated into a moral community, bound together by faith, by common moral values, and by obeying the dictates of the family and religion. . . . While male and female roles are each respected and essential and complementary components of God’s plan, men are the spiritual leaders and decision-makers in the family. It is women’s role to support men in their position of higher authority through altruism and self-sacrifice.5

The parallels with modern Middle Eastern ideals of the role of women and the family are striking. According to the late Murteza Mutahhari, one of the major thinkers of Iran’s Islamic revolution, “For Muslims, the institution of marriage based on mutuality of natural interest and cordiality between spouses represents a sublime manifestation of the Divine Will and Purpose.” He continues: Marriage and family living are very significant aspects of a society. They are responsible institutional aspects for the benefit of posterity. Family upbringing of children determines the quality of successive generations. ... Mutual affection and sincerity, as well as humane compassion and tenderness, are highly desirable attributes in married couples, in the context of their mutual and social interactions. These are often in evidence in societies governed by Islamic moral and legal checks and balances. In the others, such as those in the West, these qualities are seldom noticeable.6

In similar fashion, the late Egyptian Islamist Seyid Qutb placed far more significance on the role of marriage and the family than did historical Islam, which considered both to be down-to-earth civil contracts, according to one account of Qutb’s work. In keeping with conservative theories of motherhood and education, Qutb spoke in glowing terms of the family as “the nursery of the future,” breeding “precious human products” under the guardianship of women. Qutb further celebrated the holy bond of

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pure love between a man and a woman, who both voluntarily enter into a relationship of marriage as two equal partners, each discharging functions assigned by nature and biology. A woman fulfills her functions by being a wife and mother, whereas a man is to be the undisputed authority, the breadwinner, and the active member in public life.7 To the Islamist intellectual, the Muslim family is by no means a site of oppression or subjugation. Consider the views of the Iranian woman writer Fereshteh Hashemi, who in 1981 wrote that in the context of marriage and the family, women have the heavy responsibility of procreation and rearing a generation: this is a divine art, because it creates, it gives birth; and it is a prophetic art, because it guides, it educates. God, therefore, absolves the woman from all economic responsibilities so that she can engage herself in this prophetic and divine act with peace in mind. Therefore, He makes it the duty of the man to provide all economic means for this woman, so as there shall not be an economic vacuum in her life. . . . And in the exchange for this heavy responsibility, that is, the financial burden of the woman and the family, what is he entitled to expect of the woman? Except for expecting her companionship and courtship, he cannot demand anything else from the woman. According to theological sources, he cannot even demand that she bring him a glass of water, much less expect her to clean and cook.8

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, a 1990 study by the Research Group for Muslim Women’s Studies tried to explain low female employment by suggesting that Iranian women were by choice more attached to maternal and family roles: After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, in order to guarantee the implementation of the legal right of nafaghe [a continual allowance paid by a husband for his wife’s and children’s maintenance], many women who are not specialized in a particular field have chosen to limit their activities to their homes by taking care of their families. They have also realized that the real place for them is their homes, where they are able to raise and train Muslim children and disseminate revolutionary culture, a woman’s effective role in the success of Islamic Revolution.9

Similarly in Morocco, as Zakia Salime has shown, the Islamic newspapers Al-Forkane and Al-Raya stressed women’s roles as wife and mother and the centrality of the family to Moroccan cultural and religious identity. The issue of women’s family and social roles had become politicized in the early 1990s when women’s rights groups sought to reform the Moudawana, Morocco’s patriarchal family law. A theologian named Al-Tajkani wrote: “It is time for Muslim women to rise up and start their women’s organizations to advocate respect of the Islamic sharia, prevent the Muslim family from

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splitting into two antagonistic fronts, and preserve the identity of the Moroccan family, this unit based on complementary roles and Qur’anic principles of stability, affection, and compassion.”10 The notion of the family as a woman-tended haven against a heartless world seems to be universal—or at least universal among middle classes in modern societies—rather than specific to any culture or religion. Some historians have argued that in the West, this concept of the family emerged in the course of real struggles against the market and the state.11 But the haven ideology is deficient on a number of counts. It obfuscates the extent to which this ideal is socially limited; for example, it has nothing to say about households maintained by women alone, a phenomenon that is becoming statistically significant throughout the world, especially in regions with considerable male out-migration or where conflicts have rendered many women widows. Of what use to them is the ideology that their “real place” is at home rearing children while their husbands are earning the family’s daily bread? The relationship between the family and the state illustrates the fine line between the public and private spheres. Nowhere is the family free of state regulation. This intervention takes various forms. Apart from marriage registration (and defining what is acceptable and unacceptable), there is family law, the content of which differs across societies. There are also laws pertaining to reproductive rights, contraception, and abortion. Some countries have legal codes regarding the provision of care within families and the responsibilities of family members to each other. In many cases, female family members are understood, if not legally required, to be care providers (to children, in-laws, and parents). In other cases, a father is legally required to provide for his family. In yet other cases, social policies provide extra-family support: daycare, homes for the aged or infirm, nursing help, and so on. There may be legal codes pertaining to domestic violence, child abuse, wife battering, or spousal rape. There are invariably laws pertaining to family disintegration (which may come about through divorce, death, abandonment, or migration). Far from being an enclave, the family is vulnerable to the state, and the laws and social policies that impinge upon it undermine the notion of separate spheres. Yet the haven ideology persists and is often strategically deployed by state authorities and dissidents alike. Moreover, and notwithstanding Mutahhari’s swipe at the presumed lack of family values in the West, the 1990s saw the formation of a coalition of conservative Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant governments and nongovernmental organizations designed to promote “family values.” It first formed around what it saw as objectionable recommendations pertaining to women’s sexual rights in connection with the UN’s International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which took place in Cairo in

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1994, and the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), in Beijing in 1995. The alliance regrouped in June 2001 at the special session of the UN General Assembly on AIDS in New York, to halt what it saw as the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays being pushed by the European Union.12 There are similarities and differences between the trajectory of the Arab-Islamic family and that of the family in Western countries. They share a patriarchal structure that undergoes change as a result of economic and political developments. The timing, pace, and extent of the changes differ. In the contemporary Middle East and North Africa, the family is a powerful signifier, and there is a strong conservative trend to strengthen it and reinforce women’s maternal roles. This trend seems to have arisen in the context of three parallel developments: (1) the erosion of “classic patriarchy” and the extended household unit, (2) the rise of middle-class Islamist movements that seek to reinforce an Islamic alternative to Western family and gender relations but often evince values and attitudes reminiscent of the moral discourse of the old European bourgeoisie, and (3) the emergence of movements for women’s equality and rights. As we shall see, the attempts by Islamic governments in Turkey, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2010–2012 to strengthen Islamic laws and norms were reactions to the profound changes that have occurred, which they viewed as a form of Western cultural invasion.

Patriarchal Society and Family Patriarchal society is a precapitalist social formation that has historically existed in varying forms in Europe and Asia and in which property, residence, and descent proceed through the male line. In classic patriarchy, the senior man has authority over everyone else in the family, including younger men, and women are subject to distinct forms of control and subordination. In the 1980s, demographer John Caldwell and sociologist Deniz Kandiyoti described the “belt of classic patriarchy” as covering areas in North Africa, the Muslim Middle East (including Turkey and Iran), and South and East Asia (Pakistan, Afghanistan, northern India, and rural China). A key structural feature is the patrilocally extended household, which is associated with the reproduction of the peasantry in agrarian societies and a strictly defined sexual division of labor. Childbearing is the central, though not exclusive, female labor activity. But just as in capitalism, what a worker produces is not considered the property of the worker, so in a patriarchal context a woman’s products—be they children or rugs— belong not to her but to the patriarchal family and especially the male kin. There is a predisposition to male dominance inherent in the precapitalist

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peasant household and in the reproduction of kinship-ordered groups. In the context of classic patriarchy, women’s honor—and by extension the honor of their family—depends in great measure on their virginity and good conduct. One classic study of “the values of Mediterranean society” described the importance of manliness, woman’s sexual purity, and defense of family honor in Andalucia, Spain, villages in Greece and Cyprus, and among the Kabyle in Algeria and the Bedouins of Egypt. Pierre Bourdieu discussed honor killings among the Kabyle, and J. G. Peristiany described honor and shame among Cypriots thus: Woman’s foremost duty to self and family is to safeguard herself against all critical allusions to her sexual modesty. In dress, looks, attitudes, speech, a woman, when men are present, should be virginal as a maiden and matronly as a wife. . . . For an unmarried woman, shame reflects directly on parents and brothers, especially unmarried ones, who did not protect or avenge her honour.13

In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Frederick Engels wrote of the “world-historical defeat of the female sex” in the wake of the agricultural revolution and the advent of civilization and class society. Gerda Lerner reversed Engels’s narrative by arguing that the subordination of women—the creation of patriarchy enforced by legal codes in the ancient Near East—enabled the development of private property and state power there and elsewhere. Similarly, Michael Mann has described the trajectory of patriarchy historically and cross-culturally. He identified and traced the interrelations of five principal stratification nuclei—five collective actors that have affected gender-stratification relations over recent history: the atomized person (more pertinent to liberal, bourgeois society); the networks of household, family, and lineage; genders; social classes; and nations and nation-states. According to Mann, the patriarchal society is one in which power is held by male heads of households, and there is a clear separation between the public and private spheres of life. In the private sphere of the household, the patriarch enjoys arbitrary power over all junior males, all females, and all children. In the public sphere, power is shared between male patriarchs according to whatever other principles of stratification operate. Many, perhaps most, men expect to be patriarchs at some point in their life cycle, but no female holds any formal public position of economic, ideological, military, or political power. Indeed, females are not allowed into this public realm of power. It goes without saying that men have a monopoly on the means of violence. Within the household, women may influence their male patriarch informally, but that is their only access to power.14

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As agrarian societies gave way to modern society and women entered the public sphere, stratification became gendered internally. Mann noted that in Western Europe, from about the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the stratification system changed under the pressure of emerging capitalism, first in agriculture and then in industry, as more of economic life became part of the public realm. Mann went on to state that the distinction between the public and the private was eroded first by employment trends and the emergence of modern social classes, second by universal citizenship, and third by the nation-state’s welfare interventions in the private household and family. Thus Mann presented a model of the trajectory from patriarchy to neopatriarchy to a stratification system based on gendered classes, personhood, and the nation. It should be noted that women’s rights movements emerged in the latter part of this trajectory and have contributed to the elimination of some of the more egregious aspects of the patriarchal legacy. Like Judaism and Christianity before it, Islam came into being in a patriarchal society. The French ethnologist Germaine Tillion argued that the origin of women’s oppression in Muslim societies had to be traced to ancient times and the beginnings of patrilineal society. She identified endogamy, or the practice of marrying within the lineage, as setting the stage for the oppression of women in patrilineal society, long before the rise of Islam. Endogamy kept property (land and animals) within the lineage and protected the economic and political interests of the men. Quranic reforms provided women with certain legal rights absent in Judaism and Christianity and also corrected some injustices in pre-Islamic Arabian society. For example, Islam banned female infanticide and entitled women to contract their marriage, receive dower, retain control of wealth, and receive maintenance and shares in inheritance. In the early centuries of Islam, various legal schools were established, and within the framework of sharia, norms and laws were formulated to meet a woman’s needs in a society where her largely domestic, childbearing roles rendered her sheltered and dependent upon her father, her husband, and her close male relations. Eleanor Doumato suggested that preexisting Christian customs and Roman laws, as well as customary practices in Arabia, influenced early Muslim views on women and the family.15 When family laws were codified and modernized much later, they were based on a combination of the Islamic legal schools (Hanafi, Maleki, Hanbali, Shafii, and the Shia Ja’afari thought), pre-Islamic or tribal customs, and Western (French, Swiss, Belgian) legal systems. Muslim family law gave male members of the kin group control over key decisions affecting “their” women’s lives. The Muslim woman’s legal and religious rights to inherit, own, and dispose of property were often circumvented by more powerful male relatives, including her brothers, uncles, or husband’s

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agnates. In sharia, the custody of children is first accorded to mothers, but ultimately the children of Muslim marriage are taken into the formal custody of the father’s patrilineal kin group, generally at the age of seven for boys and nine for girls, or puberty for the boy and the time of marriage for the girl, depending upon interpretation. Alya Baffoun noted that although men and women are in theory equal before religious law, “an imbalance is introduced through sexual and economic inequality—polygamy, unequal inheritance rights and male monopoly of the production of commodities.” Mounira Charrad’s discussion of states and women’s rights located the differences in the family laws that emerged in postcolonial Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in the strength of kin-ordered structures and alliances between the national elites and local leaders. In particular, Morocco’s Maleki family law—which favored males and kin on the male side—reflected the maintenance and loyalty of tribal communities.16 The persistence of patriarchy is a matter of debate, and some feminist theorists argue that industrialized societies are also patriarchal. Sylvia Walby, for example, has distinguished between the “private patriarchy” of the premodern family and social order and the “public patriarchy” of the state and labor market in industrial societies. Other scholars tie patriarchy more strictly to modes of production and especially the agrarian rural order.17 Today, the prototypical patriarchal tribal structure can be found in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and in parts of the Arab world and eastern Turkey. The social organization of the tribe (qabila, in Arabic) or the communal group (qawm, especially in Afghanistan) is based on blood ties and is patriarchal in the classic sense. Tribal identity, such as that of the Arab Bedouin or the Afghan Pashtuns, is generally based on notions of common patrilineal descent. As a number of scholars have noted, patriarchy is thus strongest in rural areas, within peasant as well as tribal communities.18 My argument here is that patriarchy should not be conflated with Islam but rather should be understood in historical, social-structural, and development terms. The emergence of a modern middle class tied to the capitalist economy or the state bureaucracy would seem to represent a weakening of the patriarchal order, especially when educated women form a large proportion of that modern middle class. If the control of women is central to the reproduction of the neopatriarchal unit—the extended family, the community, and authoritarian state—it may also be a political strategy. Political elites or neopatriarchal states may raise the woman question to divert attention from economic problems or political corruption. States also may find it useful to foster patriarchal structures because the extended family performs vital welfare functions. The joint household system and intergenerational wealth flows that are characteristic of patriarchal structures provide welfare and security for individuals. In this way, the persistence of patriarchy relieves the state of the responsibility to provide welfare to citizens.19

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Women themselves seem to be aware of the presence of patriarchal controls and of urban-rural differences in this regard, as one Palestinian refugee’s comment suggests: I think women who live in the cities are better off than the ones who live in villages. They are very different. In the villages, women don’t even have basic rights. They don’t have a life. For example, in the villages, men never take into consideration women’s opinions. Women aren’t even allowed to sit with their husbands or speak with them. They exist just to produce children. That’s all. There are no discussions about or understanding of women on the part of men. I’m certain the situation of women in the cities is better.20

Her view is confirmed by two studies of marriage and the family in upper rural Egypt. Kathryn Yount discussed the persistence of son preference in Minya, and reported that “residence with parents-in-law, brothersin-law, and the husband decreases a woman’s influence in daily domestic and life-course decisions.” Similarly, Hania Sholkamy discussed the persistence of cousin marriage in Asyut, arguing that such marriage “is a route to personal security” from the vantage point of the woman. Refugee women or victims of occupation may face the revival or exacerbation of patriarchal family arrangements, as Cheryl Rubenberg found for Palestinian women and as has been documented by fieldworkers for the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC).21 Previous chapters have laid out the main contours of Muslim family law, its anachronistic relationship to contemporary notions of gender equality and women’s full rights of citizenship, and the increased need or desire of women to work and earn an income. Such laws have become highly contested in the twenty-first century, but they remain intact in some countries. When Saudi Arabia signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 2010, it did so with sweeping reservations that stipulated the preeminence of sharia law on matters of women and the family. 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 reform in the Muslim world. It is also highly indicative of the role of the state and of state legal policy in matters of gender and the family. Through family law, the state can maintain existing gender arrangements, it can alter social policies and laws in the direction of greater restrictions on women, or it can introduce new legislation to foster more equality within the family and raise women’s social and economic status. For this reason, women’s organizations have prioritized the modernization of family laws as a key demand of their movement for women’s rights and citizenship (see Chapter 8). Polemics surrounding women and

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the family are responses to the contradictions of social change and emerge in the context of patriarchal societies undergoing modernization and demographic transition.

The Demographic Transition and Fertility Changes Given the presence of patriarchal structures, it was not surprising that the World Fertility Survey (WFS), conducted in forty-one countries between 1977 and 1982, found that high fertility persisted in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, compared with other regions, as well as in South Asia, where the crude fertility rate was six children per woman in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. In Iran, fertility increased between the 1976 census and the 1986 census due mainly to the pronatalism of the Islamic government in the early 1980s. The 1990s, however, saw a reversal of the Islamic state’s policy on the family, widespread use of contraception, and a dramatic decline in fertility. Elsewhere, too, the demographic transition is in place: the age at first marriage has increased considerably, and fertility rates have declined significantly—clear signs of the crisis of patriarchy in the Middle East. The demographic transition is a process as far-reaching and important for the history and structure of populations as is industrialization. It involves a change from the high mortality and high fertility characteristic of preindustrial societies to patterns of low mortality and low fertility. Caldwell argued that in Western Europe the economic and demographic transitions co-evolved: the transition from the traditional peasant (family-based) economy to the capitalist economy entailed changes in decisions about and the need for reproduction. Large families became less rational as the cost of each additional child increased. But the process of change took place in two steps. First, mortality declined while fertility remained high or even increased, thus accelerating population growth. David Levine cites Michel Foucault to explain why: “The accumulation of men and the accumulation of capital . . . cannot be separated.”22 Then, as mortality continued to drop and as child and then infant mortality fell sharply, fertility began to decline as well, slowing rates of population growth. In England and France, the rate of population growth began to increase in 1780, but then slowed down after 1820 in France and 1879 in England. Although lower fertility came about in Western societies in the course of industrialization and urbanization, other important sources of instability in the family-based system of production and reproduction, according to Caldwell, were the enforcement of universal, compulsory education, the movement for women’s rights, and the rise of consumer society. These trends are consistent with Mann’s trajectory of patriarchy to neopatriarchy to gendered societies.

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Demographers studying global fertility decline since the 1960s have offered several explanations for the fertility transition: mortality reduction; reduced economic contributions from children; opportunity costs of childbearing, especially for mothers; vanishing cultural support for childbearing; improved access to effective fertility regulation; marriage delay; and diffusion of ideas and practices. Socioeconomic development, gender, class, and the state certainly play a role in fertility.23 As in other developing regions in the twentieth century, the demographic transition occurred more rapidly in MENA than in Europe. But MENA began its transition later than other countries with comparable levels of income, in part because of a slower pace of educational attainment and lower employment among women, and partly because of pronatalist policies on the part of the region’s political regimes. For many newly independent third world states, at least until recently, a large population was associated with national strength, as was stated quite explicitly by leaders of Algeria, Kenya, India, and China, to name a few. Algeria’s postindependence leaders discouraged women from working and—especially in light of the huge loss of life during the national liberation struggle—encouraged large families. In 1979, a pronatalist policy was adopted by the authorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which also banned abortion and prohibited the importation of contraceptives. In 1988 the total fertility rate in Iran was 5.6 births per woman, and in Algeria it was 5.4 births per woman. The World Fertility Survey of Egypt found that although women desired 4 children on average in Egypt, the mean jumped to 4.4 among illiterate mothers and dropped to 2.1 for women with secondary school education. The mean number of children born to university-educated women was 1.8.24 Yet, given the large size of Egypt’s rural population, fertility rates remained high. The result of lowered mortality and high fertility in the second half of the twentieth century was accelerated population growth. MENA’s annual population growth reached a peak of 3 percent around 1980, while the growth rate for the world as a whole reached its peak of 2 percent annually more than a decade earlier. On average, fertility in MENA declined from 7 children per woman around 1960 to 3.6 children in 2001. The demographic transition and fertility decline were propelled by changes in health and mortality. The region’s average infant mortality rate, for example, which was as high as 200 per 1,000 live births in 1955, began to decline in 1960; by 1990 it had reached about 70 per 1,000 live births. Eight years later it was down to 45—still higher than Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia, Europe, and Central Asia, but lower than southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. For individual countries, the changes in infant, child, and maternal mortality occurred rapidly and dramatically. For example, in 1960 Tunisia had an infant mortality rate of 159, and its under-five child mortality rate was 255. In the 1980s, those numbers had declined to 58

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and 83, respectively. By 2000, the rate of infant mortality had dropped to just 30, and in 2009 it was 21.25 Iran similarly saw impressive achievements in the health of children as well as mothers during the 1990s. Indeed, maternal mortality rates have dropped throughout the region. According to the 2009 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), they remain highest in Yemen and Morocco, with rates of 430 and 240 per 100,000 live births, respectively. Life expectancy varies: the regional average for Arab states (this does not include Israel, Iran, or Turkey) rose from 52 years in the early 1970s to 67 years early in the new century. It is highest in the Gulf states (75 years) and Israel (74 years) and lowest in Yemen (60 years).26 The fertility declines observed in the late twentieth century were especially visible among young, educated women in urban areas, and by 2010 the total fertility rate was down to 2.8 children per woman. Like the World Fertility Surveys of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of the 1990s confirmed the link between mothers’ education and total fertility rate: the higher the educational attainment, the fewer the number of children.27 Conducted in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen as well as in many other developing countries, DHS research found that education, socioeconomic status, and rural versus urban residence determined the number of children as well as the health of the mother and child. In general, the surveys found that fertility rates had declined and the age of marriage had risen in the Middle Eastern countries surveyed. Indeed, in several countries, the combined effects of socioeconomic development, women’s educational attainment, state-sponsored family planning programs, and an increase in the age at marriage have produced the lowest fertility rates of the region, lower than the world average, at 2.5 children per woman (per the 2005–2010 world estimate). As Table 4.1 shows, fertility rates are lowest in Iran, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Tunisia and highest in Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza, and Iraq. Nonetheless, decades of high birthrates have helped to keep the population of Middle Eastern countries young. According to the 2009 Arab Human Development Report, some 60 percent of the population of Arab states were younger than twenty-five, with about 35 percent of the Arab region’s population younger than fifteen years of age; by contrast, only 4 percent was older than sixty-five.28 Of course, those figures vary across the region. In 2005 the share of the population younger than age fifteen ranged from 19.8 percent in the UAE to greater than 45 percent in Yemen and the West Bank and Gaza. Similarly, in Iran in 2009, some 70 percent of the population was below age thirty-five. The existence of a large population of young people, including young women, has economic and political implications. Young people tend to suffer from high rates of unemployment and may engage in social protest either for jobs, housing, and income or for cultural change and freedoms; young men also may constitute a recruiting base for Islamist movements or radical campaigns. Young women may join women’s rights organizations.

Gender and the Family: Patriarchy in Crisis Table 4.1

Total Fertility Rate and Age at First Marriage in MENA, 1970–2010 Mean Age at Marriage (2001–2007)

Total Fertility Rate Country Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey United Arab Emirates Yemen

123

1970–1975

1990–1995

2005–2010

Female

Male

7.4a 6.7 5.4 6.4 7.1 3.9 7.6 6.7 4.6 6.8 5.9 9.3c 4.5c 6.5c 7.7 6.1 5.7 8.2c

4.1 3.4 3.9 4.0 5.8 2.9 5.1 3.2 3.0 4.1 3.7 6.3 4.1 5.4 4.9 3.1 2.9 3.9

2.4 2.7 2.9 1.8 4.9 2.9 3.3 2.3 1.9 2.7 2.4 2.5 2.4 3.0 3.1 2.0 2.2 1.9

29 26 23 24 23 26 25 25b 27 29 26 25 26 27 29 27b 23 24

33 30

8.5

7.7

5.5

25

26 — 29 29 30b 31 32 31 28 29 25 25 30b 27 22

Sources: Adapted and updated from Moghadam and Decker 2010, Table 2.3, p. 76. Fertility rates, 1970–1975: UN Population Division, “World Fertility Patterns 2007” (New York: United Nations, March 2008); 1990–1995, 2005–2010: United Nations, Human Development Report (New York: United Nations, various years), http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/data; mean age at marriage: United Nations, “Statistical Indicators on Men and Women,” http://unstats.un.org/unsd/ demographic/products/indwm/tab2b.htm, accessed April 2013. Notes: a. Data are from 1977. b. Data are from the mid-to-late 1990s. c. Data are from the mid1980s.

Thus we see that the demographic transition has had implications for, among other things, changes in gender relations and the status of women, and the earlier high fertility rates resulted in the “youth bulge” that was in evidence during the mass social protests in Iran in 2009 and in the Arab countries in 2011.29

Education and Women’s Empowerment There is much evidence that the work status of the wife, especially if she works in the modern sector of the economy (that is, in the nonagricultural

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cash economy), is an important determinant of marital fertility. Although women’s labor force participation has been increasing, formal sector employment is not pervasive among women in MENA, as was discussed in Chapter 3. Women’s educational attainment, however, has proceeded apace, with profound implications. As Fatima Mernissi once wrote, “Access to education seems to have an immediate, tremendous impact on women’s perception of themselves, their reproductive and sex roles, and their social mobility expectations.”30 Higher levels of education tend to result in more knowledge and use of contraceptives, which, along with the availability of family planning programs, has contributed to the fertility declines in the region. These trends were relevant to a growing proportion of the urban female population, and they have been visible enough to result in opposition by conservative forces. The relative rise in the position of women is seen by conservative forces as having the greatest potential of any factor to destroy the patriarchal family and its political, economic, and demographic structure. The Islamist movements of the 1980s can be viewed as partly motivated by the changes in women’s social position and the implications for the family. Caldwell has argued that mass schooling probably has had a greater impact on the family in developing countries than it had even in the West. First, mass schooling has come in many countries at an earlier stage of economic and occupational structure development than it did in the West. Second, schooling frequently means Westernization, including Western concepts of family and gender. According to Caldwell, “Schools destroy the corporate identity of the family, especially for those members previously most submissive and most wholly contained by the family: children and women.” Mernissi similarly emphasized the role of state-sponsored education in creating two generations of independent women. Her thesis is worth quoting at length: As corrupt and inefficient as it proved to be, the national state did nevertheless carry out a mass educational programme (limited to males only in the rural areas) after independence, and fostered the emergence of a new class: educated youth of both sexes. This class is the result of the interplay of three factors: (1) the demographic factor, the “youthification” of the population; (2) a political factor, the emergence of the welfare state; (3) a cultural factor, the change in women’s self-perception as actors in society. Centuries of women’s exclusion from knowledge have resulted in femininity being confused with illiteracy until a few decades ago. But things have progressed so rapidly in our Muslim countries that we women take literacy and access to schools and universities for granted.31

Algeria, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey are representative of the profound family changes that have occurred in the region. A few decades

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ago the majority of women married before age 20; in the 1990s, the figures for marriage of girls aged 15–19 were 10 percent in Algeria, 18 percent in Iran, 13–14 percent in Morocco and Turkey, and just 3 percent in Tunisia. In all three countries, the average age at first marriage rose dramatically, from 25 to 28 years of age for women.32 In the second edition of her classic book, Beyond the Veil, Mernissi argued that the idea of a young unmarried woman is completely novel in the Muslim world, for the whole concept of patriarchal honor is built around the idea of virginity, which reduces a woman’s role to its sexual dimension: reproduction within an early marriage. As she wrote: “To get an idea of how perturbing it is for Iranian society to deal with an army of unmarried adolescents one has only to remember that the legal age for marriage for females in Iran is thirteen and for males fifteen.”33 The concept of a menstruating and unmarried woman is so alien to the entire Muslim family system, Mernissi added, that it is either unimaginable or necessarily linked with fitna (moral and social disorder). The unimaginable is now a reality. Young men, faced with job insecurity or lacking a diploma to guarantee access to desired jobs, postpone marriage. Women, faced with the pragmatic necessity of counting on themselves instead of relying on a rich husband, further their formal education and remain unmarried until well into their twenties. Indeed, the average age of marriage for women and men in most MENA countries has registered a noticeable increase, as seen in Table 4.1. Even the oil countries, known for their conservatism, are home to an increasing number of unmarried young women: nowhere is the mean age at first marriage below twenty-two. The ages for young men are usually three to five years higher than those of young women. In all countries, urbanized youth marry later than those in rural areas. And it should be noted that in all cases, the average age of marriage is considerably higher than the legal minimum. At the same time, the “Middle Eastern Muslim family” has become highly differentiated, as well as characterized by different stages in the transition from patriarchal to egalitarian. Monogamous marriages are the norm, divorce is no longer a male prerogative, and many women choose to file for divorce even if it means loss of “financial rights.” In some countries, increasing modernity and development has brought about rising divorce rates (e.g., Iran and Tunisia). In Egypt, women’s rights groups and sympathetic lawyers successfully lobbied in 2000 for women’s rights to a khula divorce (whereby a woman may petition the court for a divorce, though she must forfeit any remaining mahr, or dowry). Even though urbanization has contributed to the rising age of marriage and changes in family structure, the single most important determinant has been women’s educational attainment. More women are completing secondary school, and a growing proportion of university students are women. Indeed, as seen in

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Table 4.2, the gender gap in secondary school enrollments in 2008–2010 was not only narrowing, but women’s enrollments exceeded those of men in almost half the countries for which data were available. At the university level, more women than men matriculated in most countries. According to the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report published by the World Economic Forum, women had the advantage globally in university enrollments, and the global mean ratio of female university students to male university students was 1.19. In Algeria, however the ratio was an amazing 1.4, and in Iran it was 1.15. Turkey did less well: the female-to-male university enrollment ratio was 0.76. Other MENA countries where educational enrollments of women exceeded those of men were Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the West Bank and Gaza. In other words, women’s university enrollments exceeded those of men in nearly every MENA country.34 And what were women studying? The fields of concentration—social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, medicine, law—varied from country to country. Women’s share of education and the humanities has been high since at least 1980 in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. But a noticeable trend in those countries, and in Algeria, Iran, Morocco, and Tunisia, is the feminiza-

Table 4.2

Ratio of Female to Male Enrollments in Secondary and University Education (in percent) in MENA, 2008–2011

Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey United Arab Emirates West Bank & Gaza Yemen

Secondary

University

102 — 96 96 — 102 106 107 111 — — 98 109 95 101 106 92 — 110 63

146 — 101 — 130 116 — 115 — 87 138 — 112 151 82 — 138 —

Source: World Bank, Education Statistics, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ENR.SECO .FM.ZS; http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ENR.TERT.FM.ZS, accessed April 2013.

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tion of enrollments in the medical sciences.35 What is more, women are becoming a growing presence among the teaching staff at the university level (see Table 4.3). There is some consensus that the dramatic increase in education among US women in the postwar era was a major cause of the women’s movement. The baby boomers, even more than those born a few years earlier, went to college in massive and unprecedented numbers. College education in turn increased women’s labor force participation; at the same time there was an expansion of married women’s labor force participation.36 A

Table 4.3

Country Algeria Bahrain Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Turkey UAE West Bank and Gaza Yemen

Higher Education and Related Sociodemographic Features in MENA, 2011 Female University Enrollment, 2011

Proportion Female Teaching Staff at University Level, 2011

Age at First Marriage, 2010 Male

Female

Contraceptive Prevalence, Married Women Aged 15–49, 2005–2009 (%)

34 — 32 49 — 62 38 — 58 — 13 29 32 37 — 34 34 — 51

38 33 — 19 — — 24 27 38 — 17 30 38 35 — 42 40 31 —

33 30 — 26 28 29 29 30 31 32 31 26 28 27 29 30 — 26 27

29 26 23 24 25 26 25 25 27 29 26 22 26 25 25 27 23 23 23

61 62 60 79 50 — 59 52 58 45 63 32 43 24 58 60 73 28 50

—

17

25

22

28

Sources: University enrollment, female: World Bank, World Development Indicators (Washington, DC: World Bank), http://data.worldbank.org/topic; proportion of women instructors in higher education: World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2011 (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2011), http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-gender-gap-report-2011; mean age at marriage: United Nations, “Statistical Indicators on Men and Women,” http://unstats.un.org/ unsd/demographic/products/indwm/tab2b.htm; contraception prevalence: UNDP, Human Development Report 2011 (New York: UNDP, 2011), table.4. Notes: — means the data are not available.

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similar pattern may be discerned in MENA countries—activist women, married and unmarried, emerge from the ranks of the educated and employed. This rapid social change—the impact of industrialization, urbanization, and education on marriage, the family, and gender roles— caused a conservative backlash in the form of the Islamist movement. Mernissi once referred to fundamentalism as a “defense mechanism against profound changes in both sex roles and the touchy subject of sexual identity.”37 In the 1980s, fundamentalists were concerned that education for women had dissolved traditional arrangements of space segregation, family ethics, and gender roles. They thus insisted on veiling and the enforcement of conservative family laws. Since then, Islamist movements have been recruiting in the universities, and throughout the Middle East one sees veiled university women who are also active participants in Islamist movements. Islamist movements and political parties certainly have women supporters who continue to see the family unit as essential and natural and religion as a key source of identity. At the same time, many Islamist women have had to face second-class citizenship and subjection to patriarchal gender relations within their movements and communities, and many have rebelled against it. Often these educated—and sometimes employed—Islamist women raise questions about male domination, polygyny, and unequal norms and laws governing divorce and child custody. Religious women who challenge their subordinate status within the family and the society, partly by engaging in a more woman-centered rereading of the Quran and early Islamic history, have come to be known as Islamic feminists. Women’s employment has been almost as important as women’s education in changing the position and self-perception of women and in altering the patriarchal gender contract. That is certainly true for women in the professions and could also pertain to some working-class women. Sociologist Tahire Erman has shown how Turkish migrant women’s involvement in paid employment has led them to question patriarchy, although she finds that other factors—such as affiliation with the Alevi sect, adherence to leftist ideology, and having strong mothers—also shape the extent to which women question patriarchy. In describing her entry into the world of paid employment, one woman told Erman: When I wanted to work, my husband objected to it. He said, “Who will take care of the children if you are not home all day?” [Another woman joins in, saying, “Our husbands didn’t want us to work. They said they wouldn’t live on women’s money. This is the influence of the village.”] But we needed money. We needed it for our children. Through a relative I found a job as a maid. First I didn’t tell my husband [laughing]. After a couple of days, I said to him, “Look, I started working for a nice lady. She pays me well. We need the money.” This is how I started working.38

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In many cases, both unmarried and married women make regular contributions to the family budget, and in the cases of married couples, women’s income can be as important as the husband’s source of income. Women’s involvement in paid employment reflects modifications to the patriarchal gender contract (though not necessarily to the gender division of labor within the household) and contributes to changing attitudes toward gender, family, and sexuality.

Sexuality, Cultural Change, and Backlash The rise in the age at first marriage and the growing population of unmarried young people has had significant cultural implications across the region. In Tunisia and Morocco, a growing proportion of households are headed by single, divorced, or widowed women who are also in the labor force. Sexual relations outside marriage may or may not be increasing, but according to one feminist organization—the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates—the new sociocultural realities require that the issue of “sexual rights” be addressed.39 In that connection, a conference on sexual and reproductive rights took place in Tunis in 2004, with the participation of women’s rights activists from across the region. In Morocco in 2010, women’s rights groups formed a coalition with physicians associations and human rights groups, called Springtime of Dignity, to lobby for penal code reform toward the criminalization of rape and the decriminalization of abortion. Anthropologist and psychoanalyst Lilia Labidi reports that in Tunisia there has been a shift in the “culture of shame,” with a marked preference for criminalization of rape and crimes of honor. In particular, she draws attention to social and attitudinal changes in three areas: virginity (the blood of the wedding night is no longer displayed), salaried women’s work (considered normal and indeed desirable), and the sexual segregation of space (considered unacceptable). As she asserts: “A half-century after the enactment of the PSC [Tunisia’s personal status code]—which legally ensures equal pay to both sexes for equal work—men are no longer ashamed if not solely responsible for meeting the family’s needs.”40 Such attitudinal changes are likely most prevalent in Tunis. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, increases in the numbers of unmarried young people and the fear of illicit sex led some clerical and lay authorities to encourage “temporary marriage” (muta’a in Arabic, sigheh in Persian), which is a contractual arrangement for licit sexual relations under Shia interpretation of sharia law. Iranian American anthropologist Shahla Haeri notes that “pleasure marriage” is intended to regularize sexual relations outside permanent marriage and prevent fitna, but she acknowledges

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that it usually takes place between two unequal partners. Similarly, Hoda Salah has written of the religious approval and legalization of the Sunni form of temporary marriage (misyar) that occurred in Egypt in 1999 and Saudi Arabia in 2006. The Sunni and Shia forms are similar in the woman’s renunciation of any financial obligations on the part of the man, even in the case of childbirth, and in the fact that the partners in the pleasure marriage do not have to live together. Women are often paid to enter into a pleasure marriage, but they receive no alimony later. Arguing that the legitimization of temporary marriage in the Sunni world has created “a legitimate Islamic framework in the entire Sunni world for the acting out of sexual needs,” Salah adds that there has been “a dramatic transformation in sexual practices and in society’s views toward sexuality.”41 Another contribution to changing norms, Salah explains, is that millions of male and female viewers are watching Islamic sex-education programs on satellite channels such as Al Jazeera, Al-Arabia, and Al-Mehwar that discuss sexuality with unprecedented frankness. By legalizing sexuality, the religious and political authorities hope to win supporters and sympathizers for the Islamic movement, presenting Islamism as a modern, open movement in which liberation and sexual development in the name of Islam are taking place. But Salah acknowledges that the practice has its detractors in the Arab world, and especially among feminists. Clerics allow pleasure marriages primarily to the benefit of businessmen and well-off males; after all, the corresponding fatwas come from the oil monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Men thus receive religious legitimacy to act out their sexuality with neither moderation nor responsibility. They can marry several women in various cities and countries, without their wives—including their primary wives—knowing about one another. That such marriages are being allowed right now is perceived as the result and victory of the Islamic fundamentalism of the rich oil countries, a return to the pre-modern period. . . . Poor Arab countries such as Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen have recently become a huge marriage market for men from the Gulf, who marry women for a summer vacation, sometimes even impregnating them, and then return to their home countries.42

Similarly, temporary marriage is highly unpopular in middle-class Iranian society, which associates it with legalized prostitution. Instead, as Iranian American anthropologist Pardis Mahdavi has explained, young people rebel through unorthodox modes of dress and hairstyles and by holding parties, dancing, drinking alcohol, “and kissing our boyfriends in the park.” As such, young people are “comporting their resistance” and using their bodies in deliberate ways that suggests a kind of sexual revolution.43

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In response to such developments, some governments have reverted to neopatriarchal moves. In Iran in 2012, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decried the rising age at first marriage and the low fertility rate, calling for more temporary marriage as well as polygamous marriages. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on women to procreate and have more children, and Iranian minister of health and medical education Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi said, “The budget for the population control program has been fully eliminated and such a project no longer exists in the health ministry. The policy of population control does not exist as it did previously.” At the same time, the government issued a statement intended to bar women from entering some academic fields in higher education. 44 Clearly, a backlash against women’s advancements in the previous two decades was building. (See also Chapter 6.) More backlash was attempted in Turkey in May–June 2012, when prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the ruling Islamic AK Party attempted to criminalize adultery and abortion, terming the latter “a massacre.” Massive protests, which were joined by a handful of veiled women, forced him to retreat. Women aged twenty to sixty were seen with placards that read, “My body, my choice.” And turning the tables on Erdogan, other protesters held placards that alluded to the killing of Kurdish dissidents in Uludere: “Abortion is a right. Uludere is a massacre.”45 Thus two significant social developments may be discerned in connection with changes to, and discourses about, the Middle Eastern family. In one, activist women, married and unmarried, emerge from the ranks of the educated and employed; their demands for greater civil, political, and social rights draw on global discourses and international norms (such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) but are rooted in their own experiences. In the other, Islamist movements and governments decry these changes and blame them on Western influence, or they attempt to “Islamize” sexuality and offer an Islamic alternative to sexual relations that take place outside a permanent marriage. There is no doubt that the Middle East and North Africa has become more Islamic since the 1980s, as measured by the prevalence of veiling, the proliferation of mosques, and the strength of Islamic parties and movements, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring and the first set of elections held under democratic conditions. Still, in MENA, as in other parts of the world, educated and employed women have formed women’s rights organizations, have become involved in trade unions and professional associations, and have helped change family relations from patriarchal to egalitarian. Here, educated and employed women push for the modernization of family law, greater social and political participation, and more equality (see Chapter 8). A critical mass of educated and employed MENA women, with

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fewer children and more time for civic activities and collective action, has formed women’s movements that are challenging patriarchal gender relations, the neopatriarchal state, and patriarchal family laws. In this, they have the support of some men who share their values and goals of egalitarian family relations. In 1999–2000, Mansoor Moaddel and his associates undertook a comparative study of value orientations in Egypt, Jordan, and Iran concerning religion, gender, and politics. Their findings confirm the arguments I have made regarding significant social changes in the region as a whole but also variations across the MENA countries. For example, although the respondents in all three countries attached great value to the institution of marriage, a rather significant number of Iranians (17 percent) agreed with the statement that marriage had become an outdated institution. On the issue of wife obedience, only 47 percent of Egyptians, 42 percent of Jordanians, and just 24 percent of Iranians strongly agreed with the statement that a wife must always obey her husband. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of respondents in all three countries disagreed with the institution of polygamy. Moaddel and his colleagues found, too, that the ideal number of children varied in the three countries. Most respondents in Egypt considered two or three to be the ideal number, in Jordan four or more, and in Iran, two. It should be noted that this corresponded almost exactly to the total fertility rate in each country at the time. In response to a question asking if women needed to have children in order to feel satisfied, about 89 percent of Egyptians and Jordanians agreed, but only 47 percent of Iranians. Correspondingly, a far larger percentage of the Iranian respondents (40 percent) agreed that a working mother, just like a nonworking mother, could develop intimate relations with her children, compared with 23 percent in Jordan and only 19 percent in Egypt. On the question of whether men should be favored over women in jobs, given high unemployment rates in the region, a considerable majority of respondents in all three countries said that men should be given preference. But the younger age group displayed less gender bias than the older age groups. And finally, in measuring the strength of family ties, the researchers found that 86 percent of Jordanians, 78 percent of Egyptians, and 53 percent of Iranians surveyed agreed with the statement that “making my parents proud of me is one of my main goals in life.”46 Family ties still matter.

Conclusion Since the 1960s, social structures in the Middle East have undergone rapid change as state systems have modernized and national economies have been integrated into the global economy. The material bases of classic patri-

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archy have crumbled under the impact of capital penetration, infrastructural development, legal reform, mass education, and employment. In this context, women and the family have experienced change, and Muslim family law has become a field of contestation among feminists, Islamists, and the state. Urbanization has transformed the extended household unit characteristic of classic patriarchy into more modernized versions. The patriarchal gender contract remains in place in many parts of the region, but economic changes and women’s collective action may undermine it in the years to come. I refer to this as “patriarchy in crisis.” It was in this context of social change, and especially changes in the structure of the family, that legal conservatives and Islamist ideologues sought in the 1980s and 1990s to stem the tide by insisting on returning to or strengthening patriarchal family laws. In some countries, the conservatives made gains. But in Algeria, Iran, Turkey, and Tunisia, conservative Islamic forces have had to face strong resistance from “modernizing women,” and family law reform has taken place in a number of countries. During the region’s long twentieth century, therefore, the Arab-Islamic family and its concomitants—rigid sex roles, women’s legal status as minors, the prerogatives of fathers and husbands, and high fertility—have been challenged by socioeconomic developments (urbanization, the expansion of the urban labor market, and education) and political action (state legal reform and women’s movements). Michael Mann has suggested an evolution, in the West, from classic patriarchy to neopatriarchy and a gendered class structure. The capitalist market and liberal bourgeois ideology worked in concert to break down the private/public and male/female dichotomies, while the growth of education “provided women with one of their furthest points of entry into the public sphere and into economic stratification.”47 Parallel to these socioeconomic changes were ideological, cultural, and discursive developments regarding women’s equality, autonomy, and liberation. In the Western world, socioeconomic changes—including mass education and mass employment—have transformed women’s relationship to their families; in addition, new family or household forms have proliferated. Since the twentieth century, it has become increasingly possible for the individual in the advanced capitalist countries of the West to live without the insurance afforded by an extended set of ties. This is not yet the case in the Middle East and North Africa; the family remains important not only economically but emotionally, even for highly educated women. But their range of choices regarding family formation, duration, and size has quite definitely expanded. More research is needed on the household division of labor by sex. Thus far it appears that middle-class families in the Gulf countries, Lebanon, and Jordan prefer to rely on foreign imported domestic servants to shared housework; in Morocco, they still use native-born maids. Else-

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where, families continue to exercise the traditional sexual division of labor, whereby the women are responsible for domestic tasks, childcare, and eldercare. If current trends continue, it is highly likely that in the years ahead, we will witness women’s rights groups turning their attention to women’s double burden, family ethics, and social policies for work-family balance.

Notes 1. Parsons 1951; Parsons and Bales 1955. 2. Davis 1986; Posadskaya 1993. 3. Barbara Hanawalt, cited in Boswell 1988, p. 410; Levine 1991; Gordon 1989. See also Caldwell 1982, pp. 166–169; Shanin 1987; Sen 1990; Papanek 1990. Boswell’s study locates the phenomenon of child abandonment in patria potestas, the Roman-derived paternal authority. Gordon’s study of wife and child abuse in Boston is highly critical of the patriarchal family and the prerogatives of the father. Both studies recognize extra-familial causes of abandonment and abuse, such as food scarcity, disease, poverty, and unemployment. 4. Coontz 1992, 2000; Einhorn 1993. See also Posadskaya 1993; Bodrova 1993; Wolchik 1993. 5. Klatch 1988, pp. 675–676. 6. Mutahhari 1982, pp. 7, 31, 58. 7. See Choueiri 1990, pp. 127–128. See also Akhavi 1997. 8. Hashemi 1981, p. 180. “Companionship” and “courtship” are euphemisms for sexual services. 9. Research Group for Muslim Women’s Studies 1990, p. 33. 10. Cited in Salime 2011, p. 61. 11. See especially Zaretsky 1976; Humphries 1977. For a more critical view, see Seccombe 1986. 12. See Moghadam 1996a; Lynch 2002; Butler 2002; Tohidi 2010. 13. On patriarchy in the Middle East, see Sharabi 1988; Kandiyoti 1988, 1991; and Tillion 1983, esp. chap. 6. I have also been inspired by Caldwell 1982; Rapp 1975; and Goody 1990. See also Pitt-Rivers 1977, esp. chap. 1; Peristiany 1966, p. 182; and Bourdieu 1966. Honor killing is the name given to a customary practice whereby women and girls are killed by members of their family on suspicion of having had or having aspired to pre- or extramarital relations—because such sexual transgressions presumably violate the integrity and honor of the family. On historical change, see Wood 1988. 14. Engels 1972 [1884]; Lerner 1986; Mann 1986. 15. Doumato 1991; see also Tillion 1983. 16. Baffoun 1982; Charrad 2001. 17. Walby 1990, 1996. For a discussion of the status of women in connection with modes of production, see Lie 1996. 18. Keddie 1990; Sharabi 1988; Ghoussoub 1987; Mernissi 1987. 19. See Agarwal 1988; Moghadam 1992, 2006. 20. Quoted in Rubenberg 2001, 1. 21. Rubenberg 2001; Yount 2008, p. 189; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2005 on WCLAC research; Sholkamy 2008. 22. Levine 1991, p. 4.

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23. See Chapter 1 in this book and the contributions in Bulatao and Casterline 2001; see also Greenhalgh 1990. 24. World Fertility Survey: Major Findings and Implications (Voorburg, Netherlands: International Statistical Institute, 1984), p. 13. 25. UNDP, Human Development Report 2011, table 9, p. 159. 26. Data are from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators 2000, table 2.18; and UNDP’s Arab Human Development Report 2009. Israeli data are from the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2009, table N. See also Assaad 1995, p. 21. 27. The Demographic and Health Surveys were carried out by Macro International, with funding from the US Agency for International Development. Final reports and other publications for the countries surveyed may be found on the DHS website at www.measuredhs.com. 28. Data from UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2009, 36, 232, table 4. Although the elderly population is still a fraction of the young population, it is expected to grow in line with lowered fertility rates. Care for the elderly is already a matter of social concern in Lebanon, although it remains largely the responsibility of women in the family. See Sugita, Esim, and Omeira 2009. 29. On the “youth bulge,” see Assaad and Roudi-Fahimi 2007; Fargues 2008. 30. Mernissi 1987, p. xxv. 31. Mernissi 1987, pp. xxiii–xxiv; Caldwell 1982, p. 219. 32. United Nations 2000. 33. Mernissi 1987, p. xxiv. On family honor and fitna in the Middle East, see Sabbah 1984. 34. World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2009, p. 22, table D3. 35. See CAWTAR 2001, table A/34, p. 231; Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011. 36. Chafetz and Dworkin 1986; Staggenborg 1998. 37. Mernissi 1987, p. xxiv. 38. Erman 1998, p. 152. 39. Bochra Bel Haj Hamida, Tunisian lawyer and Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates activist, personal communication, Helsinki, May 2003. 40. Labidi 2008, p. 243. 41. Salah 2011, p. 580. See also Haeri 1989. 42. Salah (ibid)., p. 576. 43. Mahdavi 2009, p. 11; Mahdavi 2008. 44. Roudi 2012. 45. See Gul Tuysuz and Anna Ozbek, “Turkish Women Rally Against Plans to Restrict Access to Abortion,” CNN, June 17, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/ 17/world/europe/turkey-abortion-rally/index.html, accessed December 2012. 46. Moaddel 2007. 47. Mann 1986, p. 52.

5

Gender, Conflict, and War: Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq

The armed conflicts in Yemen, Libya, and Syria in 2011–2013 diverged dramatically from the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco. The latter were largely peaceful protests followed by relatively smooth democratic transitions, whereas the former were characterized by armed battles, loss of life, external intervention, and considerable damage to infrastructure. At the time of this writing, the future of Yemen, Libya, and Syria was unclear. Time would tell if citizens and the international community would be able to repair the damage, rebuild trust, and propel the countries on a new path of development, democratization, security, and women’s rights. Examples from other conflict areas in the region—notably Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, which combined hypermasculinity, external intervention, and the proliferation of arms—did not, however, inspire confidence. The region has seen far too many conflicts over a period of decades and is also characterized by high rates of spending on armaments. Over a ten-year period, from 2000 to 2010, military spending as a percentage of GDP was very high throughout the region. The figures ranged from 3.5 percent of GDP in Algeria to a whopping 10 percent in Oman and Saudi Arabia.1 In Yemen, military expenditure as a percentage of GDP was higher than health expenditure in some years (2000–2004), and in other years (2006–2008) only slightly less; in Syria, it was consistently higher. In some countries, therefore, there was a trade-off between national security and human security, between military development and social development. In Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, military expenditure was considerably higher than health and education spending across all years. Only in Libya was military expenditure relatively low—ironically, given the punishment the Qaddafi government received in 2011—and certainly much lower than spending on health. Similarly, Iran’s military expenditure, which was 137

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always much lower than its spending on education and health, declined between 2006 and 2010.2 There are serious consequences both to the stockpiling of weapons and to increasing the flow of arms. First, sectarian or civil strife can intensify. Second, there are regional spillover effects, as was seen after the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, in Mali and Nigeria, and with respect to the crisis in Syria, with its effects on internal politics in Lebanon and possibly in Jordan. Third, high military expenditures also absorb spending that should be allocated to health, education, social protection, and measures to enhance women’s social participation and rights. In Chapter 2, I discussed Afghanistan in terms of the failed Saur (April) Revolution (1978–1992). Here I consider Afghanistan in terms of decades of a gendered international conflict. It is almost a banality to note that armed conflict destroys resources and lives and stalls or sets back socioeconomic development, but it is worth repeating some of the details here before discussing the gender dynamics of conflict and war and examining the three cases in some depth. Afghanistan and Iraq have seen some thirty years of conflict, starting roughly the same time, and both countries have experienced invasions and occupation by foreign troops. They are also beset by ethnic, communal, and sectarian divisions. The decision by the United States and its proxy, Pakistan, to undermine a left-wing government that had taken power in April 1978 has had long-ranging effects, from the collapse of a modernizing state and the end of women’s rights to the proliferation of armed Islamists in the region and across the globe. Iraq had a brutal eight-year conflict with Iran (1980–1988), but the punitive sanctions of the 1990s—approved by the UN Security Council following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait—were chiefly responsible for the setbacks in health and literacy and the damage to the country’s social infrastructure, and utter devastation followed the US military invasion of 2003. Palestine has seen conflict since at least the early 1970s, when its armed struggle for national recognition and against Israeli occupation took shape. The first intifada (uprising) of the late 1980s paved the way for a peace process and establishment of the Palestinian Authority, but the outbreak of the second intifada in 2001 led to more fighting and many deaths on both sides. In addition to the infrastructural damage caused by punitive Israeli military action, a consequence of the second intifada was a collapsed economy, exceedingly high unemployment, and setbacks to the women’s movement. Table 5.1 summarizes key events in the three countries over four decades. Armed conflict has dire effects on all citizens, but women face specific challenges.3 Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine all have weak state systems (although Iraq had a strong, centralized state prior to the 2003 invasion by the United States, the UK, and other members of the “coalition of

Table 5.1 Timeline of Conflicts and War: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq 1970s

1980s

1990s

2000–2011

Palestine

Palestine liberation movement: PLO, PFLP, DFLP; Arafat addresses UN General Assembly

First intifada, 1988

Madrid negotiations; Oslo peace process; Palestinian National Authority established; suicide bombings increase

Second, “Al-Aqsa” intifada; Hamas wins elections, January 2006; West Bank and Gaza separate; peace process stalls; Israel constructs wall of separation and expands settlements

Afghanistan

Saur (April) Revolution, 1978; social reform program announced

Internationalized civil conflict

US-backed mujahidin take over, April 1992; internecine conflict; Taliban take over, 1996

US invades and occupies, October 2001; Taliban regroups, 2006; US announces troop withdrawal for 2014

Iraq

Under Baath Party, oilfinanced development projects; Saddam Hussein takes power in 1978

Invasion of southern Iran; eight-year war with Iran ensues

Invasion of Kuwait; US forces withdrawal of Iraqi military; sanctions follow; deterioration of health, education, welfare, infrastructure

US-UK invasion and occupation, 2003; Iraq descends into sectarian warfare and resistance to occupation; autonomous Kurdish region established; United States withdraws troops in December 2011

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the willing”), and they have suffered armed opposition groups, as well as serious problems with human security, human rights, and women’s participation. Palestine has two advantages over the other two countries: a relatively stronger civil society and a well-organized diaspora. However, the conflict with Israel and lack of resolution of the national question have hardened identities and strengthened patriarchal tendencies, leading to the imposition of social controls on Palestinian women in the refugee camps and villages, and the inability of the Palestinian Authority to implement a women’s rights agenda. Violence against women is common in all three cases. In Afghanistan’s highly patriarchal society, women have long been subjected to violence by husbands and male kin. “Honor killings” occur with some frequency in certain Iraqi and Palestinian communities. As feminist scholarship has shown, constructions of masculinity and femininity have tended to “normalize” and “naturalize” violence against women. On top of that, wars, and especially occupations by foreign powers, have been accompanied by crises of masculinity that have led to restrictions on women’s mobility and increases in violence against women, in a destructive form of hypermasculinity. 4 In all three countries, women are caught between weak states, occupying powers, armed opposition movements, and patriarchal gender arrangements. Moreover, politics have been masculine and male dominated, with women largely excluded from political decisionmaking. A number of international treaties now recognize the effects of armed conflict on women as well as women’s contributions to peacemaking, calling on governments to include women in peace negotiations, postconflict reconstruction, and peacebuilding. These include the landmark Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325, adopted in October 2000, and SCR 1820, adopted in 2008. Among other things, SCR 1325 mandated the increased participation and representation of women at all levels of decisionmaking; required consideration of the specific protection needs of women and girls in conflict; and required that attention be paid to gender perspectives in the following situations: postconflict processes; UN programming, reporting, and Security Council missions; and UN peace support operations. The focus of SCR 1820 is sexual violence as a weapon of war. In 2009–2010, resolutions 1888, 1889, and 1960 were adopted, building on 1820 as well as on 1325.5 The adoption of these important resolutions notwithstanding, women actors and gender issues continue to be sidelined in many contemporary conflicts, peacekeeping initiatives, and reconstruction efforts. In this chapter, I shine a spotlight on the gender dynamics of conflict and war and the efforts of women’s groups to mitigate their devastating effects. I begin by examining each case study in some detail.

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Palestine As was discussed in Chapter 2, Palestinian women have been active participants in the movement for statehood, and they have founded many organizations that have contributed to a vibrant civil society. Nonetheless, social problems plague many women. The problems that Palestinian women face—early marriage and high fertility, the poverty of female-headed households, difficulties in daily life, domestic violence and sexual abuse, low political participation and representation, and absence of a legal framework for rights—originate in patriarchal gender relations, the Israeli military occupation and lack of resolution of the national problem, and the conservative nature of the main political forces. Patriarchal relations are particularly strict in the refugee camps, small towns, and the Gaza Strip. There, Palestinian women tend to marry young, at about age nineteen, often to close cousins. The hijab campaign of the late 1980s led to increasing observance of veiling by Palestinian women, including students at Birzeit University.6 The first intifada resulted in unprecedented opportunities for women’s social participation, as was discussed in Chapter 2. But Israeli intransigence hardened identities such that the Islamist forces gained sway and the second intifada assumed a religio-political form. After the Madrid negotiations and the Oslo Accords, debates in Palestinian society concerned the nature of the Basic Law and women’s legal status within it, along with the formulation of a unified and more egalitarian civil code. The latter demand, which was contained in the 1994 “Draft Document of Principles of Women’s Rights” (also known as the Palestinian Women’s Charter) and discussed in the Women’s Model Parliament, was fiercely attacked by religio-nationalists and the media. With respect to the Basic Law, compromise language eventually was agreed upon, but the document languished on Yasir Arafat’s desk for years. In 2002, Arafat finally signed the Basic Law, but Israel reasserted military control over much of the (limited) territory it had turned over to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo process, “leaving the still not fully ratified Basic Law as a document without a country,” in Deborah Gerner’s words. 7 The second intifada, largely dominated by Islamist groups, eclipsed all other issues, especially feminist claims—including the May 2005 national debate on the subject of honor killings, spearheaded by Zahira Kamal, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of women’s affairs. Studies suggest that the high rates of unemployment, loss of livelihood, homelessness, and the frustrations of the occupation may be tied to increases in domestic violence. One poll showed that 86 percent of respondents said that violence against women had significantly or somewhat increased as a result of changing political, economic, and social conditions.

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When asked if they knew of a woman who had been assaulted by her husband, 57 percent of the respondents said yes, representing an increase of 22 points over a poll taken the previous year by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion. According to Nahla Abdo, research on Palestinian refugee camps, particularly in Gaza, revealed that refugee women and girls bore the brunt of increased physical, mental, psychological, and sexual domestic violence, including incest and rape.8 Women also faced the violence of the occupation. At the close of its March 2004 deliberations, the UN Commission on the Status of Women passed a resolution expressing concern about the “grave deterioration in the situation of Palestinian women” and called for the resumption of the peace process. Subsequently, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women for the UN Commission on Human Rights visited the Palestinian Authority and stated in a press release that “the atmosphere of legitimized violence as a method of conflict resolution” pervading the Palestinian Authority had become integrated into all aspects of women’s lives. Women could be “killed, targeted for arrest, detained and harassed for being related to men suspected of being linked to armed groups, and may be displaced as a result of house demolitions.”9 Obstacles also complicated women’s efforts to provide food and other basic necessities for their families. Thousands of women have lost husbands and male kin to the intifada, exile, emigration in search of work, Israeli imprisonment, or death. In refugee camps, the number of femaleheaded households is always high; in 2003, out of a total population of almost 4 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency, between 43 and 52 percent of households were headed by women. In a 2005 report, UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimated that half of all refugee families were headed by women, and female-headed households had been disproportionately affected by the rise in poverty that accompanied the second intifada, along with Israeli-imposed curfews and the closures of roads and facilities. Meanwhile, women’s participation in the labor force, while remaining low, had been made even more difficult by the rise in unemployment after the second intifada. The conflict, curfews, and checkpoints also adversely affected girls’ access to schooling.10 Settlers have been known to verbally abuse and physically harass Palestinian women residents of East Jerusalem. One example of graffiti in Hebron read: “Watch out Fatima—we will rape all Arab women.”11 Rioting settlers destroyed Palestinian-owned businesses, property, farmland, and crops (e.g., olive and fruit trees), thereby destroying the livelihoods of Palestinian women and their families. Settlers also attacked Palestinian homes while women and their families were inside. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem collected personal testimonies describing such

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attacks. All that compounded the difficulties Palestinian women already faced in meeting their family and household responsibilities and increased their dependence on assistance. What is more, births attended by skilled health workers decreased from 97.4 percent before the escalation of violence in 2000 to 67 percent in 2002. Home deliveries increased from 3 percent to 30 percent in the same period. A 2009 report in The Lancet, the British medical journal, described a low level of postnatal care, stagnating mortality rates among infants and children under age five, and stunted growth affecting about 10 percent of Palestinian children. 12 Perhaps because of all the violence, frustration, and humiliation Palestinians have faced, an unprecedented and certainly unexpected development occurred: the participation of a number of women in suicide bombings after the onset of the second intifada. The Palestinian national movement has produced at least one well-known guerrilla fighter—Leila Khaled, who was a militant with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the 1970s—but the image of armed militancy was invariably a masculine one. Although Palestinian women have been strongly nationalist even when engaged in peacebuilding initiatives, violent action seemed to be outside the scope of their activities until the second intifada. As was discussed in Chapter 2, Palestinian women’s political participation has been consistent and often significant, though usually unacknowledged. The national movement has produced outstanding diplomat-activists such as Hanan Ashrawi (the first female spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), instrumental in the Madrid peace process, though not in the secret Oslo talks), Leila Shahid (ambassador to France, Belgium, and the Netherlands), and Zahira Kamal (minister of women’s affairs in 2004–2005 and a founder of the women’s movement in the 1970s). In January 2005 Kamal was the sole woman in the Palestinian government. In discussions that I had with her in 2005, she noted difficulties in implementing her mandate of gender mainstreaming across the ministries, although she did cite the development of a gender-statistical database by the Ministry of Planning as a positive sign. 13 Despite the presence of women like Kamal, widely respected by diplomats and feminists alike, Palestinian women were not included in formal power structures to any significant extent. The Palestine Authority did not demonstrate any strong support for women’s rights, and until the democratic elections of 2005 and 2006 that followed Arafat’s death, clientelism and patronage were the main criteria for political appointments. According to the Palestinian Working Women Society (PWWS), the representation of women in decisionmaking positions at all levels had been minimal since the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), occupying fewer than 10 percent of leadership positions. A grassroots feminist push for quotas resulted in about 17 percent female representation in the municipal elections of 2004. In each

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local council, two seats were then reserved for women, with each municipality electing from nine to fifteen councilors. Women activists, I was told, were pushing for 20 percent representation on the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC).14 Though not fully involved in decisionmaking, the women’s NGO sector was active and strong in the mid-2000s, engaged in advocacy and research. Some notable organizations included the WCLAC, the Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC), the PWWS, and the Bisan Center; most were part of the umbrella organization, the General Union of Palestinian Women. Palestinian feminist scholars worked at the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, the Women’s Studies Center, and the Women’s Studies program at Al-Quds University. Scholars and activists alike maintained regional and international links, working with the Tunisbased women’s think tank CAWTAR, the Arab Women’s Forum (AISHA, established in 1992), a number of transnational feminist networks, the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), UNIFEM (since 2010 UN Women), and UNESCO. In October 2012, an unprecedented number of women—more than 1,000—ran for office during the municipal elections in the West Bank, but few were elected. In the conservative city of Hebron, Maysoun Qawasmi organized an all-woman ticket, but it did not receive enough votes to obtain any seats.15 Despite the achievements of Palestinian elite women, and notwithstanding the serious problems that women face generally, the following “peace” agreements made no mention of women: the Oslo Accords, the Cairo agreement, the Wye River Memorandum, and the Quartet-Backed Roadmap. Yet, the record of Palestinian-Israeli interaction across the years exemplifies the importance of building bridges among women and the illogic of ignoring women in negotiations and postconflict political developments. Palestinian and Israeli women met and talked and negotiated in informal settings across many years, and the Jerusalem Link—the main partners of which were Bat Shalom and the Jerusalem Center for Women— was set up to bring together a number of progressive Israeli and Palestinian women’s groups in a more formal network of communication. In October 2003, two Israeli women, but no Palestinian women, participated in the negotiation of the independently initiated (nonstate) Geneva Accord. To overcome their marginalization from official peacemaking processes, women undertook peacebuilding initiatives in local homes and churches, in European cities and in symbolic places like the Notre Dame Center on the border of Israeli and Palestinian Jerusalem, according to a 2005 UNIFEM report. In February and March 2002, Jewish and Palestinian Israeli women from Bat Shalom together observed Land Day, focusing on Palestinian women’s points of view. After 2001, Israeli women belonging to Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch) maintained a daily presence at numerous Israeli

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Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoints throughout the West Bank, monitoring and recording the behavior of soldiers and police to prevent the abuse of Palestinians. Machsom Watch, which admitted only women as members, used nonviolent, nonaggressive confrontation to challenge the power of the security establishment and to demand accountability. In 2013, it maintained a website and published a weekly report in order to bring to public attention the human rights abuses and humiliation that Palestinians endured. Whether members of the earlier Women in Black or the more recent Machsom Watch, pro-peace Israeli women often suffered insults from right-wing Israelis.16 After SCR 1325 was adopted, Palestinian and Israeli women studied it with a view toward making it a reality in the “peace process.” In 2002, Terry Greenblatt, director of Bat Shalom, and Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas, executive director of WCLAC and representative of Equality Now, met with members of the Security Council to discuss ways of increasing women’s participation in peace and security. On March 8, 2003, women from Jerusalem Link met with national and international representatives in Ramallah, East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Jerusalem Link and Equality Now were in negotiations with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s office to develop a mechanism for implementation of SCR 1325 in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.17 In early February 2005, the Ad Hoc Coalition of Palestinian and Israeli Women wrote a letter to then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice during her mission to the Middle East, pointing out that women had been at the forefront of peacebuilding: Women are the majority stakeholders in this enterprise, with a proven expertise in reconciliation and rapprochement, yet not a single Israeli woman, and only one Palestinian woman [Hanan Ashrawi] has held an official role at any Middle East peace summit. This is not only in violation of UN Security Resolution 1325 . . . but a squandering of formidable skill, talent, and experience that both nations can ill afford.18

At around the same time, Amneh Badran of the Jerusalem Coalition of Women aptly referred to “the political turmoil we live in, the patriarchal social realities, the deteriorated economic situation, [and] the backward educational system.” She called for “active and responsible participation from the international community towards implementing international legality, ending the Israeli military occupation in all its forms, and then embarking on a process of radical democratization of political life, economy and culture so that women and men can fulfill their power to act as citizens.”19 Palestinian women have faced violence from male relatives as well as Israeli soldiers and settlers. WCLAC has been an important Palestinian

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feminist institution working on reforming personal status laws, combating violence against women, and increasing women’s political participation. It has faced much opposition, however, from conservative forces in Palestinian society and from the Israeli occupation. The house demolition policy and other human rights violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation had a terrible impact on health, education, an adequate standard of living, work, and family life. The frustrations and indignities of everyday life contributed to violence against women by male kin—who largely enjoyed impunity for their actions. As WCLAC leader Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamas stated: “The struggle for women’s rights is formidable under ideal circumstances, but in a situation of a militarized conflict the task becomes overwhelmingly difficult.”20 WCLAC has continued to document violations of Palestinian women’s human rights, with a view toward eventual gender justice as well as national liberation. In 2012, however, the goal seemed elusive at a time when the Israeli government continued to enjoy the unqualified support of the US government and to resist Palestinian measures to attain statehood, European governments were dealing with their economic difficulties, and the world’s attention seemed fixated on the crisis in Syria. The cycle of violence continued in November 2012, when the Israeli military reacted to Hamas rocket attacks by bombing Gaza.

Afghanistan As discussed in Chapter 2, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan came into being in 1978 with the Saur (April) Revolution. A revolutionary program was announced that included land reform, formal rights for the various nationalities, women’s rights, and compulsory schooling. A tribalIslamist uprising emerged in the latter part of 1978; covert US military support for the insurgency began in the summer of 1979, six months before the intervention of the Soviet army that had been requested by the Kabul government. During the Reagan administration, US military support through its proxy, Pakistan, drew the Soviet military into a protracted international war. The mujahidin, the seven-party alliance of insurgents, received additional support from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and jihadists from across the Muslim world. It is interesting if perplexing to note that the United States backed an Islamist rebellion opposed to girls’ schooling, whereas the Soviet Union supported the modernizing, left-wing government dedicated to women’s emancipation and social development in an impoverished country. The US involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s would have long-term and very adverse effects. After the departure of the Soviet army in February 1989, the conflict raged until April 1992, when the government of Dr. Najibullah fell to the

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insurgents. The consequences were the collapse of a modernizing state and a civil war among the mujahidin (1992–1996), during which time the country was divided into fiefdoms ruled by warlords with a propensity for rape as well as combat. Challengers to the dreadful mujahidin era came from a group called the Taliban, men of the Pashtun ethnic group who had grown up in the refugee camps of Peshawar, Pakistan. They had limited formal education but a Wahhabi-style religious zeal and went on to institute a medieval regime. The Taliban’s victory in 1996 was accompanied by a decline in Afghan women’s social participation and their ability to enjoy any civil, political, or social rights, in what international feminists called “gender apartheid.” In addition, the Taliban offered hospitality to the likes of Osama bin Laden. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was invaded by US troops in concert with former mujahidin commanders, now known as the Northern Alliance. The Taliban were removed from power later that year.21 For a while, the so-called Bonn process for Afghanistan—which entailed meetings in Germany followed by assistance from the United States, European Union, and NATO—was considered a success story of international intervention and postconflict reconstruction through development aid. The Bonn agreement was signed on December 5, 2001, under UN auspices, outlining the terms of the re-creation of the new Afghan state. An interim administration was formed, with Hamid Karzai as its chair. Donors made much of the introduction of elections; of the “restoration of women’s rights” and the introduction of a 25 percent gender quota in the legislative bodies; of the building of schools, especially for girls; and of the start of an array of businesses, including many hairdressing salons. The post-2001 legal framework for women’s rights included Article 22 of the 2004 constitution, which stated the following: “Any kind of discrimination and privilege between the citizens of Afghanistan are prohibited. The citizens of Afghanistan—whether man or woman—have equal rights and duties before the law.” In addition, Articles 43 and 44 of the constitution guaranteed women’s right to education, and article 48 codified their right to work. The Afghan government established the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to fulfill the constitution’s commitment to women’s rights. In terms of women’s political participation, in 2002, 12 percent of the participants in Afghanistan’s legislative body, the Loya Jirga, which began charting a post-Taliban political system, were women. Female representation rose to 20 percent in 2003’s Loya Jirga, which focused on the proposed constitution. Afghanistan granted 25 percent of seats to women in its lower house, the Wolesi Jirga, of parliament and 17 percent of seats to women in the upper house, the Meshrano Jirga, quotas that are specified in Articles 83

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and 84 of the Afghan constitution. The quota system guaranteed 25 percent of seats for women in district and provincial councils, as well. In early 2004, the Loya Jirga, Afghanistan’s traditional decisionmaking body, adopted the country’s first post-Taliban constitution. The majority of the 502 delegates (including 95 women) approved a presidential system, paving the way for presidential elections later that year. Compliance with CEDAW, which Afghanistan ratified in March 2003 without reservations, was mandated in Article 7 of the constitution. At the same time, the very first article stated that Afghanistan is an Islamic republic. Islam was declared to be the official religion of the state, and Article 3 of the constitution expressly barred any law “contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.” Such legal anomalies and inconsistencies meant that many questions of legal interpretation—such as those pertaining to women’s status in the family, or the right of Muslims to change their religion—would be left up to the Supreme Court. Later that year, the 2004 Afghanistan Human Development Report emphasized legal inconsistencies, continued risks, and threats.22 The situation had already begun to deteriorate, as the Taliban, incensed by the presence of US troops, reasserted themselves and began to sabotage the progress that was being made. This was a sort of reenactment of the civil conflict of the 1980s, except that this time the Pakistani military and intelligence services were secretly supporting the insurgents who were attacking US troops and the symbols of the new Afghan government. All manner of gender injustices followed. UNICEF confirmed twenty-six attacks against schools, mostly girls’ schools, in 2003–2004. In April 2006, the Taliban attacked a primary school in Asadabad, killing seven children and injuring thirty-five. In Kandahar, the base of the Taliban resurgence, killings of women leaders and acid attacks on schoolgirls ensued. According to a Human Rights Watch report, girls represented 34 percent of children enrolled in primary schools, but in ten provinces, fewer than one in four girls aged seven to twelve attended primary school. Secondary school enrollments remained extremely low, especially for girls: only 9 percent of girls attending primary school continued to secondary school. The country’s Supreme Court barred married women from attending high school—in a country where adolescent girls are frequently married off, often to far older men. Even before the resurgence of the Taliban, Afghan girls and women across the country continued to read and write in secret classrooms—girls because of attacks on schools or because their fathers would not send them to a state school, and women because the government prohibited married women from attending school. In 2004, the literacy rate was estimated at 14 percent for women, compared with 39 to 43 percent for men. The 2004 constitution mandated compulsory education up to grade nine, but in 2005, more than 60 percent of girls remained out of school.23

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Patriarchal practices, attitudes, and policies prevailed. Approximately 57 percent of girls were married before the age of sixteen, according to a study by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Afghan women’s NGOs. Under Afghan law, the legal age for marriage was sixteen, but courts often refused to act in the case of forced marriage. Health statistics remained dire for citizens as a whole, but women also suffered very high rates of maternal mortality. In a culture where a woman without a sarparast (male household head) is often shunned, widows faced many prejudices. Under the Taliban, widows were denied employment opportunities, and many had to resort to begging to provide for their families. In 2005, it was estimated that as many as 30 percent of households could be headed by women; in Kabul alone there were some 50,000 widows. Few institutions or policies existed to assist their independence and integration into society. As one expert put it, “bakeries have been built, but there are no sustainable jobs or careers.” Despite the existence of many “gender specialists” and some 2,000 NGOs, mainly set up in Kabul by formerly expatriate Afghans, new social problems emerged. Street children, especially boys, abounded, and prostitution increased.24 Women experienced considerable violence in the country. There were reports of rapes of Pashtun women in northern Afghanistan by nonPashtun men, in retaliation for years of Taliban-Pashtun dominance. Son preference remained strong, and mothers could be abused by husbands and in-laws for not producing sons. An Amnesty International report noted that girls and women in many parts of the country were prosecuted for zina crimes such as adultery, running away from home, and premarital sex. Selfimmolations appeared to be on the rise in Afghanistan and were tied to forced marriage; the typical victim was fourteen to twenty years old and was trying to escape a marriage arranged by her father. Maliha Zulfacar noted that some laws may have changed, but “old customs die hard.” 25 Under such conditions, the vast majority of women continued to wear the all-encompassing burqa. Warlords continued to dominate most parts of the country. Human rights groups repeatedly called for demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) to halt their abuses. Because of the persistent lack of security, Médicins Sans Frontières and other international aid groups pulled out of Afghanistan in 2004, returning only in 2009. Security Council Resolution 1563 of September 2004 stated that the situation in Afghanistan remained a threat to international peace and security and that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should continue its work until at least October 2005, or one month after the country’s first parliamentary elections. (In 2013, the time of writing, ISAF remained in Afghanistan.) With the destruction of rural subsistence economies during the war years, agriculture shifted toward poppy cultivation for opium exports, feeding addictions in neighboring Iran and Pakistan.26

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What was behind the persistence of violence, patriarchy, and insecurity in the immediate post-Taliban Afghanistan? A tribal social structure, warlordism, and state compromises were key factors. In particular, the post-2001 Afghan state seemed to be the result of social and ideological compromise between modernists and traditionalists, feminists and fundamentalists, and Islamists and Muslims with more moderate religious views. As a result, the state could not take a definitive stance in favor of women’s rights or human rights. Indeed, the government of Hamid Karzai accommodated extremely conservative political tendencies. For example, the government rejected a bill of rights prepared by a group of Afghan women, and prior to that, Karzai had acquiesced to clerical demands that Sima Samar be removed from her post as minister of women’s affairs. Activist and independent-minded women like Samar were labeled blasphemous, Westernized, and alienated from their own culture and religion.27 In 2005, the court was still headed by the extremely conservative judge Fazul Hadi Shinwari. Originally appointed by former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, a conservative chief of the Northern Alliance, Shinwari was later reconfirmed by President Hamid Karzai under the transitional administration in June 2002. Chief Justice Shinwari was in principle the guardian of the rights enshrined in the constitution, but he made several attempts to ban women from singing and dancing in public. In November 2004, the Supreme Court issued a ban on cable television channels, particularly condemning films from India showing women singing and dancing in musicals. Shinwari suggested that women should cover their bodies entirely, exposing only their faces and hands, and he decreed that a woman could not travel for more than three days without a mahram, a husband or male relative she cannot legally marry. He also stated that adulterers should be stoned to death. During the presidential election campaign in October 2004, Shinwari attempted to have presidential candidate Abdul Latif Pedram removed from the ballot for proposing that women and men should have equal rights in marriage and divorce. (Shinwari was replaced by Abdul Salam Azimi in 2006.) In the transitional administration, Shinwari appointed scores of judges at all levels, all of them men and many who could not meet the requirements set forth in Article 118 of the constitution, which called for “a higher education in law or Islamic jurisprudence” and “sufficient expertise and experience in the judicial system of Afghanistan.” Many of Shinwari’s appointments served on the Supreme Court, which in 2004 had a reported 137 members and possibly more—a number that exceeded the nine justice positions authorized by the constitution—and many held extreme views regarding the subordinate position of women. Interestingly enough, a number of women judges existed, some of whom had received training during

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the PDPA era. One such judge formed an association of women judges, which, however, was forced to disband a few years later.28 The violence to which women were subjected included assassinations. From 2006 on in Kandahar, these included Safia Amajan, head of the department of women’s affairs; Malalai Kakar, a well-known policewoman; and Sitara Achakzai, who was shot dead after leaving a provincial council meeting and for whose killing the Taliban claimed responsibility. In November 2008, teenage schoolgirls attending Mirwais Mena School were attacked by men on motorcycles. During the 2010 elections, women made valiant efforts to run for parliament, but five of Fauzia Gilani’s campaign workers were murdered, and other women candidates were “inundated with threatening phone calls.” Throughout this campaign of intimidation, women leaders such as Malalai Joya and activists from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) blamed the government for the absence of security and for the existence of a culture of impunity. A consistent criticism—which emanated largely from the women’s rights community and especially from bold women leaders and members of parliament such as Joya—concerned the sinecures given to former mujahidin commanders guilty of war crimes, including sexualized violence against women. Injustices against women continued, including mutilation of those charged with spurious infractions in Taliban-controlled areas.29 In Afghanistan, women’s participation and rights were open to interpretation in a situation where less than 5 percent of judges were women, few women worked in the Afghan justice system in rural areas, and there were three legal systems: the state system, sharia law, and customary and tribal codes such as the Pashtunwali. For example, a woman running away from her family due to abuse may not have committed a crime under the Afghan penal code but had done so under sharia and Pashtunwali. A proposed bill to install a separate, and very patriarchal, family law for the Shia community—which comprises about 20 percent of the Afghan population—raised much criticism but was adopted nonetheless. The law would permit Shia men to deny their wives food or sustenance if they refused to obey their husbands’ sexual demands. At the same time, the government placed restrictions on the importation of schoolbooks from Iran, on the grounds that they represented a Shia worldview and as such were inappropriate to predominantly Sunni Afghanistan.30 Despite serious obstacles, or perhaps because of them, women’s organizations in Afghanistan continued to work with each other and with global feminist groups to bring pressure to bear on the Karzai government, to raise funding for women’s projects, and to make women’s rights a reality and not merely a formality. Groups such as RAWA, the Afghan Women’s Network (an umbrella group of women’s organizations in Afghanistan), and the

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Afghan Women’s Council collaborated with international groups such as Women for Afghan Women, the Feminist Majority, and Equality Now. Government initiatives for women’s rights continued: a ten-year National Action Plan for Women (NAPWA) took effect in 2008, and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs adopted a three-pillar strategy to ensure that the government vision was achieved, entailing measures to eliminate all forms of violence against women, enhance human resource development, and facilitate women’s participation in social and political affairs. In 2011, 28 percent of the seats in the Afghan parliament—sixty-nine in all—were occupied by women.31 Still, the continued threats and attacks against women led to a decline in the number of women in the civil service, from 31 percent in 2006 to 18.5 percent in 2010. One study cited by UNIFEM found that Afghan women’s actual influence in parliament was lower than their numbers might suggest for the following reasons: (1) a “lack of issue-based groups,” (2) “weak connection between parliamentarians and their constituents,” (3) “patronage networks and class-based divisions,” (4) limited female representation in [President] Karzai’s cabinet,” and (5) “the confinement of women’s issues to ministry of women affairs.” Less is known about the position of women in rural areas, where progress has been slower. Women face barriers to earning a livelihood, have limited economic opportunities, and are primarily restricted to working at home. Accordingly, they are primarily involved in economic activities such as agriculture and animal husbandry. Other reports suggest that women may also have little control over the income they generate for their household. Literacy and school enrollment rates are difficult to compile, much less improve, in a context of ongoing conflict. The Afghan Ministry of Education estimated in 2007 that 40 percent of Afghan girls completed primary school but that only 5 percent completed secondary school. The 2008 report by the Afghan ministry of women’s affairs and UNIFEM cited an overall female literacy rate of 18 percent, compared to 39 percent for males. These rates were among the lowest in the world. Health indicators were not much better. Medical NGOs reported poor diet, hypertension, and anemia among Afghan women. Women were also expected to have an average of six or seven children, which added to their health risks. Afghans residing in mountainous areas were unable to access health facilities all or part of the year due to heavy snowfall. In some parts of Afghanistan, it is considered culturally inappropriate for women to visit a male doctor for certain illnesses, thus putting women’s health at risk. (See Table 5.2 for summary information on social and gender conditions in Afghanistan.) By 2010, and in the wake of a disputed presidential election, it was clear that the Western experiment in Afghanistan had failed. Apart from the Taliban resurgence, Afghanistan was among the poorest countries in the

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Table 5.2

Women’s Lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011

Population

• Out of 23.9 million people in Afghanistan, 48.8 percent were female in 2009. • Females make up 49 percent of the population aged 0–19 and 43 percent of the population 60 years and over. • Afghanistan ranked 174 out of 178 countries in the 2005 Human Development Index. • The 2005 Gender Development Index for Afghanistan was the lowest in South Asia at 0.310. • The average woman had 6.3 children in 2003.

Marriage and • Women headed 1.8 percent of households in rural and widowhood nomadic areas and 2.4 percent in urban areas (2005). • An estimated 60–80 percent of women faced forced marriages in Afghanistan (2007). • The mean age at marriage in Afghanistan was 17.8 years for women and 25.3 years for men. In 2009, 9 percent of women aged 20–49 hade married before they reached age 15. In 2006, 57 percent of girls married before the legal age of 16. • There were 1 million widows in Afghanistan; in Kabul, the average age of the estimated 30,000 to 50,000 war widows was 35. Ninety-four percent were unable to read and write, and about 90 percent had children (2005). Literacy and education

• Only 12 percent of females 15 years and older could read and write, compared to 39 percent of males. • The estimated overall literacy rate for females between the ages of 15 and 24 stood at 24 percent (compared to 53 percent for men). • Of the 4.8 million children in grades 1–6, 36.6 percent were girls in 2008. • Girls made up 32.8 percent of students attending secondary and high schools in 2008. • The number of girls in high school more than doubled from 2007 to 2008, from 67,900 to 136,621 students. • In 2006, there were a total of 41,789 students in all colleges and universities in Afghanistan, but only 21.5 percent were female. • In 2008, the total number of students in vocational schools was 11,575. Only 15 percent were female. • A total of 8,944 students graduated from colleges and universities in Afghanistan in 2008. Of these, 1,734 (19.4 percent) were female. • At the 63 teacher-training institutions in Afghanistan, women made up 36.7 percent of students and 42.5 percent of new students in 2008. (continues)

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continued

Employment

• In 2008, 28.5 percent of schoolteachers and 15.2 percent of university professors were female. • From 2002 to 2008, the percentage of female employees in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs decreased from 76 percent to 58 percent, but increases were registered in the percentage of female employees in the Ministry of Social Affairs, Martyrs, and the Disabled—from 5.1 percent of employees in 2002 to 48 percent in 2008. • In 2008, women made up less than 10 percent of employees in 16 of the 25 ministries. • In 2008, 18.4 percent of all government workers were female, a decrease from 25.9 percent in 2005. Women hired as government contractors decreased from 10.3 percent in 2005 to 7.5 percent in 2006. • Of the 1,547 sitting judges in Afghanistan, only 73, or 4.7 percent, were female as of July 2007. • Of the 546 prosecutors, 35, or 6.4 percent, were female in December 2006. • Of the 1,241 attorneys 76, or 6.1 percent, were female in December 2006. • Of the 1,919 total posts at the Ministry of Justice, 1,325 were filled, and of those, 90, or 7.3 percent, were held by women (2004); in 2006, the female share declined to 6 percent.

Political participation

• Per the 2004 constitution, 68 seats in the lower house are reserved for women. • In 2007, women held 27 percent of seats in the National Assembly: 68 out of 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) and 23 out of 102 seats in the Meshrano Jirga (upper house); in 2008, women made up 14 percent and 16 percent of all members in the Wolesi Jirga and Meshrano Jirga, respectively. • In the 2005 election, 11.7 percent (or 317) of the candidates for the lower house of the National Assembly and 7.5 percent (or 211) of the candidates for the Provincial Council were women. • Of the 420 seats in the Provincial Council, 124 are reserved for women. In 2005, there were not enough women to meet the quota at the Provincial Council elections, and 3 seats had to be given to men. • Only one cabinet member was female (the minister of women’s affairs). • Out of the total 17 ambassadors of Afghanistan to other countries in 2007, only two were women. (continues)

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Table 5.2 Violence against women

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continued • Out of 1,327 incidents of violence against women in Afghanistan in 2006, 30.7 percent involved physical violence, 30.1 percent involved psychological violence, and 25.2 percent involved sexual violence; and 14 percent combined all three, including kidnapping. Eighty-two percent of these incidents are committed by family members, 9 percent by the community, and 1.7 percent by state authorities. • The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs documented cases of severe beatings, forced marriage, self-immolation, murder, girl exchange, rape, a woman’s property being taken away by her husband’s relatives, lack of support from the husband, restriction of social activities, and trafficking of girls.

Sources: UNIFEM, “Afghanistan Fact Sheet,” February 2010, http://afghanistan .unifem.org/media/pubs/factsheet/10/index.html; and “Women and Men in Afghanistan: Baseline Statistics on Gender” (Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNIFEM, 2008), http://afghanistan .unifem.org/docs/pubs/08/Baseline_Stats_on_Gender_2008.pdf.

world, ranking 181 out of 182 countries on the UNDP 2009 human development index. A large percentage of the population suffered from shortages of housing, clean water, and electricity and could not afford the rising cost of food. Afghan women faced the highest rates of illiteracy and maternal mortality in the world. Educated youth had few job prospects; young men in particular were likely to attempt illegal migration to Europe, often under hazardous conditions. The presence of international aid and donor agencies had provided jobs for some educated Afghans, but it also drove up the price of real estate and fostered resentment because of salary disparities. In addition, the presence of foreign troops helped create a prostitution industry.32 The US military surge in 2010 did not succeed, and at this writing, the Obama administration was still deciding how many US troops to leave in Afghanistan after 2014. A British newspaper reported in 2012 that schools and health centers built by the British as part of the military’s counterinsurgency strategy were being forced to close down because President Karzai’s government could not afford to pay for them. Understandably, Afghan women’s rights advocates quoted in an article in the Guardian Weekly feared for the future, saying: “Afghan women need and require peace with justice. This is our request to the world and international communities.”33 It is tragic but true that Afghan women were worse off in 2012 than in 1979, when the United States decided to support an Islamist armed rebellion.

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Iraq The record of women’s rights in Iraq before 2003 was a mixed one, beginning with gains resulting from the Baathist ideology of Arab socialism and progress in the 1960s and 1970s but giving way to setbacks after the IranIraq War, the Gulf War, the sanctions that followed, and Saddam Hussein’s attempt to curry favor with tribes and religious forces by assuming an Islamic mantle and reinstating patriarchal family practices.34 Saddam Hussein became the Iraqi leader in 1978 and in 1979 faced a belligerent neighbor in the form of the new revolutionary government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thinking that the Arab residents of southern Iran would join his war effort, Saddam invaded the Iranian province of Khuzestan in September 1980. What followed was a long and bloody war that lasted until 1988. In addition to the loss of military and civilian lives, both countries saw infrastructural damage, including military attacks on their respective oil fields. Subsequently, Saddam’s government declared that Kuwait was part of Iraq and invaded that country in December 1990, launching an international war that pitted Iraq against the United States and its allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt. After the Iraqi army was defeated, a punitive sanctions regime was installed under the auspices of the United Nations, causing considerable civilian hardship and reversing the social development that had characterized Iraqi modernization in the 1970s. Sanctions along with the contamination caused by the depleted uranium in US weapons harmed Iraqi women, children, the elderly, and the poor far more than the intended political elite, as Yasmin Al-Jawaheri has documented.35 Then, in April 2003, Iraq was invaded and occupied by US and UK troops, which set off a new wave of insecurity and setbacks. Ideally, a strong state should back women’s rights and pay attention to them at all levels of programming and policymaking. US promises to “liberate” Iraq and Iraqi women were realized only to the extent that many more NGOs, trade unions, and women’s groups were allowed to organize and operate independently. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq had a relatively large and well-educated middle class, with many strong and highly educated women, some of them in or around the government and others working independently. This is why, when the Iraqi Governing Council tried to return family affairs to religious courts through the notorious Resolution 137 in early 2004, large numbers of Iraqi women mobilized opposition inside and outside the country. As Iraqi activist Manal Omar explained, a letter of protest was sent to Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq (CPA), and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK representative to the CPA; in addition Judge Zakia Haki from the Ministry of Justice wrote a brief detailing her concerns about Resolution 137.36 Supporters in other countries signed numerous petitions and sent letters to Bre-

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mer and Greenstock. As a result, the resolution was withdrawn. This was an important victory for Iraqi women leaders, and they went on to demand greater representation in government bodies. Six women (out of twenty-five cabinet members) were appointed to the cabinet of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi (2004-2005): Minister of Agriculture Sawsan Sherif, Minister of Environment Mishkat Aimounmen, Minister of Immigration and Refugees Pascal Isho, Minister of Labor Leila Abdul-Latif, Minister of Municipalities and Public Works Nesreen Berwari, and Minister of Women’s Affairs Nermin Othman, who came to hold a number of portfolios. For a while, it appeared that Iraqi women had found a new space for themselves in their country’s public sphere and in the international public sphere. Iraqi women activists hoped that international donors and partners would share information and guidance; extend invitations to international conferences; support education by building schools, providing books and supplies, and encouraging curriculum development and teacher training; and help to establish a peace studies curriculum. Others called for assistance in establishing shelters and in enabling female victims of violence to support themselves, and for solidarity in efforts to promote women’s rights and human rights.37 For example, the Iraqi Women’s Network comprised a number of women’s groups, some with ties outside the country (e.g., the feminist network Women for Women International, founded, coincidentally, by an Iraqi woman), and involved expatriates as well as long-term residents. Some of the Iraqi women’s groups under its umbrella included Ala Talabani’s Women for a Free Iraq (formerly the Kurdish Women’s Union), the Iraqi Women’s High Council, and Yanar Mohammed’s Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI). Groups of Iraqi women traveled to the United States for meetings organized by the US government, the Council on Foreign Relations, an academic and advocacy program called Women Waging Peace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and others. They included Raja Habib Dhaher Khuzai, a former member of the Interim Governing Council, later a member of the Transitional National Assembly, and an obstetrician-gynecologist and women’s health advocate; and Zakia Haki, Iraq’s first woman judge and a 2004 adviser to Iraq’s Ministry of Justice. They called for abolishing laws impeding women’s employment, ensuring the appointment of qualified women judges throughout Iraq, and hiring women for reconstruction tasks. As Yanar Mohammed wrote in a 2010 essay, “Creating an oasis of Feminist Resistance in Iraq was meant to defend an uncompromised right of Iraqi women to participate in decision-making, get the protection they deserve, maintain their threatened women’s rights, and force a gender-based perspective for the legislation of a secular egalitarian and non-ethnic constitution.”38At a seminar in 2004 in Helsinki, Finland, two Iraqi women advocates discussed the government’s new NGO policy, the family law, and the constitution. They described the

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1959 family law as “fairly liberal” though “not perfect” and expressed the hope that the new constitution would state that Islam is a source of legislation, not the source.39 Many Iraqi women advocates and their international supporters insisted that women be part of the constitutional process in Iraq and that women’s rights be enshrined in the constitution. However, the draft constitution that was submitted in the summer of 2005 contained legal inconsistencies similar to those in Afghanistan’s constitution. The hopeful period was short-lived. The US invasion and measures imposed by the CPA and its administrator, Paul Bremer, set off an armed resistance movement. In 2003–2004, women’s human security or human rights could not be guaranteed because neither the post-Saddam interim government nor the US military was able or willing to protect women in their everyday lives. Yifat Susskind of the international human rights organization MADRE noted, “After a year of liberation at the hands of the US military, most Iraqi women find that they are worse off on every count.” Another observer stated that the CPA initially was “astonishingly insensitive” regarding women’s human security and their human rights. Reports showed that many more women were appearing in public in hijab, for fear of harassment or worse. It was an ironic but tragic consequence of the US invasion and occupation that Iraq experienced a breakdown in public order, with reports of increases in domestic violence, honor killing, kidnapping, and rape. What appeared to be deliberate assassinations of prominent women, including those who did not observe hijab, also increased. Susskind stated, “Women attribute the rise in violence to social disintegration triggered by the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime; the rise of Islamism; [and] ongoing fighting between US and Iraqi forces.” At the 2004 seminar in Helsinki, Finland, a prominent Iraqi woman said that “terrorism does not discriminate among people; parents now pay for armed guards to accompany their children to school.” She emphasized that “Islamists, Baathists, foreign fighters, neighboring countries, and the US army” all were responsible for the deteriorating security situation. According to Yanar Mohammed of OWFI, not only were the streets unfriendly to women, but posters put up at universities demanded that women students and faculty veil, and workplaces now required veiling of their women employees.40 The veracity of the repeated refrain—“Without himaya [security] for women, there can be no place for democracy to grow in Iraq”—was confirmed after the first post-Saddam elections took place in February 2005.41 Apart from fears that a majority Shia government might institute Islamic law, the overall environment of heightened insecurity continued to pose many difficulties for women and girls. Although a quota system was established to guarantee women 25 percent of the seats in the country’s parliament, the legal framework for women’s rights had serious limitations. There remained provisions in the Iraqi penal code allowing a man to escape

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punishment for abduction by marrying the victim and significantly reducing sentences for so-called honor killings. 42 Few seemed to ask if Iraq could undertake reconstruction and build democracy under such conditions, when overall security was lacking and women experienced fear and new forms of violence. The World Bank noted in 2003 that “Iraq’s overall reconstruction needs today are vast and are a result of nearly 20 years of neglect and degradation of the country’s infrastructure, environment and social services.” As time went on, the situation worsened as a result of war and sabotage. A UNESCO survey documented the shortage of schools and noted that over 50 percent of schools ran double shifts; many schools, moreover, were in poor physical condition. At the secondary school level, 31 percent of girls were enrolled in 2003; for boys it was 49 percent.43 Despite the growth of women’s NGOs and their collective action, the violence directed at women leaders was considerable, as Raja Habib Dhaher Khuzai stated at a meeting in Washington, D.C., in November 2004. The violence began with the 2003 assassination of Akila Hashemi, a member of the Interim Governing Council, and continued with targeted killings of other prominent women, unveiled women, and women who worked in services associated with the occupation or government. In March 2005, a well-known pharmacist, unveiled, was assassinated by Islamists. 44 In the absence of a strong state with the capacity and will to mobilize resources, protect its citizens, and realize the stated objectives of women’s rights, Iraqi activists noted the rise of honor killings and domestic violence, as well as targeted assassinations and the kidnappings, rapes, and killings of ordinary Iraqi women and girls. The violence was perpetrated by US troops as well as the Iraqi resistance. The reestablishment of security was a necessary condition for Iraqi reconstruction but was increasingly elusive at a time when the Iraqi resistance fought both the US military presence and symbols of the new Shia dominance. Moreover, US plans were highly controversial, entailing the privatization of Iraqi assets and special deals for US corporations, plans that came under much criticism from human rights activists, feminists, and progressive academics. Reports circulated of considerable corruption on the part of both Iraqi officials and US contractors. A July 2004 report by the General Accounting Office found that under Paul Bremer’s CPA, about $8.8 billion intended for Iraqi reconstruction had gone missing or was unaccounted for. Instead of healthy economic reconstruction, Iraq’s war economy generated predatory smuggling networks. It was commonly believed that US troops consumed a large portion of Jordan’s exports to Iraq, particularly foodstuffs. Meanwhile, US firms such as Blackwater, Halliburton, and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root were permitted to overcharge the Pentagon for their contracting work in Iraq and to make fortunes at the same time that the US economy was beginning to show signs of

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strain.45 As long as US and UK troops remained in Iraq, the resistance would continue, and even afterward, tension between the Sunni and Shia politicians and communities would continue. The behavior of US troops in Iraq was disturbing from the onset of the invasion, contributing to the fierce resistance that ensued while also turning Shias—who initially had welcomed the US invasion and removal of Saddam Hussein—against the US enterprise in Iraq. The fact that, in the days after the invasion, US soldiers had stood by and done nothing while vandals invaded the archaeological museum in Baghdad and looted numerous items was a sign of the disdain of the US military toward Iraqi history and cultural heritage. (It also may have been an indicator of the education level of the US soldiers in the vicinity of the museum, who might not have appreciated the importance of cultural heritage.46) The sexualized violence perpetrated by US soldiers on Iraqi male prisoners inside the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 was the first scandal; another outrageous action was the rape in March 2006 of a teenage girl—fourteen-year-old Abeer Qasim al-Janabi—by US soldiers who had been stalking her, followed by the murder of Abeer and her entire family. Numerous killings of civilians by US soldiers further enraged the Iraqi population, and in particular the resistance.47 In an ideal world, such actions would constitute war crimes by the occupying army and its government. However, as of 2012, not a single high-ranking US decisionmaker had been held accountable. Both the military occupation and the insurgency caused considerable damage, including the destruction of infrastructure, the loss of many lives, and massive displacement. One book has examined the “cultural cleansing” that involved the looting of museums, the burning of libraries, and the murder of academics. The Iraqi government estimated that about 85,000 people died from 2004 to 2008, but other reports placed the casualties considerably higher. One report estimated Iraq’s human toll after 2003 to include about 1 million killed, 4.5 million displaced, 1–2 million widowed, and 5 million orphaned. Very high male unemployment followed the war and the restructuring of its economy by the occupying power. In addition to a ferocious conflict between disempowered Sunnis and ascendant Shia, the small Christian minority was targeted. Many Iraqis sought asylum in Jordan and Syria; a relatively small number were eventually allowed in the United States, though they reported being placed in miserable conditions, with little or no government support.48 During the Bush years, officials pointed to regular elections and the 25 percent quota for women in parliament as an achievement in Iraq (as in Afghanistan). But the results of the 2006 general elections showed that voting followed ethnic and sectarian patterns. Women, meanwhile, were hardly empowered to take a rightful place in national decisionmaking, and their political participation has tended to decline over the years. In late January

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2009, Iraqis voted in provincial elections, but frustrations abounded elsewhere in government: the minister for women’s affairs resigned when her already small budget was slashed by 80 percent.49 The results of the parliamentary elections of March 2010 indicated that Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki might have lost his majority to the more secular Iraqqiya political party; after considerable delay a government was formed, but again, no women had influential posts beyond the guaranteed seats in parliament. Meanwhile, Sunni resentment at their marginalization and Shia political dominance continued to simmer. By 2010, seven years after the US invasion, it was clear that the fallout for Iraqi women had been considerable. The destructive gendered effects included the following: women appearing in hijab in public for fear of harassment or worse; a spike in domestic violence, honor killings, kidnapping, and rape; targeted assassinations of women leaders; assaults by foreign soldiers and by the resistance; a drop in women’s political participation despite the electoral quota; ambiguities and contradictions in the Iraqi constitution, especially as regards women’s rights in the family (polygamy was retained, and females receive half of what males inherit from family wealth); and the use of young women as suicide bombers. Iraqi women knew that their legal status and social conditions had deteriorated drastically since 2003. In the 2010 essay mentioned above, Yanar Mohammed, who since 2003 has led OWFI and what she calls the “Feminist Resistance,” delineated the following effects:50 • mass killings of women in the south: a combination of “cleansing” by religious militia and encouragement of honor killings by selfstyled vigilantes of community honor; • trafficking into modern-day sexual slavery; • a population of 4 million widows and orphans of war, mostly lacking access to education, healthcare, male protection, or financial support; • a disempowered female population experiencing economic insecurity and lack of access to health care in the face of a disinterested state; and • misogynist female parliamentarians who represent their party and not Iraqi women’s rights. Mohammed went on to explain that although more than 300 women were killed in the city of Basra alone from 2006 to 2008, the criminals continued to live freely and “have the upper hand in the society.” Honor killings continued to take place at alarming rates in all the cities of the center, south, and Kurdish north, Mohammed complained, adding that no legislation had been passed or campaigns conducted by any governmental facility or media against the crimes. In some cases, accusations of “dis-

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honor” were followed by female suicides, “as the killers have found a way to impose shame on the females and let them kill themselves, thus leaving the males unaccused.” She added that in the Kurdish north, “a thriving practice of FGM [female genital mutilation] takes place.” Healthcare insecurity was pervasive; giving birth to children in decent hospitals had become unaffordable to the majority, Mohammed wrote, because hospitalization was becoming privatized. Neither were Iraqi hospitals able to treat the numerous kinds of cancer that had increased “due to an unprecedented exposure to depleted uranium because of two consecutive American wars on Iraq.” Throughout this period, Iraqi Kurdistan was a special case. It experienced economic prosperity and—partly because of its well-trained armed forces, the Peshmerga, and partly because of its long isolation from the rest of country—it was spared the political and sectarian violence that tore apart the rest of Iraq and paralyzed the federal government. Moreover, Kurdistan had successful regional election campaigns in 2005 and 2009. In short, although formally it remained part of Iraq, Kurdistan gained an unprecedented autonomy, functioning as a quasi-independent state, albeit one without formal diplomatic recognition from other states or the UN. What is more, it developed a women’s rights movement determined to see an end to honor crimes, FGM, and polygamy.

Conflict and Gender Justice In recent years, feminist scholarship has referred increasingly to the concept of gender justice. Discussions of it derive from at least three sources— political philosophy concepts of human agency, autonomy, rights, and capabilities (with relevant writings by Susan Okin, Martha Nussbaum, and Iris Young, among others); political science theories of democratization, citizenship, and constitutionalism (key writings include those of Ann Phillips, Ruth Lister, and Georgina Waylen); and legal scholarship on gender equality, judicial reform, and access to justice (with important contributions by Catherine MacKinnon, Joanne Sandler and Anne-Marie Goetz, Lamia Shehadeh, and Lynn Welchman). 51 Here I consider how women in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq might have access to gender justice. I begin by considering what the three cases presented here offer by way of lessons with wider relevance regarding the gender dynamics of conflict, peacebuilding, and reconstruction. Indeed, what do we know about gender and conflict? First, it should be noted that conflict can give rise to disruptions of gender relations such that women can participate and create in ways that are sometimes unprecedented. The role of US and British women in factory production during World War II is well known, and this replicated—at least

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temporarily—the kinds of roles that women in Soviet Russia played after the Bolshevik Revolution. As noted in this chapter and in Chapter 2, the first intifada provided new opportunities for Palestinian women to engage in all manner of contributions to the national liberation struggle. In addition, scholars have noted that a feminist consciousness became more visible among Palestinian women, and some Palestinian women writers, such as Samira Azzam and Fadwa Tuqan, combined a critique of patriarchal structures and a fervent nationalism to compelling effect. Likewise, the long civil war in Lebanon produced not only suffering and destruction but a remarkable body of literature with strong themes of social and gender consciousness. Miriam Cooke’s analysis of the war writings of the “Beirut Decentrists” in the late 1970s and early 1980s highlighted the emergence of a feminist school of women writers.52 In addition, a body of scholarship has emerged that links wars and conflict to increases in women’s political representation.53 However, wars and conflict are more often deeply damaging, sociopsychologically and in terms of development, entailing struggles over power that often evince destructive forms of masculinity. It should be noted that invaders—including those who decide to wage war or begin a conflict—are almost invariably men, because of gender socialization patterns and because economic, political, and military power remains in male hands. Conflicts and wars have complex causes, and some forms of struggle and armed battle are legitimate, necessary, and just. But it must be conceded that an underlying cause of many conflicts and wars is hypermasculinity, with its aspects of competition, rivalry, swagger, aggressiveness, and violence. It is therefore a causal factor in war as well as in women’s oppression. Conflict and war are damaging to women and men, young and old, but for women there are distinctive risks and consequences, ranging from new or heightened controls on women’s dress, conduct, and mobility to sexualized violence such as kidnapping and rape. In times of conflict, women are caught between weak states, occupying powers, armed opposition movements, and patriarchal gender arrangements. Some may join resistance movements and engage in heroic acts, whereas others may be coopted into carrying out questionable acts of violence. Hypermasculinity can be highly injurious to men, too—in terms of loss of life and livelihood, and forced migration—and to soldiers, especially those drafted against their will or who come to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. During times of invasion and occupation, men experience a heightened form of humiliation and emasculation whose effects are often visited on women, whether they be women in the family, women in the community, or women of a rival ethnic group. The counterpart to men’s humiliation, as well as to male domination, is women’s insecurity. The women’s movement of the second wave drew attention to domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape, and Susan Brownmiller’s 1975

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book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape included details on wartime atrocities against women. It was not until the 1990s, however, that violence against women and the problem of wartime rape acquired global prominence. Armed conflicts in Yugoslavia and Rwanda showed that women, like men, are victims of military onslaughts and terrorist actions; they lose life and limb and join the ranks of refugees or internally displaced persons. Women also are the special victims of sexual violence, especially rape. Events in Afghanistan under both the mujahidin (1992–1996) and the Taliban (1996–2001) demonstrated that women could be punished because of their appearance, dress, and desire to access public space. During Algeria’s civil conflict in the 1990s, as was noted in Chapter 2, Islamist militants not only bullied and harassed but also raped and murdered women and girls— and this ten years after the government had tried to placate the growing fundamentalist movement by instituting a patriarchal family law. All too often, women—their legal status, social positions, and bodies—become pawns during conflicts or in postconflict agreements. States have been known to make compromises or accommodations at the expense of women’s integrity, autonomy, and rights. It was telling that among the first pronouncements of the new transitional leader of post-Qaddafi Libya was one that promised the restoration of polygamy. What do we know about gender and conflict? We know that women’s subordinate roles in peacetime render them vulnerable in wartime. Conflicts can be anticipated—so can the fact that women will be violated. Survivors of wartime trauma face inadequate services.54 International outcries rarely succeed in bringing perpetrators to justice. The message is that women’s lives matter less. Sexualized violence is implicated in armed violence but it also exists during so-called times of peace—hence the need to recognize the gender dynamics of peace as well as conflict. Johann Galtung’s wellknown maxim “the absence of war does not mean peace” is complemented by Cynthia Enloe’s feminist definition of peace as “women’s achievement of control over their lives.”55 For women, peace does not mean only the formal end of war and its concomitants, such as the demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration of armed combatants. It also means the enjoyment of human security and human rights, including the right not to be beaten at home, assaulted on the streets, or prevented from seeking a job. Given this, it must be stated that many so-called peace processes have been flawed or worse. The UN-sponsored peace in Afghanistan in the early 1990s did nothing to bring about stability and security, especially for women, who had to contend initially with marauding mujahidin warlords and subsequently with the Taliban. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process of the early 1990s was regarded by its detractors as favoring the Israelis, but it also was accompanied by a growing Islamist movement that earlier had put pressure on the women in its communities to veil. The UN may have

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declared the US invasion of Iraq to be illegal under international law, but it was unable to prevent the invasion or hold the United States accountable. These and many other examples show that women’s human security and human rights are rarely considered in peace processes and that UN Security Council Resolutions do little to undermine global inequalities, hierarchies, and unilateralism. As political scientist Ann Tickner has pointed out, “unequal social relations can make all individuals more insecure.” The concept of human security has been defined in different ways but generally includes personal security, water and food security, the rights to healthcare and political participation, and economic security. There is thus a connection between human security and human rights, and links among security, rights, and participation. In other words, achieving peace and security for women cannot be guaranteed in the absence of a broader sociopolitical and economic project that rests on participation and redistribution of resources. Tickner has noted, “The achievement of peace, economic justice, and ecological sustainability is inseparable from overcoming social relations of domination and subordination; genuine security requires not only the absence of war but also the elimination of unjust social relations.” Reconstruction should therefore be viewed not only in terms of the repair or reconstruction of physical and social infrastructure, but also in terms of the establishment of participatory and egalitarian social and gender relations. In this regard, women have a special role to play because they have experienced inequality, because they have a stake in reconstruction that is woman-friendly, and because they play important roles in building bridges among opponents and in peacemaking. As Ziva Flamhaft has shown, bereaved women can also become advocates of reconciliation and peace.56 Women’s role in peace movements is well known, and “maternalist politics” has a long history. Women peacebuilders often have deployed the discourse of motherhood and emphasized feminine values of nurturing and caring in their efforts to build bridges, mediate, or encourage reconciliation. Whether we are referring to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) at the beginning of the twentieth century or Women Strike for Peace in mid-century, or to organizations such as Israel’s Four Mothers Movement, the Saturday Mothers of Turkey, Iran’s Mourning Mothers, and the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina in the late twentieth century, or to Code Pink in the new century, we see that women activists often draw on motherhood, maternity, and femininity as resources and discursive strategies.57 As Zahira Kamal stated at a 2003 rally of the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, “I am bonded to women. I believe in their power. Women are grounded in their awareness of the sanctity of all human beings, the equal value of each human being, and a commitment to justice, applied equally through adherence to law. I

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believe we can work together for ending the occupation and its related measures, and we can live in peace together.”58 Maternalist politics constitutes one model of women’s activism, seen largely in peace, anti-militarist, and human rights movements. But there is another model as well: that of women in armed struggles, liberation movements, and revolutions. Women have taken up arms in many liberation or resistance movements. Notable examples are the women partisans of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia during World War II, Vietnam during the war of liberation against the French in the 1950s and the Americans in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the liberation movements of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. Many feminists and leftists have hailed those women as heroes and role models, but the participation of women in the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka is more controversial because of the use of suicide bombings and similar tactics. The same holds true for the small number of Palestinian and Iraqi women who have carried out “martyrdom operations.” Whether these two models of women vis-à-vis peace and conflict are completely contradictory or simply two dimensions of women’s lives, experiences, and collective action is a difficult question. Scholars and activists alike tend to rely on women to lead the way in peace, conflict resolution, and human rights while also accepting that women will be active participants in armed struggles.59 Peacebuilding requires justice, including gender justice. A situation of long-standing injustice and deep tensions—whether within a society or between countries—is not a situation of peace. In other words, the peace process between Israel and Palestine in the 1990s was not a just peace at all but rather a war, or at the very least hegemonic politics by other means. And a cease-fire or a brokered “peace” in which essential issues of security, justice, and redress have not been addressed should not be called peace at all. A just peace is more than putting down weapons and achieving DDR. Its sustainability depends on the realization of social and economic justice, human security, democratization, participation, and equality. Beyond that, “Women survivors of armed conflicts and advocates for women’s rights during and after these conflicts recognize that meaningful justice must protect the fundamental human rights of all people and that there cannot be meaningful reconciliation without gender justice.” Gender justice has at least four component parts. One is the participation of women—and especially representatives of women’s organizations—in peace negotiations and diplomacy. A second pertains to postconflict peacebuilding, reconstruction, and decisionmaking. A third is the establishment of laws and institutions for the realization of women’s human rights. A fourth component involves redress for sexualized or other forms of violence against women during conflict or war. A major international achievement was the designation in December 1993 of rape as a war crime when carried

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out in the context of armed conflict, reinforced by Security Council Resolution 1820 in 2008. All too often, however, the perpetrators of sexualized violence are not brought to justice—thus denying gender justice to women. Positive developments, however, should be noted. Tribunals in The Hague on human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia and on the genocide in Rwanda constitute one model of justice. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996–2001) is another model that links peace to justice. Morocco’s justice and reconciliation process, established to examine the repression, arrests, and torture of dissidents during the reign of Hassan II, is the only one to have taken place in the MENA region.60 Women must be involved in formal processes of peacebuilding, reconstruction, and policymaking for at least five reasons. The first and most basic reason is that women constitute half, and in some cases a majority, of any population. Without their participation, there can be no claim of equity and representation. Second, because women are often the special victims of armed conflict, their experiences, perspectives, and aspirations need to be incorporated into negotiations, mediation, and peacebuilding processes. Likewise, their views and perspectives must be included in all aspects of postconflict reconstruction—including any truth commissions or tribunals that may be established. For the same reason, women experts and leaders must be involved in processes of demilitarization, demobilization, and reintegration of fighters. Women experience not only sexualized violence but also bereavement and the loss of family members, resources, and livelihood. Sanctions may lead to the feminization of poverty, and widowhood increases the number of female-headed households living in dire conditions. The gender-specific experiences and outcomes of conflict need to be considered and addressed in peacebuilding and postconflict reconstruction. Third, women often play a key role in bridge building and peacemaking at the local level, a role that should be acknowledged as well as translated into higher-level participation and representation. Indeed, the important role played by women at the community level can serve as a model of mediation and reconciliation at the national level. Fourth, women are major stakeholders and actors in the reconstruction or building of infrastructure, the state, and civil society. They have a direct stake in strategies for social development, the allocation of financial and human resources across economic sectors, the adoption of progressive legal frameworks, and the flourishing of associational life. Without their participation, half the population is automatically disenfranchised, postconflict reconstruction remains an exclusively masculine endeavor, and rights-based development is compromised. Fifth, the exclusion and marginalization of women is part of the logic of authoritarian, neopatriarchal state systems. That is why including women is so important—it helps to change the nature of the state.

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How women fare in a postconflict situation depends on a number of factors, both internal and external, which are similar to those identified in Chapter 2 in connection with women and revolutions. Internal factors include (1) preexisting gender relations and women’s legal status and social positions before the conflict; (2) the extent of women’s mobilizations before and during the conflict, including the number and type of women’s organizations and other institutions; (3) the ideology, values, and norms of the ruling group; (4) the state’s capacity and will to mobilize resource endowments for rights-based reconstruction and development; and (5) links to world society and transnational advocacy networks. In particular, international feminist monitoring and advocacy can make sure that laws, policies, and resources are designed to enhance women’s participation and rights. Strong transnational links may ensure global cooperation and collective action toward the promotion of women’s participation, rights, and empowerment in the postconflict situation, preventing the marginalization of the “woman question” and leading to vigorous and effective campaigns to protect or build women’s empowerment. The state, economic resources, and legal frameworks matter enormously to women, but transnational solidarity can influence national decisions and raise international awareness of women’s conditions and needs in various national contexts. International feminist networks can affect national processes by advocating for women, lobbying donors to increase allocations to women’s institutions, and pressuring the postconflict governments to prioritize women’s empowerment. Last but not least, in defending the interests of women in postconflict reconstruction processes, global feminism can play an important role by exposing and criticizing corrupt or oppressive measures taken by neighboring countries, the big powers, or the new regime.

Conclusion Political scientist Kathryn Sikkink has examined what she terms “the justice cascade,” which is evidenced by trials for perpetrators of human rights violations within newly democratic states, legal cases brought by governments or NGOs against foreign perpetrators, and the number of special tribunals and cases brought to the International Criminal Court.61 A conspicuous gap in the record is accountability, let alone justice, for invasions, occupations, and war crimes by big powers. In a just world, leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom would be held accountable for the invasion, occupation, disruption, and destruction of a once-stable country, albeit one that was ruled in an authoritarian manner (Iraq). Iraqi women would be able to sue the US government and the military, as well as nonstate militants who targeted them. A special tribunal would examine the

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actions of US-supported Afghan warlords in the post-Najibullah period and of the Taliban during the 1990s. Israel would be compelled to compensate Palestinians for loss of land and livelihood. Are these prospects likely? Although all states have obligations under international law, in the present world order, the strongest states are able to ignore or withstand international moral opprobrium, and the global justice system remains weak and inconsistent. What is more, the Security Council resolutions on women, war, peace, and security have been almost totally ignored, not least by the UN itself, according to a report produced by a group of UK-based NGOs and released in September 2012. There have been no female chief mediators in UNbrokered peace talks, and fewer than 10 percent of police officers and 2 percent of the soldiers sent on UN peacekeeping missions have been women. Women played a part in settlements in El Salvador, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, and Papua New Guinea, but in seventeen out of twenty-four major accords—including Croatia, Bosnia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—there was zero female participation in signing agreements.62 Is it any wonder that so many formal peace agreements are seriously flawed, taking a narrow definition of what constitutes enduring peace and ignoring the needs of women and girls? The 2012 report recommended a quota of 30 percent women’s participation “in all local, national, and international peace negotiation processes” and urged donor governments to keep to a UN target of 15 percent of peacebuilding aid to address women’s specific needs. Without idealizing women, one may plausibly postulate that an enhanced role for women in reconstruction could minimize corruption and cronyism—if only because women’s absence from economic and political domains of power has prevented their involvement in patronage and clientelism. In addition, the presence of women would likely focus more attention on social policies to alleviate poverty, provide welfare, and promote social development. And because women have a stake in a welfare state that is also women-friendly, they will assist in the (re)construction of strong social institutions such as social service organizations; health facilities; nurseries, and schools, universities, and training institutes. The process of rebuilding and upgrading a country’s physical and social infrastructure is another area for women’s inclusion, as is the (re)building of the public sector and civil service, because women in their productive and reproductive roles are directly affected by the type, location, and costs of schools, hospitals, roads, housing, water, and power. In this respect, the incorporation of women into the labor force as decisionmakers and as beneficiaries of new policies becomes an essential part of the social and economic rights that were discussed in Chapter 3. Finally, women’s involvement in reconstruction should be extended to the cultural domain and to include support for women-run media and media

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campaigns promoting women’s participation and rights; gender awareness and sensitivity in the mainstream and government-controlled media; and women’s involvement in cultural institutions such as the ministries of culture, education, religious affairs, and communications. Through such involvement, women would play a key role in the shift away from a culture of violence to a culture of peace, human rights, women’s empowerment, and democratization.

Notes 1. Spending declined over the ten-year period but remained very high: in Algeria, it was 3.5 percent; in Bahrain, it declined from 4 percent to 3.4 percent, in Kuwait from 7.2 percent to 3.6 percent, in Lebanon from 5.4 percent to 4.2 percent, in Jordan from 6.3 percent to 5 percent, in Oman from 10.8 percent to 8.5 percent, in Saudi Arabia from 10.6 percent to 10.1 percent, in Syria 5.5 percent to 4.1 percent, and in UAE from 9.4 percent to 6.9 percent. Israeli military spending decreased from 8 percent of GDP in 2001 to 6.5 percent in 2010. 2. The data on military expenditures come from the online databases of the Swedish International Peace Research Institute and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, http://www.sipri.org/databases; health data are from the online databases of the World Bank and UNESCO from http://data.worldbank.org/; and education data from http://www.uis.unesco.org. 3. This chapter draws in part on Moghadam 2007b. 4. Enloe 1990; Breines, Connell, and Eide 2000; see also contributions in Moghadam 2007a. 5. See http://peacewomen.org/pages/about-1325. These resolutions are framed in at least two ways: (1) by representing women as victims of sexualized violence and other forms of human rights violations and reiterating the responsibility of states to protect women, and (2) by representing women as key players in peacebuilding and reconstruction and depicting sexualized violence as an obstacle to peace and security. For a discussion of these and other instruments pertaining to women, conflict, peace, and security, see Yakin Ertürk, “The Quest for Gender-Just Peace: From Impunity to Accountability,” Open Democracy, 50.50 Series, December 10, 2009, http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/yakin-erturk/quest-for-gender -just-peace-from-impunity-to-accountability, accessed September 2012. 6. Author’s observations, 1995 and January 2005. 7. Gerner 2007, p. 31. 8. Abdo 2000; Stein 2003, citing the survey. 9. Cited in UNIFEM 2005b. 10. Rema Hammami, personal communication, East Jerusalem, February 22, 2005. See also UNIFEM 2005b. 11. In 2012, WCLAC compiled testimonials; see also “Women’s Voices,” on settler violence at http://www.wclac.org/english/index.php. 12. UNIFEM 2005b. On the Lancet study, see “Palestinian Health Care ‘Ailing,’” March 5, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7924199.stm. 13. In an interview on January 21, 2005, Kamal described how she had had her political start in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). A Marxist group that had made women’s rights a central plank of its program and

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recruited many women, it was referred to, by both its supporters and detractors, as jebheh-e mar’a, or “the women’s front” (see Hasso 1998). In 2006, Kamal became director of the Palestinian Women’s Research and Documentation Center, established with the support of UNESCO. At the time, I was providing technical assistance in my capacity as chief of the section for gender equality and development within UNESCO’s Social and Human Sciences Sector. 14. Khadija Habashneh, deputy minister of women’s affairs, in a conversation with the author, Ramallah, February 20, 2005. The attempt to establish a 20 percent quota was thwarted by the bifurcation of the PA after the 2006 election. 15. See Associated Press, “All-Female Party to Run in Palestinian Elections,” Al-Arabiya, September 16, 2012, http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/16/ 238342.html; Mohammed Daraghmeh, “All-Female Bloc to Run in Palestinian Elections,” Guardian, September 15, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feed article/10440252. 16. See UNIFEM 2005b; Benski 2005, 2006; Shadmi 2000. Machsom Watch was established in 2001. For updates, see http://www.machsomwatch.org/en. 17. International Women’s News/Nouvelles Feministes Internationales (Journal of the International Alliance of Women) 98, no. 1 (2003). See also Women Living Under Muslim Laws, http://www.wluml.org. 18. I am grateful to Pamela Pelletreau of Search for Common Ground for bringing this matter to my attention, in a conversation in East Jerusalem, January 21, 2005, and a subsequent e-mail message. 19. A. Badran 2003. 20. Cited in Rought-Brooks, Duaibis, and Hussein 2010. 21. For more details on Afghan political history, see Cordovez and Harrison 1995; Rashid 2001; Rubin 1995. 22. See UNDP (2004a), The Afghanistan Human Development Report. 23. The preceding paragraphs draw on the following sources: Amnesty International 2004, UNICEF 2005, Human Rights Watch 2004, and UNIFEM 2005a. 24. Maliha Zulfacar, in a presentation on Afghanistan at a special session of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) on “Gender and Conflicts in the Middle East,” Middle East Studies Association annual meeting, San Francisco, November 22, 2004. Zulfacar also mentioned the kidnapping of girls and trafficking in human organs. 25. Ibid. See also “Self-Immolations on the Rise in Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2002. Posted on the website of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, http://www.rawa.org/immolation.htm http://www .rawa.fancymarketing.net/immolation.htm, accessed November 28, 2002; and Afghanistan: Women in the News, no. 35, July 10–15, 2004 (Kabul: UNIFEM); and UNIFEM 2005a. 26. See Christensen 2011. 27. Sima Samar, in comments made at the conference Women Defending Peace, organized by the Suzanne Mubarak Women’s Peace Initiative, in cooperation with the government of Switzerland and the ILO, Geneva, November 22–24, 2004. Cited in the December 9, 2004, report by Ingeborg Breines of the UNESCO liaison office in Geneva. See also “New Afghan Constitution Illustrates Progress, Hurdles,” Centerpoint (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Newsletter), April 2004, p. 4. 28. See Kitch 2013. 29. At a meeting of members of the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace in Jakarta, April 10–11, 2010, Afghan women’s rights

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activist Sakina Yaqoobi emphasized the complicity of the Karzai government in abuses by warlords and their joint responsibility, along with US aerial raids, for destruction and continued insecurity. This paragraph also draws on Filkins 2009; Boone 2009a, 2009b, 2010; A. Baker 2009, 2010; Joya 2009. 30. Personal communication, Carol Mann, FemAid. See also http://www .femaid.org for Mann’s reports and photos. On family law for the Shia community, see Boone 2009a. 31. The information in this paragraph and those that follow comes largely from UNIFEM, “2010 Fact Sheet on Afghanistan” and http://afghanistan.unifem.org/ media/pubs/factsheet/10/index.html; http://afghanistan.unifem.org/docs/pubs/08/ Baseline_Stats_on_Gender_2008.pdf; Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNIFEM, Women and Men in Afghanistan: Baseline Statistics on Gender (Kabul: Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UNIFEM, 2008). See also Khan 2012. 32. Kitch 2013. 33. Cited in Khaleeli 2011, p. 30. See also The Guardian, September 27, 2012. 34. Comments by Naba al-Barak and Mrs. Mahdieh, Helsinki, September 6 and 9, 2004, at the seminar Family, Society, and the Empowerment of Women: North African Women Meeting Finnish Women, Helsinki, September 6–10, 2004. Mahdieh and al-Barak were in Helsinki at the invitation of the Finnish Women’s Union. They were part of the 1,000-person commission that chose the Iraqi interim parliament. They described how the war with Iran changed the legal status of women. From 1981 to 2003, no woman could travel abroad without a mahram (husband or close male kin). See also al-Ali and Pratt 2010. 35. Al-Jawaheri 2008. 36. Personal communication, February 2005. In addition, I drafted a letter of protest on behalf of a group of expatriate Iranian feminists living in the United States and Europe in solidarity with Iraqi women. 37. The first set of recommendations was cited by Naba al-Barak in Helsinki at the Family, Society, and Empowerment of Women seminar on September 6, 2004; the second set comes from Yanar Mohammad in a talk given in Amsterdam on September 23, 2005. Author notes. 38. See Yanar Mohammed, “Women of Iraq Left All Alone,” OWFI, November 24, 2010, http://www.equalityiniraq.com/articles/123-women-of-iraq-left-all-alone. 39. Naba al-Barak and Mrs. Mahdieh, at the Family, Society, and Empowerment of Women seminar, September 6 and 9, 2004, Helsinki. 40. Author’s interview with Yanar Mohammed, Amsterdam, September 23, 2005. This paragraph also draws on Susskind 2004; Sandler 2003; and my notes on Mrs. Mahdieh’s comments, Helsinki, September 9, 2004. 41. The quote is from Sandler 2003. 42. These are Articles 398 and 427. See Human Rights Watch, 15, no. 7, July 2003, http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0703/l.htm. 43. The possibility of reconstruction in Iraq was the subject of many UN meetings and documents, some of which I attended and obtained while a staff member at UNESCO from 2004 to 2006. The data in this paragraph come from UNESCO 2004, pp. 3-4. 44. See “Iraq: Focus on Threats Against Progressive Women,” IRIN, March 21, 2005. Raja’s talk took place at the Policy Forum Roundtable Discussion, Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, November 19, 2004. 45. This paragraph draws on Klare 2003; Klein 2004; Harriman 2005; Moore 2009 (citing a 2007 Jordanian intelligence report); and Scahill 2008.

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46. In an emotional phone conversation after the incident, my paternal aunt, who in her capacity as an employee of the Iran Baastaan (Archaeological) Museum had visited the Iraqi museum in the 1950s, used the Persian word bi-savaad— illiterate, or undereducated—to describe the US soldiers who had failed to defend the museum. 47. According to one report, thousands of convicted felons have been allowed to enlist in the US military. The murder of the al-Janabi family “involved a convicted criminal, Steven D. Green, whose enlistment required special dispensation because of his criminal record” (Matt Kennard, “The Modern US Army: Unfit for Service?” Guardian, August 31, 2012, p. 28). 48. According to Yaghmaian 2007, the UNHCR estimated that there were 500,000 to 1 million Iraqi refugees in Syria, 700,000 in Jordan, 40,000 in Lebanon, and between 20,000 and 80,000 in Egypt; some 1.8 million were internally displaced. On the refugees in the United States, see Janega and Oliva 2009. On the estimated death toll, see Tirman 2009. On cultural cleansing, see Baker, Ismael, and Ismael 2010; and Tirman 2009. 49. See Reuters, February 5, 2009, “Iraqi Women’s Affairs Minister Resigns in Protest,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/02/05/us-iraq-women-idUSTRE 5146L720090205, accessed May 2013. 50. See Yanar Mohammed, “Women of Iraq Left All Alone,” http://www.equality iniraq.com/articles/123-women-of-iraq-left-all-alone. On suicide bombers, see Steele 2008. In 2007, a teenage girl named Du’a Khalili was the victim of an honor killing by her close male relatives because she, as a member of the Yezidi religioethnic community, had fallen in love with a Muslim boy, converted to Islam, and eloped with him. In retaliation for the killing of a “Muslim” girl, a mob attacked a busload of Yezidi men and killed them all. For details on this and other examples of violence against women, see Susskind 2007 and Lattimer 2008. 51. For an overview of gender justice and the International Criminal Court, see Joanne Sandler and Laura Turquet, “Searching for Gender Justice,” Open Democracy, May 10, 2010, http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/joanne-sandler-laura -turquet/searching-for-gender-justice. 52. Indeed, Cooke’s argument is that what has been regarded as the first Arab women’s literary school is in fact feminist. See Badran and Cooke 1990, especially the book’s introduction; and Cooke 1986. 53. A cross-national analysis of the poorest developing nations finds that nations with a history of civil strife—and more specifically, larger-scale wars that challenge the political system—are more effective than their peaceful counterparts at placing women in parliaments (Hughes 2009; see also Paxton and Hughes 2007, pp. 167–177). Civil strife is advantageous for women, it is argued, when it is followed by periods of “political opening,” or peace process negotiations mediated by international organizations. These transitions often result in a relatively complete break from old ways of doing politics and entail the involvement of the international community in negotiating peace processes, which in turn supports the entrance of new players into politics and puts into place new political structures (Viterna and Fallon 2008). 54. One response was the formation of Medica Mondiale, founded after the Bosnian conflict to treat female victims of sexual violence, as well as Women for Women International. See www.medicamondiale.org and www.womenforwomen international.org. 55. Enloe 1988, p. 53.

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56. Flamhaft 2007; Tickner 1992, pp. 128, 193. 57. This is true also of MADRE, a New York–based women’s human rights organization that since 1993 has worked in partnership with women’s communitybased groups in conflict areas worldwide. See also Azmon 1997; Bouvard 1994; Ruddick 1980; Strange 1990. 58. Zahira Kamal, general director of the Ministry for Gender Planning and Development of the Palestinian Authority, in a statement on May 30, 2003, distributed by the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace. Translated from the Arabic by Ruth Roded. 59. See, for example, Kampwirth 2002; Shayne 2004. On women’s terrorist actions, see Bloom 2011. 60. The quote at the start of the paragraph is from McKay 2000, p. 561. For details on Morocco, see Susan Slyomovics, “Morocco’s Justice and Reconciliation Commission,” Middle East Research and Information Project, April 4, 2005, http: //www.merip.org/mero/mero040405. Feminists and other democrats in Algeria, as well as Afghan women’s groups such as RAWA, have insisted on trials for those who perpetuated sexualized violence. In Afghanistan, however, the mujahidin–Northern Alliance commanders responsible for rape and sexual slavery were given government posts after the overthrow of the Taliban. In Algeria, there were fears that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s call for a general amnesty would exonerate even the worst of the GIA terrorists of the 1990s who were then in prison; the commission he formed to examine the prospects for peace and reconciliation included not one woman (see Ouazani 2005). Nevertheless, the country’s referendum on amnesty, held in late September 2005, was overwhelmingly approved by the population, though many dissident voices continued to insist on the need for accountability on the part of both the state and the Islamists (see Moghadam 2011). 61. Sikkink 2011. 62. See Borger 2012; the report was produced by Cardona et al. 2012; see also UNIFEM 2010.

6

Gender Politics and the Islamic State: The Case of Iran

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 arguably ushered in the first wave of Islamization in the Muslim world, influencing fundamentalist and political movements that sought to Islamize society, if not the state. In 2011, the Islamic rulers of Iran sought to take credit for the second wave of Islamization, that is, the Arab Spring revolutions that brought to power Islamic parties in the region’s first elections in a democratic context. Whether the dominant Islamic parties in the region will help create institutions that are inclusive and democratic remains to be seen, but the record of the Islamic Republic of Iran does not inspire confidence.

Gender Policies over Three Periods In this chapter I focus on stability and change in the gender system of the Islamic Republic of Iran over some thirty-five years, as indicated by women’s educational attainment, labor force participation, political representation, and the capacity of the women’s rights movement. I begin by examining women’s participation and rights over three periods: the highly ideological 1980s, the period of liberalization ushered in by Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and especially Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005), and the neofundamentalist era of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005– 2013). The decade after the 1979 revolution was characterized by a war economy as well as heightened ideological exhortations and policies steeped in the project of Islamization. In terms of women’s legal status and social positions, the 1980s represent the period of most explicit and overt discrimination, codified in the family law provisions of the new Civil Code and in education and employment policies. This was followed by a period of lib175

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eralization under two presidencies (1992–2005), when some of the most egregious aspects of the regime’s policies on women were overturned and when women began to gain admission to university programs in large numbers. During the presidency of Khatami, the late 1990s saw the emergence of a reform movement, a visible and vocal student movement, and womenled NGOs, some of which advocated for women’s rights. Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, after which women’s issues were addressed by government through a neofundamentalist lens, and policies included the introduction of controversial, discriminatory bills in the legislature. But this era was also marked by the eruption of a women’s movement and, in June 2009, a grassroots protest movement. The Iranian “Green Movement” (known for the green ribbons and other green symbols donned by supporters) was a protest against the contested presidential election results and the lack of civil and political rights. Women’s grievances pertained to their second-class citizenship that was inscribed in discriminatory laws. In what follows, I examine the three periods and their gender dynamics in more detail. Ideology, War, and Repression in the 1980s While the 1978–1979 revolution against the Shah’s dictatorship is regarded as a populist and popular uprising, the process of Islamization that took hold from 1980 onward, under the leadership of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, the velayat-e faghih (the supreme jurist—a new and unprecedented title in Iranian Shia governance), took the revolution in a very different direction.1 Misogyny and authoritarian rule propelled the repression of erstwhile allies, the Islamization of education, sex segregation in schools and public places, and compulsory veiling for women. A new law barred women from acting as judges, and female judges who had already been appointed during the Pahlavi era were dismissed. This action was followed by the removal of many women from top-level government posts; they were forced either to accept lower-level jobs or to retire completely. The Family Protection Act of 1967 (amended in 1973) of the Pahlavi era, which enhanced women’s rights within the family, was abrogated. It was replaced by a patriarchal sharia-based set of family law provisions within the Civil Code that denied women the right to initiate divorce and reinstated men’s unilateral right to divorce and polygamy. Also adopted was a criminal code based on sharia. Among other things, it prescribed stoning for adultery and set the “blood-money” of a woman at half that of a man. Other features of the highly ideological decade included the storming of the US embassy and the taking of American hostages; an eight-year-long war with Iraq; and the execution of thousands of Iranian dissidents and political prisoners, most of whom were connected with the left-Islamic

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armed group known as the People’s Mojahedin but also included many nonviolent communists. With the launch of the “Islamic cultural revolution” in 1980, Iran’s universities and some high schools were shut down for two years, during which time faculty were purged, new curricula prepared, and ideological criteria established for students and faculty. All coeducational schools were converted into single-sex institutions, Islamic dress codes were introduced, private schools and international schools were eliminated, and textbooks were rewritten. When the universities were reopened in 1982 and national entrance examinations (konkour) were held, the government had eliminated some programs of study it considered unnecessary, such as music and counseling. Women were barred from a number of fields of study, including veterinary sciences, geology, mining, and some engineering programs. To ensure that women did not overwhelm certain fields of study, quotas were established.2 Meanwhile, abortion was strictly prohibited (it was illegal prior to the revolution, but doctors were available to perform it), contraception became very difficult to obtain, and a pervasive discourse tied women to marriage and motherhood. The gender policies, along with the long war with Iraq, had a societal price. The Islamic Republic’s first census was carried out in 1986, and by 1988 the results were finalized, revealing an untenable set of trends, such as growing poverty, rapid population growth, and many indicators of gender inequality. In terms of labor force participation, for example, the female proportion of the total labor force and of salaried employment had dropped since the revolution, from 13.8 percent of the salaried workforce in 1976 to under 10 percent, with most of the job losses experienced by rural women and urban working-class women in the industrial sector. In the mid1980s, most women in the workforce were wage and salary earners in the government sector, employed largely by the Ministries of Health and Education as teachers in state schools and universities and as health workers in public health centers.3 The unemployment rate of women was very high: 29 percent in urban areas. The war with Iraq ended in 1988, and Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989. The death of the charismatic revolutionary and religious leader, the cessation of hostilities with Iraq, and the realization of the enormous task of reconstruction and socioeconomic development that lay ahead led the Islamic Republic under President Rafsanjani in a new direction. The 1986 census had revealed high levels of absolute poverty and social inequality, large numbers of war widows, and declining standards of living and quality of life; moreover, the government had been unable to create jobs, meet basic needs, and invest in industry and agriculture. The end of the long, costly war with Iraq had plunged Iran into an economic crisis worsened by

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rapid population growth. A new and more rational national development strategy was needed.4 Liberalization and Reform, 1992–2005 The 1990s began with liberalization, development planning, and shifts in gender policy under President Rafsanjani (1989–1997); the growing visibility of Islamic feminists, legal strategies for women’s rights by the state, and the proliferation of a dynamic feminist press, including the influential women’s magazine Zanan (Women); and the emergence of a movement for reform of the Islamic Republic’s cultural practices and political system, which led to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and again in 2001. In the wake of the results of the 1986 census, the government changed course, lifting any remaining restrictions on women’s education and employment while also advocating family planning. In the summer of 1989, the quotas for women at Iran’s universities were removed from many disciplines, an official decision attributed to the advocacy and negotiating skills of Zahra Rahnavard, wife of former prime minister Mir Hossein Musavi and herself president of Al-Zahra women’s university. The Women’s Social and Cultural Council was formed to study and report on the legal, social, and economic problems of women. Following meetings and seminars that included university presidents and cabinet ministers, and in response to pressure from multilateral organizations in which Iran participated (for example, UNICEF and UNESCO), the council in 1993 lifted all restrictions on women entering any fields of study in Iran’s universities. In addition, a new family planning policy encouraged small families through an active advocacy campaign. Health workers across the country were trained to teach married couples about the use of contraceptives and to deliver them free of charge, and mandatory seminars on family planning were organized for couples set to marry. In 1994, the first time I visited Iran after the revolution, the major cities were replete with posters from the family planning campaign, portraying a mother, father, and two children, with words such as “A smaller family is a healthy family.” The Rafsanjani presidency provided a more open opportunity structure for women’s education and employment. According to a newspaper account, Rafsanjani “called on the female population to strive to take their 50 percent share in the country’s educational programmes and institutions.”5 This was facilitated in part by the expansion of the Daneshgah-e Azad-e Islami, which was not part of the country’s system of public universities. Although this new university reflected the Rafsanjani presidency’s emphasis on privatization and liberalization, it also had the effect of increasing educational opportunities for women. During the 1990s, women’s enrollment in educational

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institutions began to increase, and fertility rates declined as dramatically as they had risen in the 1980s. The picture of women in the labor force that was revealed by the Islamic Republic’s second decennial census, which was completed in November 1996, was not as bright as the trend in women’s educational attainment and fertility. In summary, women’s share of the total economically active population was just 12.7 percent; their share of the urban economically active population was just 11.7 percent, and they comprised 11.2 percent of the urban employed population. Of all public sector wage earners, women constituted only 16.4 percent (a slight increase over 1986). Thus women’s share of the labor force was still less than 20 percent—very low by international standards, albeit higher than in 1986. The rate of unemployment for women was 12.5 percent—considerably lower than in 1986, but still higher than the rate for men (8.3 percent in 1996).6 In other domains, women made notable advances. The beginning of the Rafsanjani era saw the emergence of what feminist scholars in the Iranian diaspora termed “Islamic feminism,” by which they meant an intellectual and theological trend advocating women’s advancement and gender equality within an Islamic discursive framework.7 Zanan was launched by Shahla Sherkat, who sought to initiate “a debate between secular and Muslim feminists over the issue of women’s rights” as well as return to Islamic history and texts to “raise the issue of women’s rights to have control over their sexuality and fertility.”8 The women’s studies journal Farzaneh also appeared, cofounded by Maryam Ebtekar and Massoumeh Abbas-Gholizadeh. The latter part of the 1990s witnessed a revival in Iranian publishing, and the proliferation of all manner of newspapers and magazines, mostly affiliated with the reformist trend, opened up space for a feminist press and greater participation in what was a growing public sphere. In July 1998, Faezeh Hashemi (Rafsanjani), daughter of the president and a member of the fifth parliament (1995–1999), launched Zan (Woman), the first Iranian daily newspaper wholly dedicated to women. This period was defined by the flourishing and increasing international visibility of the Iranian film industry, which included outstanding films by women directors such as Marzieh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman, Tahmineh Milani’s Two Women, and Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s Nargess, The May Lady, and Our Times. Admission of women to universities increased steadily and dramatically during this period of liberalization and reform. In the 1980s, the most dramatic increases had been recorded for men, but women began to gain ground in the 1990s, eventually surpassing male enrollment. By 2001, women held 57 percent of total enrollments at the university level, a phenomenon that the government decided was sufficiently significant to merit further analysis. During the second term of Khatami’s presidency, as educa-

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tion specialist Golnar Mehran has discussed, the National Report on Women’s Status in the Islamic Republic of Iran described educational issues concerning women, which included curriculum, choice of academic fields, educational management positions, and other matters.9 Clearly, an environment had emerged that was more conducive to female participation in higher education. What is more, surveys conducted in Iran within the framework of the World Values Survey found increasing societal support for women’s education and disagreement with the statement that “university education is more important for a boy than for a girl.”10 Thus, in 2002–2003, more women than before entered all fields of studies except engineering. As shown in Table 6.1, the proportion of women doubled in most fields, and there was, indeed, a feminization in some fields, including the sciences and medicine. Most dramatic was the increase of women in agriculture and veterinary sciences (from 2.5 percent to 51.1 percent of students) and in technical and engineering subjects (from 6.6 percent to 20.9 percent). In general, women dominated not only the traditionally female-intensive field of the humanities and the arts but also the sciences and medicine. According to an official report, the ratio of female to male students at the university level increased from 37.4 percent in 1990 to 110.5 percent in 2002.11 More women also completed degrees, and their share of degrees at various levels increased: of the bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2003–2004, women’s share was nearly 50 percent; of master’s degrees, 27 percent; and of PhD degrees, 24 percent.12 By 2005, over 60 percent of urban women

Table 6.1

Women Admitted to Universities by Field of Study (as share of total students admitted) in Iran, 1991–1992 and 2002–2003 1991–1992

Fields of Study Humanities Sciences Agriculture and veterinary sciences Technical and engineering Medicine Arts

2002–2003

Total Students Admitted

Women (%)

Total Students Admitted

Women (%)

28,139 10,305 4,101

31.0 37.9 2.5

88,481 22,296 14,499

61.9 78.2 51.1

13,392 14,347 1,149

6.6 46.1 38.1

56,240 24,098 10,422

20.9 73.7 74.5

Source: Shahla Kazemipour, “Report on the Discussion of the Increase in Women’s Higher Education Participation” (Tehran: Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, 2004), p. 34 (in Persian), reproduced in Goli Rezai-Rashti and Valentine M. Moghadam, “Women and Higher Education in Iran: What Are the Implications for Employment and the ‘Marriage Market’?” International Review of Education 57, no. 3 (October 2011): 419–441.

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aged eighteen to thirty had an upper secondary degree or above, compared with just over 50 percent for urban men.13 Progress in the promotion of women academics within universities was nonetheless limited. Until the 1990s, most university women were employed as lecturers and were not found in tenure-track positions; by 2002, almost half of women academics (49 percent) were employed as assistant professors (up from 26.8 percent in 1991). Women’s academic publications and research saw an increase during the same period.14 However, both the female share of university academic appointments and the female share of senior administrative positions remained low. Indeed, success in higher education did not bring educated women better job opportunities or access to decisionmaking positions. Higher education attainment seemed to serve men better than women, but unemployment became a problem for both. In 2002, the rate of unemployment for men was 8.8 percent, and for women it was fully 19.6 percent.15 Unemployment among educated youth increased significantly in the twenty-first century—and rates were twice as high for women as for men. This matched a regional trend in high unemployment rates, especially for educated youth.16 The Khatami era (1997–2005) was characterized not by a radical approach but rather a gradual approach to reform and change within the parameters of the existing Islamic constitutional system. Nevertheless, expectations were raised, there was a relaxation of many cultural restrictions, and Khatami’s references to civil society encouraged a reform movement that sought more civil and political rights. Conservative forces, however, led by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, remained opposed to change, and in this they were backed by the judiciary, the Guardian Council, and the armed forces. The Guardian Council, for example, vetoed bills that would strengthen the presidency and the parliament. The reformist student movement, which held public demonstrations calling for more political freedom, was put down in the summer of 1999, and several public figures associated with a controversial conference that took place in Berlin in 2000 were detained and questioned upon returning to Tehran. The authorities shut down more than thirty newspapers and magazines, including Zan, arresting and prosecuting prominent journalists and reformists, including Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh. More arrests were to follow during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Neofundamentalist Era, 2005–2013 The Ahmadinejad period began with the dramatic appearance of a feminist movement but came to be characterized by a neofundamentalist approach to women’s issues—including a highly controversial draft Family Protection Bill and government concerns over late marriage, declining fertility, and women’s

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higher enrollment in university—along with a harsh response to the Green Protests of June 2009. When he first took office, Ahmadinejad announced his intention to purge liberal and feminist professors and those in the social sciences and humanities who were affiliated with the reform movement. In 2009, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution established a Special Council for the Development and Promotion of Humanities and appointed seven humanities scholars to oversee Islamization of the disciplines.17 In 2011, dozens of professors were fired, forced to retire, or compelled to leave Iran and seek employment in other countries because they did not support the new policy or were associated with the reform movement or the Green Protests. A new decree would bar women from the study of fully seventy-seven specific academic fields in thirty-six government-run universities throughout the country. These areas of study had been available to female students in years past, but in advance of the new academic year, each individual university would impose its own restrictions, presumably based upon the institution’s distinct requirements. The largest constraints were in engineering and its subfields, but women would also be barred from a wide range of other subjects. And in 2012, the government announced that it was reversing the family planning policy in an effort to raise the fertility rate. As discussed in Chapter 4, sociodemographic changes in the Islamic Republic of Iran (and several other countries in the region) included everdecreasing fertility, which by 2010 hovered at the replacement level, and this development was tied to the prevalence of contraception, women’s increased educational attainment, and the rising age at first marriage. Demographer Farzaneh Roudi explained that the new measure to end the state-led family planning program was driven by a changing social reality: Iran stands out for lowering its fertility in a short time without coercion or abortion. The total fertility rate dropped from 6.6 births per woman in 1977 to 2.0 births per woman in 2000 and to 1.9 births per woman in 2006. The decline has been particularly impressive in rural areas where the average number of births per woman dropped from 8.1 to 2.1 in one generation. (To put into perspective the speed at which Iran’s fertility declined, it took about 300 years for European countries to experience a similar decline.) Because of the high fertility rate that Iran experienced in the recent past, followed by a sharp decline, Iran’s population is now aging rapidly. According to the United Nations Population Division, the median age in Iran increased from 18 in the mid-1970s to 28 today, and it is expected to increase to 40 by 2030 if the fertility trend continues. Yes, Iran is facing an aging population, and this may well be in the minds of Ayatollah Khamenei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and some other officials who are encouraging Iranian women to have more children.18

The statistics certainly bear out the changed sociodemographics, albeit only to an extent. In 2012 the rate of literacy was nearly 90 percent for

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men, though somewhat less for women; enrollment in primary education was 100 percent for both sexes; and the secondary school enrollment rate was about 80 percent for women. According to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2013, expected years of schooling in Iran was over fourteen years, and the mean years of schooling for the population was just under eight (in 1980 the figure had been two years).19 Clearly, an ever-growing proportion of the population was attending university and postponing marriage and family formation. What is more, according to census data, fully 62 percent of all households in 2006 were comprised of just between one and four persons.20 The reversal of the family planning policy was no doubt tied to this changed demographic reality and expected future “graying” of the population. The government’s neofundamentalism, moreover, had not mitigated high unemployment among university graduates, which might also have prompted the new restrictions on women. But the call for earlier marriage and larger families and the restrictions on fields of study for women at universities were arguably intended to reverse other social trends, such as young women leaving their towns to study at a university in another city or province, young women living apart from their families and residing in a dormitory or even renting a flat with a group of other female students, increasing interaction between the sexes, and women overtaking men in entrance exams and in enrollments at the tertiary level. The return of a conservative gender ideology was driving the new education and family planning policies. Unemployment in Iran resulted from structural and demographic factors, including low economic growth, continued investments in capitalintensive sectors, and rural-urban migration. High levels of female unemployment reflected the fact that a growing pool of women was available for work, but women’s employment opportunities were blocked by gender bias as well as the aforementioned structural and sociodemographic factors. Educated Iranian women were especially disadvantaged in the labor market, including the academic market.

Education: Advances and Constraints Iranian women have made significant advances in both secondary and tertiary education attainment. At 23 percent in 2005, female enrollment in college in Iran was lower than in Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey (see Table 4.2). But by 2011, Iran had surpassed quite a few of the countries in the region (Table 4.3), and as noted, women in Iran surpassed men in university enrollments. On the employment side of education, however, Iranian women did less well. In 2010, slightly over half of all teachers in Iran were women, but

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the female share of university teaching staff at different levels was only about 19–20 percent (according to official Iranian sources). The proportion of university teaching staff who were women did increase each academic year between 2001 and 2007, but not by a significant amount (from 17 percent to 20 percent). As shown in Table 4.3, Iran’s female share of jobs at the university level fell short of that in other countries in the region; it was higher than only those of Morocco and Yemen. According to data provided by the Global Gender Gap Report 2011, Iranian women comprised 57 percent of primary school teachers and 19 percent of the teaching staff at the university level. (Data were not available for the proportion of secondary school teachers that were female.) If we compare Iranian women’s employment as teachers in the university sector with other MENA countries, we find that universities in Algeria (38 percent female), Tunisia (42 percent female), and Turkey (40 percent female) were more woman-friendly than in Iran. Official statistics showed that in 2006, the sex ratio favored men, which is something of a puzzle. Also, early marriage and childbearing persisted to some extent. Still, roughly half of Iran’s population of 73 million was female and about half of the population aged fifteen to thirty was female. That population had the greatest access not only to schooling but also to the Internet and to social-networking sites. Such access helps young people develop the capacity for social and political awareness, critical thinking, comparative knowledge, and international connections. Table 6.2 provides data on Internet access, comparing Iran with three Arab Spring countries where women figured prominently in the pro-democracy movements and political revolutions. Assuming no significant gender divide in Table 6.2

Country

Internet and Facebook Usage in Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Tunisia, December 2011 Total Population

Internet Usage (% of total population)

Facebook Usage (penetration rate in %)

Iran

77,891,220

36,500,000 (46.9)

Not available

Egypt

82,079,636

21,691,776 (26.4)

9,391,580 (11.4)

Morocco

31,968,361

15,656,192 (49)

4,075,500 (12.7)

Tunisia

10,629,186

3,856,984 (36.3)

2,799,260 (26.3)

Source: “Internet World Stats: Usage and Population Statistics,” http://www.internetworld stats.com/stats5.htm (Middle East, Africa), accessed March 2012.

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online access, the figures for Internet usage are quite impressive, especially for Iran and Morocco. Given the indicators on education and fertility, one would expect Iranian women to be doing relatively well in the field of employment. And yet, women remained marginal in key arenas, and certainly in decisionmaking (see discussion below). I have already shown that their representation on the teaching staff at universities has been relatively low. Female labor supply is shaped by a number of sociodemographic factors and forces that operate within the household as well as at the societal level. Literacy, schooling, and university education paint a picture of continuous advancement for women, as do the trends in the age at first marriage and fertility. What, then, has been keeping women back from advancing in the domain of employment and thus in attaining economic citizenship?

Iranian Women in the Labor Force A growing body of studies has noted the persistence of low levels of women’s paid employment in Iran.21 According to the 2006 census, only 3.6 million women were employed, compared with 23.5 million men; women constituted just 16 percent of the nonagricultural paid labor force, and the highest urban female labor force participation rate was 23 percent for women aged twenty-five to twenty-nine. World Bank data for 2010 set the labor force participation rate of Iranian women at just 32 percent—up from 20 percent in 1980 and 29 percent in 2000 but still quite low.22 Key findings of the 2006 census for women’s economic participation included the following: • Some 33 percent of Iran’s female labor force held professional jobs, concentrated in education, healthcare, and social services. • Some 50 percent of the female workforce were in professional and technical work, 11 percent in administrative and clerical, and 10 percent in services and sales. In urban areas, the female labor force was about equally divided between private and public sector employment. • Some 20 percent of the female workforce were in industrial employment, but mostly as unpaid family workers. • Some 45 percent of rural women had entered industrial employment, mainly in craftwork such as rug weaving, and were employed primarily as unpaid family workers or contributing family workers. • In terms of age-specific labor force participation, there was a sharp decline among women after age thirty. The unemployment rate among women was higher than the unemployment rate among men.

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ILO data for 2008 (the most recent at the time of writing) reveal patterns of women’s employment, including occupational distribution and participation in various sectors (see Tables 6.3 and 6.4).23 Women comprised 45 percent of all professionals; they were concentrated in the sectors of education, health, and social work, where they made up about 46 percent of the total workforce in those sectors. (Many of the jobs in those sectors are civil service jobs.) As seen in Table 6.3, the figure for female clerical workers was just 249,000, or 25.5 percent of all clerical workers. The proportion had increased relative to earlier years, but it should be noted that globally, clerical work is largely a female occupation. Table 6.4 also shows that women’s share of “modern occupations” such as real estate and finance (about 14.5 percent) was not inconsequential, but women were underrepresented in wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants, and public administration. These occupations, too, tend to have strong female participation in most countries. Given women’s educational attainment, one could reasonably expect increasing levels of participation in senior decisionmaking positions. And yet, according to census and international data, and despite a respectable share of civil service jobs (over one-third female) and professional jobs (about 45 percent; see Table 6.3), the proportion of women in administrative and management positions was surprisingly low. Decisionmaking positions at universities and other institutions were held overwhelmingly by men. Just 13 percent of the category “legislators, senior officials, and managers” were women. Was the figure low because more men than women had graduate degrees? Or was it because male bias impeded women’s promotion to decisionmaking positions? Or could it be that women’s own preference keeps them at a distance from higher-level positions?24 What of employment across social class? Most uneducated women were found in the categories “contributing family workers,” “agricultural workers,” and “craft workers.” Note that they were not salaried employees. The Statistical Yearbook 1388 [2009] showed that of the 2.78 million women in the labor force, just under 37 percent were women with some higher education. The rest were in possession of ebtedayi (primary) schooling, or motevaseteh or rahnema-yi diplomas—two levels of high school (dabeerestan) completion. We can assume that those represent the female workingclass or lower-middle-class population in the labor force. Another way of looking at the class distribution is through the data on public sector employment. Of the women employed in the public sector in 2008 (who constituted 35.8 percent of the total 2.16 million Iranians employed by the public sector), some 741,610 were employed under the civil service code (middle class), whereas 10,000 were employed under the labor law (working class).25 The public sector tended to employ women with higher education attain-

Table 6.3

Economically Active Population by Occupation and Status in Employment in Iran, 2008 Total Workers

Total Females (%) Legislators and senior officials Females (%) Professionals Females (%) Technical Females (%) Clerical Females (%) Service Females (%) Agriculture Females (%) Craft Females (%) Plant and machinery Females (%) Elementary/basic (unskilled) workers Females (%) Not classified Females

20,500,000 3,381,000 (16.5) 497,000 66,000 (13.2) 1,592,000 691,000 (43.4) 994,000 171,000 (17.2) 974,000 249,000 (25.5) 2,625,000 269,000 (10) 3,654,000 893,000 (24.4) 3,948,000 791,000 (20) 2,475,000 32,000 (1.4) 3,219,000 211,000 (6.5) 524,000 8,000

Employers, OwnAccounta Workers, and Employees 10,898,000 1,583,000 (14.5) 310,000 58,000 (18.7) 1,486,000 669,000 (45) 724,000 157,000 (21.6) 944,000 245,000 (26) 972,000 99,000 (10.2) 201,000 11,000 (5) 1,978,000 181,000 (9.1) 1,160,000 27,000 (2.3) 2,609,000 129,000 (4.9) 514,000 5,000

Employees, Including Paid Family 996,000 29,000 (2.9) 160,000 6,000 27,000 4,000 32,000 1,000 8,000 0 175,000 7,000 208,000 5,000 334,000 5,000 37,000 0 15,000 0 1,000 0

Unpaid and Contributing Family Workers 8,606,000 1,770,000 (20) 28,000 1,000 79,000 18,000 (22.8) 238,000 12,000 (5) 22,000 4,000 (18) 1,479,000 163,000 (11) 3,245,000 877,000 (27) 1,636,000 605,000 (37) 1,278,000 5,000 (3.5) 595,000 82,000 (13.8) 9,000 1,000

187

Source: ILO, LABORSTA, Table 2A (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2008), http://laborsta.ilo.org/, accessed November 2012. Note: Total numbers for each category are given in the top line; the line below shows the number of women per category and women as a percentage of the total (in parentheses). a. Own-account workers are self-employed.

188 Table 6.4

Modernizing Women Economically Active Population by Industry and Status in Employment in Iran, 2008

Wholesale and retail trade Hotels and restaurants Financial intermediation Real estate Public administration Education Health and social work Other community, social, and personal services

Total Males and Females

Female (%)a

2,891,000 211,000 284,000 521,000 1,332,000 1,291,000 448,000 443,000

160,000 (5.5) 17,000 (8.0) 41,000 (14.4) 77,000 (14.7) 116,000 (8.7) 601,000 (46.5) 204,000 (45.4) 140,000 (31.6)

Source: Author’s calculations using data from ILO, LABORSTA (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2008), http://laborsta.ilo.org, accessed November 2012. Note: a. Percentage female in parentheses.

ment, even though most of the female labor force had secondary schooling or less and was found in the private sector or in family employment. A study by Hadi Salehi-Esfahani and Parastoo Shajari found that having only an elementary education lowers the likelihood of female labor force participation by about 11 percent, but having higher degrees tends to raise women’s participation sharply. The authors also found that marriage is associated with a significant reduction in women’s labor force participation (about 8.5 percent), but an increase for men (about 7 percent).26 The sexual division of labor operates within all social classes, but especially among those with lower educational attainment. What of female household heads? Was their labor force participation higher than the average? In addition to age, marital status, and education, female household headship is identified in the literature as a factor contributing to the supply of job-seeking women.27 (Table 6.5 provides some instructive data about female-headed households in Iran.) Again, Iran departs from the norm. According to the 2006 census, of 17.3 million households in Iran, 1.6 million—or 9.5 percent—were headed by women. In most countries, female household heads tend to be among the most economically active among the female population. However, the census showed that only 14.1 percent of female heads of household in Iran were economically active, a figure that is even lower than Iran’s average female labor force participation rate. Indeed, that was a decline from 1996, when nearly 16 percent of such women were employed. Nearly 79 percent were designated as “homemaker/inactive” or “has an income without a job.” (The latter may refer to remittances or other support from relatives, unreported rental income, or social assistance.) By contrast, 81 percent of men

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Total Population and Characteristics of Household Heads in Iran, 1986, 1996, and 2006 1986

Total population 49,445,010 Total households 9,672,477 Male-headed household 8,986,976 Female-headed household 685,501 Female-headed household (% of total) 7.1 Mean age of male-headed household — Mean age of female-headed household — Employed (% male) — Employed (% female) — Homemaker/inactive (% female) — Has income without job (% female) —

1996 60,055,488 12,387,943 11,350,622 1,037,321 8.4 43.6 53.9 84.9 15.8 57.6 20.3

2006 70,495,782 17,352,686 15,711,642 1,641,044 9.5 44.3 57.0 81.3 14.1 31.0 48.3

Source: Adapted from Roksana Bahramitash, Shahla Kazemipour, and Valentine M. Moghadam, “Female-Headed Households in Iran: A Preliminary Investigation,” unpublished manuscript 2012, using data from the Iran Census, 1956–2006, http://www.amar.org.ir, and Iranian Statistical Yearbook, http://salnameh.sci.org.ir/AllUser/DirectoryTreeENComplete.aspx, various tables.

heading households in 2006 reported themselves to be employed. Moreover, many of the women household heads had a low level of education and were working in low-paying jobs. Another notable characteristic was that female heads of household tended to be older than males: 57 years of age in 2006, compared with an average of 44.3 years of age for males. Put another way, fully 45 percent of the households were headed by women aged 60 and over. Illiteracy among them was very high, and especially high among female heads residing in rural areas. Since illiteracy and poverty tend to correlate, such high rates of female illiteracy would suggest that female household heads are poor. As noted, they tend to be outside the labor force. To put the Iranian figures in perspective, the ILO estimated that the global share of women above the working age (fifteen years and over in most countries) who were employed (the employment-to-population ratio, or EPR) was 48 percent in 2009, compared to a male EPR of 72.8 percent.28 Clearly, the EPR in Iran was low in the period 2006–2008, and the vast majority of Iranian women appeared to be outside the formal labor force. The figures for Iran were conceivably inflated due to a peculiarity of the census: Iranian census takers continued the practice of counting the population aged ten and above in the labor force. This is anachronistic and unethical, given international opprobrium toward child labor; in addition, school enrollment rates in contemporary Iran indicate that widespread child labor is highly unlikely. In any event, the labor force statistics raise a number of questions. Even allowing for larger cohorts of females remaining in school, why were the graduates of university education in the 1990s and the

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early years of the new century not eased into paid professional work? Why was women’s unemployment rate in 2008 (18 percent) higher than their share of the formal sector’s paid labor force (16 percent)? (See Tables 3.3 and 6.6.) As was discussed in Chapter 3, women’s unemployment rates are higher than those of men in most parts of the world and certainly across MENA. In absolute numbers, most of the unemployed in Iran in 2006 were men, but women made up fully 51 percent of the new entrants looking for work (557,000 women and just over 1 million men, according to the ILO’s labor statistics database). Age-specific unemployment rates in Iran revealed two patterns: (1) very high rates of youth unemployment in general, and (2) extraordinarily high unemployment rates among young women. Indeed, women’s unemployment rates were consistently higher than those of men— on the order of 30 percent in 1997, 36 percent in 2000, and 42.5 percent in 2004 for the twenty- to twenty-four-year-old age group, according to Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Daniel Egel. Given women’s lower participation rates, these unemployment rates for women were disproportionately high. Women with university education still suffered the highest unemployment rates—and in 2004, some 43 percent of young women with a university education were unemployed, compared with 22.5 percent of universityeducated men.29 The data provided by Salehi-Isfahani and Egel are reproduced in Table 6.6. As shown by Table 6.6, women evidently faced serious obstacles to obtaining steady, paid employment. The female labor force was dominated by women with high school and university education whose unemployment rates were exceedingly high. Women with more education were more available for work than were women with less education. It would also appear that the vast majority of women from urban working-class families—in cities such as Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Mashad—were either discouraged workers and labor force dropouts; economically inactive or housewives; or engaged in informal, home-based, or volunteer activities. Given high unemployment and inflation in Iran, it is likely that a majority of unemployed women engage in an array of home-based economic activities, both high end and low end. During fieldwork in Iran in 1994, I noticed an array of home-based beauty salons. More recently, ethnographic research by Roksana Bahramitash and Shahla Kazemipour and by Fatemeh Etemad-Moghadam has found that the upper-middle-class women “missing” from the official labor force statistics are actually engaged in home-based income-generating activities.30 Such women may prefer to undertake work at home rather than acquiesce to the strictures of the dress code and other irritants associated with formal sector employment. Their home-based activities might include making and selling jewelry or special jams, catering parties or weddings, providing tutoring or

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Gender Politics and the Islamic State: The Case of Iran Table 6.6

Unemployment Rate by Gender, Age, and Education in Iran, 1997–2004 (in percent) 1997

2000

2004

Male

Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Unemployment by age and gender 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 Total

33.5 28.2 14.0 7.0 12.8

30.6 28.9 13.1 6.7 14.9

33.0 33.6 17.3 8.3 14.4

30.5 36.2 18.3 7.1 16.6

18.8 22.2 12.0 5.6 9.2

33.7 42.5 23.3 7.2 7.8

Unemployment by education and gender Illiterate Primary Lower secondary Some upper secondary Upper secondary University

17.4 19.7 24.6 27.9 33.9 14.5

14.1 13.0 25.2 30.7 56.2 14.9

18.8 20.7 26.7 32.3 37.6 24.7

6.0 7.8 21.0 42.7 63.2 31.0

8.2 10.4 15.5 21.5 23.6 22.5

4.3 7.5 19.2 39.6 56.8 43.2

Source: Adapted from Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Daniel Egel, “Youth Exclusion in Iran: The State of Education, Employment, and Family Formation,” Middle East Youth Initiative Working Papers, Wolfensohn Center for Development, Brookings Institution, and Dubai School of Government, 2007, Tables 6-1 and 6-2, pp. 24–25, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/ papers/2007/9/youth%20exclusion%20salehi%20isfahani/09_youth_exclusion_salehi_isfahani .pdf.

counseling, doing desktop publishing, or teaching Pilates or yoga classes. Those researchers also found that a much larger number of women from low-income and working-class families engage in home-based informal labor, including dressmaking, beauty, catering, counseling, childcare, or transportation services. Those activities enable them to supplement the incomes of their spouses and otherwise contribute to the household budget and to have the flexibility needed to attend to domestic duties. Political theorists such as Frederick Engels and sociologists such as Rae Lesser Blumberg and Janet Chafetz have made the argument that women’s economic independence is a prerequisite for involvement in political society.31 Given Iranian women’s low involvement in paid employment, it is no surprise that they have been severely underrepresented in formal politics, with a mere 3 percent of seats in parliament. The two measures—the female share of paid employment and the female share of formal politics—reveal the severity of gender inequality in Iran, a situation that has remained relatively stable over more than three decades of the Islamic Republic.

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Women, Participation, and Political Power The Islamic Republic of Iran has many discriminatory laws, and the majority of adult women remain outside the formal labor force, but since the early 2000s, women’s presence in public life has increased. It takes the form not only of women walking, driving, shopping, and working but also taking part in public protests (where possible) and petition campaigns, setting up women’s websites and blogs, and initiating national debates and discussions about women’s rights and legal reform. Women’s paid and voluntary involvement in nongovernmental organizations, activism in women’s rights organizations, and visibility as writers, journalists, and artists also signal their growing social participation. However, Iranian women’s participation and representation in the formal political structure was among the lowest in the world in 2012. International data sets show that since the early 2000s, just 13–18 percent of legislators, senior officials, and managers in Iran have been female, even though women’s educational attainment exceeds that of men and women are important political constituents in elections. In a number of other MENA countries, and indeed in a number of other Muslim-majority countries (e.g., Indonesia), women can be judges and comprise between 20 and 30 percent of all judges. (In most Muslim countries, however, women may not serve as judges in sharia courts.) Women judges may be concentrated in juvenile courts or family courts, but their presence in such a traditionally male-dominated field enables their entry into other domains. Recall that the profession of judge became off-limits to women after the Iranian Revolution. The reality of Iranian women’s exclusion makes the Iranian political system among the most masculinist in the world, as Table 6.7 starkly illustrates. Unlike many other countries, Iran has not instituted gender quotas for women’s political participation, even though it has instituted quotas for fields of study. And it has yet to become a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Women’s underrepresentation in formal politics results not only from the masculine nature of the Iranian state and the male bias of its legal frameworks, but also from women’s economic powerlessness. Being outTable 6.7

Political Power Indicators in Iran, 2011 (in percent)

Members of parliament Ministerial positions Head of state (since 1961)

Female

Male

3 3 0

97 97 100

Source: World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2011 (Geneva: WEF, 2011).

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193

side the formal labor force, without an income, and without political power, women depend on male kin for social insurance and retirement benefits or on the mahr (mehrieh in Persian parlance). Anecdotal evidence indicates that in the twenty-first century, the practice of negotiating mehrieh was growing rather than declining in Iran. Could this be explained at least partly by the fact that women’s employment opportunities were limited and they could not rely on a steady income? The puzzle that I have been addressing is why, given Iranian women’s educational attainment and low fertility rate, their labor force attachment is so weak. In the discussion below, I provide an explanation, drawing attention to structural and institutional obstacles. Female labor supply is usually shaped by a combination of educational attainment, marital status, fertility, and household economic need, and in this chapter I have shown that those conditions obtain in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I now examine other factors. The demand for labor is tied to the structure of the economy, development policy, and investment strategies, and in some cases it can also be shaped by a country’s institutional framework. In Chapter 3, I analyzed the role of the regional oil economy in shaping female labor supply and demand, and also posited that Muslim family law reproduces the patriarchal gender contract, or the male breadwinner–female homemaker ideal. In Iran’s case, too, laws, policies, and norms affect the demand for female labor—but also the supply of women available for work. In turn, the small proportion of women in the workforce correlates with their underrepresentation in the domain of formal politics.

Structural and Institutional Obstacles In the 1990s, the economy grew, and the government developed new institutions that boosted the opportunities to expand modern services— education, medicine, finance, law, engineering, and the like. As we have seen, however, women’s participation is low in all areas but education, healthcare, and social services. That tends to be the case across the globe, but most countries have a far larger female labor force than does Iran. Why is the demand for female labor so low? The role of the neopatriarchal Iranian state and its institutional barriers (mainly, the family law provisions of the Civil Code) will be elucidated in a subsequent section. Here I draw attention to the economic development strategy it has pursued—one that favors the oil and gas sectors and, most recently, advances in nuclear power. These fields, it should be noted, are capital intensive and male intensive. The presence of state-owned or parastatal monopolies, combined with a strategy in the first two decades after the Iranian Revolution that favored self-employment and the expansion of the informal sector (as

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Farhad Nomani and Sohrab Behdad demonstrated in their 2006 book, Class and Labor in Iran), created an economic and labor market environment that was not conducive to incorporation of women into the workforce. To look at the situation through a gender-analytic lens, it would appear that the Iranian state prefers that some women enter the fields of education and healthcare, if only to teach and administer healthcare to women and girls, but that in general, women remain at home and care for their families. In 2011, Iran was the second-largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa in terms of GDP ($400 billion) and in terms of population (76 million people).32 It was characterized by a large hydrocarbon sector, smallscale, private agriculture and services, and a noticeable state presence in manufacturing and finance. In 2007 the service sector (including government) contributed 56 percent to GDP, followed by the hydrocarbon sector with 25 percent and agriculture with 10 percent. Iran ranked second in the world in natural gas reserves and third in oil reserves. It was the secondlargest OPEC oil producer, with an output averaging about 4 million barrels per day. Iran’s chief source of foreign exchange derived from oil and gas. Although Iran’s economy had shifted toward a market-based economy, the financial sector was largely dominated by public banks, and the state still played a key role in the economy, owning large public and quasi-public enterprises in the manufacturing and commercial sectors. Over 60 percent of the manufacturing sector’s output was produced by state-owned enterprises. The government envisioned a large privatization program in its 2010–2015 five-year plan that aimed to spin off some 20 percent of stateowned firms (SOEs) each year, although it appeared that the assets of SOEs were purchased mainly by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps or other semigovernmental enterprises. International prices of oil and gas fluctuate, which means that aggregate GDP and government revenues are intrinsically volatile. According to the World Bank, Iran’s economy grew by 3.5 percent in 2009–2010, while “prudent macroeconomic policies” reduced inflation to about 10 percent and ensured a fiscal surplus. However, the government ended substantial energy and food subsidies in December 2010, and even stricter economic and banking sanctions and embargoes by the United States and Europe were expected to harm economic growth. What is more, Iran’s macroeconomic policies had not counteracted boom-and-bust cycles in economic performance, despite help from the Oil Stabilization Fund and the development fund established in 2011–2012. As a result, the private sector looked to an uncertain future, impeding investment and job creation. Meanwhile, the state sector continued to invest in the capital-intensive sectors of oil, gas, and nuclear energy. What are the gender implications of the above World Bank analysis? One is that the “large hydrocarbon sector, . . . and noticeable state presence

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195

in manufacturing and finance” would be more receptive to male rather than female labor.33 In principle, female labor should be found in large numbers in “small-scale, private agriculture and services,” but the figures we examined earlier do not bear this out. According to the 2006 census, women made up just 17 percent of technical and related workers, less than 2 percent of plant and machinery workers, less than 7 percent of other basic (unskilled) workers, and a very small proportion of workers and employees in the commercial and financial fields (see Tables 6.3 and 6.4). If the (rather conservative) Revolutionary Guard purchased “privatized” assets, that development, too, would be unlikely to favor the hiring of women. Another implication is that if the economy did contract as a result of the sanctions or volatile commodities prices, the resulting increases in male unemployment would militate against expanded female employment. What also should be borne in mind is the inability of the Iranian state to attract foreign direct investment, especially of the type that might be labor intensive and employment generating. The sanctions regime, of course, had an adverse effect, but Iran’s free trade zones (FTZs) did not become the “back doors to the international economy” that the authorities had hoped for. Hassan Hakimian showed that although the FTZs had a modest workforce to begin with (at some 45,000 people), “female employment creation . . . is very weak.” He concluded that “Iran’s experience of free zones in the past one and a half decades has failed to achieve its principal objectives of attracting FDI, diversifying non-oil exports and generating new jobs.”34 Table 6.8 provides a summary of key economic indicators, drawn from the World Bank. Institutional Obstacles: The Masculine State, Its Laws and Norms The Islamic Republic of Iran’s very ambitious constitution of 1979 requires the government to provide full employment to its citizens, including (presumably) female citizens. But this constitutional guarantee has been undermined by (1) poor economic conditions, inadequate domestic and foreign investments, and subsequently low levels of job creation; (2) a preference for investments in capital-intensive, male-dominated sectors such as oil, gas, and nuclear energy; (3) a constitutional clause extolling the virtues of motherhood; and (4) the ubiquitous Islamic criteria, including the fact that under the Islamic Republic’s sharia-based civil code, women cannot seek jobs or remain in their occupation of choice without the approval of their fathers or husbands. As noted earlier in this chapter, a massive ideological campaign was launched after the Iranian Revolution to tie women to their family roles, and the new Islamic family law restored men’s rights to polygamy, unilat-

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Table 6.8

Economic Indicators in Iran, 2007–2011

Population

75.35 million

GDP Contribution by sector Agriculture Industry Services

$331 billion (2009, current US$) 11.2% 40.6% 48.2%

Value of exports

$83.79 billion

Value of petroleum exports

$71.57 billion

GDP per capita

$4,741 (2009, current US$)

Labor force distribution and sectoral products Agriculture

25% Wheat, rice, other grains; sugar beets, fruits, nuts; cotton; dairy products; wool; caviar

Industry

31% Petroleum; chemical and petroleum products; textiles; cement and building materials; food processing (sugar refining and vegetable oil production); metals fabricating (steel and copper); armaments

Services

45% Public and private services

Unemployment

15.3% (2011 estimate)

Below poverty line

18.7% (2007 estimate)

Exports—commodities

Petroleum (80%); chemical and petroleum products; nuts and fruits; carpets

Imports—commodities

Industrial supplies, capital goods, foodstuffs and other consumer goods, technical services

Sources: World Bank, “Country at a Glance” analysis for Iran, http://www.worldbank.org/en /country/iran; and World Bank Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org/country/iran -islamic-republic.

eral divorce, and automatic custody of children after divorce. Amendments to the family law provisions enabled women to sue for divorce, but only under certain conditions, whereas none existed for men. “Divorce Iranian Style,” the 1998 documentary film by Kim Longinotto and Ziba MirHosseini, showed how women tried to negotiate a divorce settlement or custody of a child. Although it depicted strong women determined to assert

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their rights under the law, it also drew attention to the arbitrariness or lack of sympathy of judges. In matters of inheritance, women became severely disadvantaged. For example, a man inherits all his wife’s wealth, but she is entitled only to one-fourth (if he has no child) or one-eighth (if he has children) of his movable property and of the value of his estate. This pertains to cases of permanent marriage; partners in a temporary marriage receive no inheritance.35 In polygamous marriages, wives must divide among themselves the allotted inheritance that, according to Article 942 of the Civil Code, can never exceed their designated fourth or eighth. Article 1117 stipulates that a man has the right to prevent his wife from employment “if he deems such employment would be at variance with their family interests and values.” A 1992 amendment to the divorce law introduced ujrat-ul-methl—the monetary value of the housework that the wife performed during the marriage. This sum, to be calculated and determined by the court, would be payable by the husband—assuming, however, that the wife did not initiate or cause the divorce. And in 1997, a bill tied any mehrieh payment to the inflation rate. Such were the notions of progress in the status of women within the Islamic Republic. In reality, however, these measures assumed that women are homemakers and men the breadwinners. As such, they reinforced the patriarchal gender contract and rendered married women the economic dependents of their husbands. In Chapter 3, I explained how Muslim family law limits women’s economic citizenship by restricting their participation and rights. MFL also demonstrates class bias, in that working-class and lower-income women are especially disadvantaged. In Iran, women with a university education or from wealthy or well-connected families can negotiate a high mehrieh, but other women are vulnerable after divorce, especially if they cannot or will not remarry and have dependents. The precarious situation of a lower-middle-class woman after divorce is poignantly depicted in the 2002 documentary film by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Our Times. Arezoo is divorced from a drug-addicted husband, works at an office job to support a small daughter and sightless mother, but is bullied by her boss. She tries desperately to find a place to live after her landlady tells her she must leave in order to make way for the landlady’s son and new daughter-in-law. She cannot afford to buy a home and cannot find a decent place to live because landlords prefer not to rent to single or divorced women. Negotiating Mehrieh and Bargaining with Patriarchy: An Alternative to Women’s Economic Citizenship? Prior to the 1979 revolution, the practice of negotiating mehrieh was declining among the elite stratum, as it was considered outmoded and

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incompatible with modernity. Although supporters of the practice have always defended it as a form of social insurance or a means of building assets for the wife, opponents have argued that it presents the bride as an object for sale and encourages women’s economic dependence. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the custom was not only revived and expanded, but many educated women began asking for very high mehrieh. As a nuptial gift, “bride price,” or dower, the mehrieh is normally specified in the Islamic marriage contract and is payable to the bride by the groom after the marriage is consummated. The nuptial gift is usually divided into two parts: that which is paid at the time of marriage, and the deferred amount, which is paid upon the dissolution of the marriage or obtained after the husband’s death. The wife may claim her nuptial gift any time during the marriage, but traditionally, mehrieh is deferred. It is considered a financial right of the wife and financial obligation of the husband. In principle, Muslim women may be able to rely on the mehrieh and use it as a bargaining chip in case of misbehavior on the husband’s part or if he wishes to divorce her or take a second wife or a sigheh (temporary wife). But there are at least three problems here. One is that low-income families can only offer a small amount. The second is that if a woman sues for divorce or is found by a judge to be at fault, she forfeits her mehrieh. The third problem is that the mehrieh represents and reinforces the patriarchal gender contract, whereby the groom proffers a sum of money in exchange for the bride’s sexual and childbearing services, and whereby he offers to “maintain” her in exchange for her “obedience.” In a sense, Iranian women are “bargaining with patriarchy.”36 Because Iran’s Islamic family law makes it far easier for the husband to get a divorce than for the wife to do so, mehrieh can provide some leverage. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the increasing prevalence of mehrieh has been associated with the denial of women’s economic citizenship—limited employment opportunities and the absence of policies and mechanisms to enable work-family balance. In addition, the practice has been used as a strategy to counter the legal discrimination and risk of divorce that women face under the provisions of Islamic family law. Indeed, interviews conducted in Iran by Goli Rezai-Rashti confirmed the propositions, as in the following quote: For myself, I am a strong believer in mehrieh for women. Mehrieh should not be seen in the traditional sense. In this country women cannot negotiate their civil and legal rights through legal means. I was married for five years and found out that I could not live with my husband any longer. We discussed divorce but he said no. My mehrieh was 1370 gold coins (sekeh azadi). I threatened that I would litigate for my mehrieh. This was the

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only way that I could secure my divorce. I am absolutely sure that because of this high mehrieh he agreed to divorce.37

Muslim family law may be seen not only as a premodern or prefeminist code for the regulation of family relations but also as a way of retaining family support systems in the place of a fully functioning welfare state predicated on concepts of citizen contributions and entitlements. The welfare of wives and children remains the responsibility of the husbandfather. When a woman seeks a divorce or is divorced, her maintenance comes not in the form of any transfers from the state, and even less in the form of employment-generating policies for women, but in the form of the mehrieh that is owed to her by her husband, as well as the ujrat-ul-methl, which is the monetary value of the domestic work she has performed over the years. In 2007, the Ahmadinejad government introduced a controversial Family Protection Bill that would have consolidated the various family law provisions in the Civil Code and create a unified family law for the first time in forty years. Among other things, it would have imposed taxation of the mehrieh, removed the requirement to register temporary marriages, and eliminated the need for a husband to prove financial solvency or ask his wife’s permission before marrying another woman. The bill caused a huge outcry and was eventually withdrawn.38 Still, the overall climate for women within Iran’s version of MFL, along with the limited opportunities for salaried employment, arguably has compelled them to turn to mehrieh as a strategy for economic independence and as a patriarchal bargaining chip. In the Global Gender Gap Report 2011, the World Economic Forum presents information from a survey of countries regarding the presence of the following policies that enhance gender equality: • • • • •

Maternity, paternity, and shared parental leaves Prohibitions on gender-based discrimination Implementation of gender-neutral practices at work Mandatory percentages of both genders on corporate boards Mandatory percentages of both genders in political assemblies (parliaments) • Authority to monitor these policies • Gender equality labels39 • Funding for female entrepreneurs Most countries that responded to the survey had policies relating to parental leaves, prohibitions on gender-based discrimination, and genderneutral practices at work. As expected, the Nordic countries had incorpo-

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rated almost all the items into law, but other countries had as well, including Greece, Ethiopia, Malta, Spain, and South Korea. Iran did not take part in the survey and was not included in the country listing. That is not surprising, given the absence of a legislative framework for gender equality and the presence of its opposite, discriminatory family law. Muslim family law may reinforce traditional gender attitudes, which attenuate the demand for female labor across the economy. The results of the 2005 World Values Survey conducted in Iran show some enlightened attitudes, for example, with respect to education and wife abuse, but traditional views prevail, too (see Table 6.9). The persistence of women’s economic and political marginalization can be explained by the presence of a neopatriarchal state and highly discriminatory laws, along with the absence of women-friendly social policies, safeguards for women in the workforce, and affirmative action policies to encourage more women to join the workforce. The Iranian state’s legal and policy frameworks, and especially its family laws, reinforce conservative social norms regarding male and female roles. Such norms are internalized by many women themselves, as well as by employers, thus affecting female labor supply and demand. In addition, an economy that is dominated by monopolies and by the oil, gas, and nuclear sectors does not generate substantial employment opportunities for women. Although women with higher education attainment in the health and education sectors can find professional jobs, and although rural women who engage in craft work (albeit largely as unpaid family labor or contributing family workers) also appear in labor force statistics, urban working-class or low-income women seem to be conspicuously absent. The employment-to-population ratio of Iranian women is very low. As for the political process, Iranian women turn out in large numbers as voters, and at times as candidates in the parliamentary and municipal elections, but except for a brief period in the Khatami era when thirteen women were members of parliament (and faced many frustrations), Iranian women are excluded from the realm of political power. The situation persists despite the

Table 6.9

Attitudes Toward Women, Work, and Family in Iran, 2005

When jobs are scarce, men should be prioritized. Men make better executives than women do. It is more important for a boy than for a girl to attend university. A man is justified in beating his wife.

Agree/strongly agree: 69% Agree/strongly agree: 78% Disagree/strongly disagree: 44%; agree/strongly agree: 55% Never justified: 80%

Source: World Values Survey, Iran, 2005, http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeQuestion .jsp.

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impressive educational advances of Iranian women. As studies by UNESCO and the World Bank confirmed, by 2010, gender parity had been achieved at the secondary level; the majority of students in higher education were female; and fully 68 percent of science students were women.40 It may very well be the case that in future years, more women will rebel against their subordinate place in the paid labor force and in political decisionmaking. In the meantime, however, the marginal position of women in the labor force and in politics has implications for the country’s democratization prospects. As discussed in Chapter 7, the long-standing exclusion of women from political processes and decisionmaking in MENA countries is a key factor in explaining why the region has been a “laggard,” compared with other regions, in what Samuel Huntington called “democratization’s third wave.” If modernization theory and democratic transition theories posit a central role for a “modernizing bourgeoisie” or socioeconomic development or an active civil society, a gender-analytic lens might point to the important role of “modernizing women,” and especially of the presence of a critical mass of women in the workforce and in the political process. If the exclusion of women is part of the logic of the neopatriarchal, authoritarian state, then the integration of women into employment and political decisionmaking could change the nature of the state. That is no doubt the specter that haunts the Iranian authorities and the reason why women continue to agitate for equality.

The Women’s Rights Movement In the 1980s, when Iranian women were divided for and against the Islamic regime and the authorities broached no dissidence, a women’s movement was inconceivable. But the death of Khomeini and the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani enabled women’s rights advocates to mobilize quietly. Women who were staunchly secular and those who believed in the Iranian Revolution began to speak to one another, using the language of Islamic feminism and of the emerging global women’s rights agenda associated with the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995. The women’s magazine Zanan served as a bridge between the two wings of what was a women’s rights proto-movement. With the 1997 election to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami and the further opening of social and cultural space, women’s nongovernmental organizations and a lively feminist press flourished. Many of the women who formed publications and NGOs were supportive of the reform movement, though they were critical of reformist politicians for ignoring women’s issues. In one of her essays, women’s rights advocate Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh wrote that certain reformist leaders had a “utilitarian view of women’s

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questions and issues” and tended to use women’s issues to mobilize women for their own agenda. This essay also represented Abbas-Gholizadeh’s transition from a supporter of the Islamic system to a strong critic of both fundamentalism and the limits of the reformist agenda of the time.41 In both his terms, President Khatami was mild in his approach to change and women’s rights and did not appoint women to senior posts in government, even though the parliament was dominated by reformists, including several activist women. Moreover, and as noted, the conservatives still held sway. In 1999, the judiciary banned Zan and charged founder Faezeh Hashemi (Rafsanjani), daughter of the former president, with being a counterrevolutionary. Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, an elected member of parliament whose constituency was largely Tehran university students, was sentenced to twenty-two months in prison in August 2001 on charges of inciting public opinion and insulting the judiciary. Haghighatjoo had been among the most vocal supporters of students who were jailed in 1999, and she had discussed the plight of the students on the parliament floor. She had been previously called before the judiciary after objecting, in a parliamentary speech, to the treatment of a female journalist, Fariba Davoudi-Mohajer, who was arrested during the crackdown on the reformist press. Haghighatjoo was arrested twice and subsequently left Iran with her family to reside in the United States. Other arrests took place following a conference on Iran that had convened in Berlin in April 2000; among them were women who would go on to be leading figures in the feminist movement. By 2004, it was clear that the reformist faction within the state had exhausted its possibilities and reached the limits of its capacity to modify the political and social realities; parliamentary elections had resulted in a victory for the conservatives, and the upcoming presidential election was expected to favor the conservatives. Indeed, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became the new president in June 2005. That month, a group of Iranian women’s rights activists staged a protest in front of Tehran University. According to Mahboubeh AbbasGholizadeh, the women were alarmed by statements emanating from the Ahmadinejad camp that all NGOs were to be closed down.42 The fundamental issue, though, was the second-class citizenship of women and the role of the constitution in codifying and reinforcing gender inequality and blocking social change. The vast powers and veto authority that the constitution conferred on the supreme leader and the Guardian Council were correctly seen as serving to obstruct reform bills and impede change in the status of women. Even devout Muslim women, such as the well-known Islamic feminist Azam Taleghani, took issue with a constitutional article that reserved the office of the president to men. The women protesters demanded “change for equality,” which included repeal of the articles of

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the civil code that placed women in a subordinate position within the family and the articles of the penal code that sanctioned dire punishments for adultery. Some 6,000 women and men joined the 2005 protest in Tehran. Photos of the relatively calm event were posted on the Iran Feminist Tribune website. The protest event issued a statement entitled “Our Protest Against Violations of Women’s Rights in the Iranian Constitution,” which could be seen as challenging the authority of the Islamic state and its institutions. Within days, some 1,000 people had signed the public declaration, also posted online, calling upon the Iranian state to change laws that discriminated against women. Women’s NGOs from major cities such as Tabriz and Isfahan and even towns in provinces such as Kurdestan announced their support. More than 130 weblogs posted their call to action, and many women’s rights groups in the United States and Europe endorsed the action. The June 2005 demonstration of feminist collective action represented a clarion call for an independent women’s rights movement audaciously targeting the constitution and the inequalities embedded in the Iranian legal system as obstacles to gender justice. When women’s rights activists gathered in central Tehran in June 2006 to commemorate the first anniversary of the women’s protests, more than thirty were arrested by the police: they were charged with constituting a “threat to national security”—a catchall indictment of all dissidents introduced by Ahmadinejad. The women’s division of the police used violence against the peaceful demonstrators, and the photos of police brutality were immediately posted on weblogs and news sites and circulated across the globe. Simin Behbehani, a well-known poet in her seventies, was photographed being manhandled by police, and she later told foreign reporters how she had been stunned with a taser gun and beaten along with other women protestors.43 In a demonstration of the effective use of new social networking media by Iranian activists, a communiqué with a complete list of the feminist demands was posted on blogs and widely distributed on the Internet. Titled “Resolution Against Gender Discrimination in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the communiqué begins with a reference to the introduction of a constitution a century earlier and goes on to demand “the same right to divorce as men”; “the prohibition of polygamy”; “equal rights in marriage”; “equal child custody rights for mothers and fathers”; “the age of criminal responsibility for boys and girls changed to eighteen years of age” [from age nine for a girl and fifteen for a boy]; and “the speedy abolishment of temporary working contracts” in favor of work contracts that enable steady jobs and a guaranteed career.44

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Although the feminist demands could be seen as challenging the Islamic constitution, they also drew on national and cultural frames for legitimacy and resonated with various groups. For example, the activists strategically drew on the language of the constitution and the law to defend their action and justify their right to engage in peaceful protest. When the head of the judiciary was reported in the official news agency as having declared the feminist rally illegal because the organizers had not acquired permission from the authorities, the protest organizers cited their constitutional right, as delineated in Principle 27, to peacefully demonstrate as citizens as long as the demonstration does not oppose Islamic values and no one bears arms. Lawyer Shirin Ebadi, a judge prior to the revolution who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, deployed constitutional and cultural framing in a legal complaint against the excessive use of force by the policewomen against “unarmed Muslim women who had gathered to peacefully demand equality under the law.”45 In addition, by designating their struggle as part of “one-hundred-year-old demands,” the feminists linked their movement to Iran’s famous Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911. That revolution had sought to limit the powers of the Qajar Shah, establish a constitution and parliament, tie political power to popular sovereignty, and bring progress and equality to oppressed social groups. It has enormous resonance within Iranian political culture. Finally, the feminists referred to their movement and set of demands not as siassi (political) but as senfi—again a reference to Iranian constitutional and political history, where groups of citizens make claims on the basis of their collective identity as a class or guild or trade. By referring to themselves as a senf, the women’s rights activists were strategically invoking a historical tradition, ranking themselves as a legitimate class of workers whose demands are independent of political factions or objectives. And yet the repression continued, with police brutality and the arrest of over seventy persons, including feminists, reporters, student activists, union activists, and a former member of parliament. Faced with state violence, activists decided to change their tactics and refrain from public protests; cognizant, too, of their growing appeal, they decided to widen their target audience and broaden their social base by appealing directly to the people. The decision was therefore made to take the women’s rights message directly to ordinary citizens in order to gain their support and recruit new members. Thus was launched the One Million Signatures Campaign—adapted from the Moroccan experience of the early 1990s. It was perhaps no accident, given that Iranian and Moroccan feminists were able to meet at a workshop organized by the Women’s Learning Partnership—a transnational feminist network launched in 2000 by expatriate Iranian feminist Mahnaz Afkhami—during the biannual conference of

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the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, which convened in Bangkok in 2005. In this case, international connections proved to be an effective tool for the feminists in Iran. The Campaign was a grassroots effort to recruit support for women’s equality. Activists went door-to-door, obtaining signatures from housewives, shopkeepers, students, pedestrians, and bus and metro commuters. It brought women’s rights activists from various backgrounds—secular women, devout Muslim women, and self-identified Islamic feminists—and three generations around a fluid, decentralized, and democratic network. As one activist told sociologist Elham Gheytanchi, “This is the first time women’s rights activists are cooperating with each other in a truly non-ideological and non-hierarchical manner.”46 What is more, the campaign developed a men’s committee, with the participation of a number of active young men and the endorsement of Iranian filmmaker Jaafar Panahi and left-wing economist Fariborz Raisdana. In June 2009, Ahmadinejad ran for a second term, this time against two reformist candidates, former prime minister Mir Hossein Moussavi and the even more liberal Mehdi Karroubi. The outcome was widely seen as fraudulent. According to official sources, Ahmadinejad won 63 percent of the vote against Moussavi’s mere 35 percent. The massive protests that followed began with citizens holding up placards reading WHERE IS MY VOTE? but soon turned into an overt display of dissatisfaction with the neofundamentalist faction represented by the supreme leader and Ahmadinejad. The Green Protestors included many women who were highly visible and vocal in their condemnation of Ahmadinejad and the regime of the “dictator.” Along with the massive numbers of female protesters, feminist activists took part in the street protests, though individually and not as representatives of the One Million Signatures Campaign or any other feminist group. This strategy reflected a principled desire to retain autonomy and avoid association with any political faction, but it was also a pragmatic tactic to prevent further state harassment. Nonetheless, Iran’s women’s movement had to face the full force of state repression, as did everyone associated with the Green Protests. A new wave of repression ensued, including violent assaults on protesters on the streets and in the prisons, followed by a number of show trials and televised coerced confessions. In what was almost a parody of itself, the state sent agents in December 2009 to confiscate the Nobel statue and other items belonging to Shirin Ebadi. Another well-known women’s rights and human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, the mother of two small children, was arrested and imprisoned. At this writing, many feminist activists have been silenced or forced to leave Iran, but their cyberactivism and support from feminists in the Iranian diaspora continues.47

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Conclusion Over the more than three decades of its existence, the Islamic Republic of Iran has witnessed contentious politics along at least three axes: first, in the aftermath of the revolution, contention between Islamists and their erstwhile liberal and left-wing partners in the anti-Shah revolution; then between reformists and conservatives; and finally between feminists and Islamists. Throughout this period, the gender politics of the Islamic Republic may be characterized as sometimes erratic and confounding, appearing to take one step forward and two steps back. For example, while Khomeini was still alive, he issued fatwas allowing women certain conditions that would enable them to seek divorce and encouraged them to write their own conditions for marriage in their marriage contracts. In another fatwa, he permitted sex-change operations for those with gender identity problems. And yet, homosexuality remained strictly forbidden, women were forced to veil themselves when they went outdoors, and family law as well as cultural norms continued to reproduce the traditional sexual division of labor. Women’s access to higher education increased and their fertility declined from the 1990s onward, and several amendments to the family law resulted from women’s rights advocacy during the presidencies of Rafsanjani and Khatami. When Ahmadinejad became president, he first declared that women would be permitted to watch football matches in any outdoor stadium but then proceeded to shut down independent NGOs and promoted a number of highly controversial legislative bills to deepen women’s subordination and increase men’s privileges within the family. On balance, the politics of gender and of women’s rights have been contentious in Iran. Women-led NGOs associated with the women’s rights movement were targeted for harassment or closure, and leading figures were arrested or forced into exile. In this chapter I have also addressed the question of why Iranian women’s labor force attachment is weak, what obstacles keep them out of the formal sector labor force, and how that might be connected to their underrepresentation in formal politics. What I have established is that Iranian women are available for work, but a combination of structural and institutional factors preclude their labor force incorporation. Lack of confidence in the labor market generated by the high unemployment rate and the absence of social supports for working women and working mothers in particular could motivate many Iranian women to remain outside the labor force. The state’s economic growth and national development strategy and the absence of investments in labor-intensive, female-intensive sectors constitute another obstacle to their gainful employment. Iran’s family law provisions reproduce the patriarchal gender contract, reinforce women’s sense of insecurity, and contribute to the persistence and high rates of mehrieh. In

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turn, the absence of a critical mass of women in the paid labor force prevents the public from gaining confidence in women’s leadership. Apart from the masculinist nature of the Islamic state in Iran, the absence of women from all but a relatively small proportion of professional jobs impedes their political participation and empowerment. In Iran, as in other authoritarian countries, one can live happily and fairly comfortably as long as one does not contest the political system and as long as the government ensures a decent standard of living, but life changes for citizens who dare to challenge the laws and norms of the state. Life can also change—for both citizens and the state—if economic conditions deteriorate. In 2012, as international sanctions and boycotts were tightened, unemployment grew even higher, prices soared, and workers and merchants alike expressed their discontent. Should societal discontent deepen and broaden, the next chapter of the Islamic Republic’s existence could be a very different one. What it will look like is as yet unclear, but one can be certain that Iran’s modernizing women will have a prominent place in any future pro-democracy movement.

Notes 1. For detailed information, see Arjomand 1989. 2. For details on the education policies of the period, see Mojab 1987; Najmabadi 1991. 3. These findings—based on my acquisition, through my late father, of an early version of the 1986 census data results, and published in Moghadam 1988— were initially criticized by some as having underestimated the extent of women’s economic marginalization. However, the overall findings in my 1988 article were confirmed years later by Nomani and Behdad 2006, who agreed that working-class women fared much worse than professional women, and by Salehi-Isfahani 2005, p. 138, who confirmed that the employment loss was seen primarily in the rural sector, and that the proportion of women in professional fields more than doubled between 1976 and 1986. 4. For details on the economic conditions and new strategy, see Amirahmadi 1990; for details on the extent of gender inequality revealed by the 1986 census, see Moghadam 1991. 5. Tehran Times, September 24, 1991, p. 1. 6. Data are from Iran Statistical Yearbook 1375 [1996]. See Islamic Republic of Iran 1997, Table 3-1, p. 70, http://www.amar.org.ir. 7. See Moghadam 2002b for a summary and discussion of the controversy surrounding Islamic feminism in Iran. 8. Povey 2001, p. 62. 9. Mehran 2003. 10. Moaddel 2007, Table 9.3, p. 221. The World Values Survey (WVS) is a worldwide network of social scientists studying changing values and their impact on social and political life. See http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org. 11. Islamic Republic of Iran 2004, p. 19.

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12. Data from a 2008 report by the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology, cited in Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011, table 7. 13. However, more men than women were enrolled in masters and PhD degree programs. See Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011, table 3. 14. Gaeini-Radan 2006, cited in Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011. 15. Data from Shahla Kazemipour 2007, cited in Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011, table 3. 16. CAWTAR 2001; Moghadam 2008; see also Chapter 3 in this book. 17. See Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, “Attacks on Academic Freedom in Iran,” Gozaar, January 29, 2009, http://www.gozaar.org/english/articles-en/Attacks-on -Academic-Freedom-in-Iran.html. See also T. Erdbrink, “Iran Plans Education to Create Perfect Islamic Children,” Guardian Weekly, January 7, 2011, p. 6. 18. Roudi 2012, p. 2. 19. UNDP 2013. 20. See Statistical Center of Iran, Statistical Yearbook, http://salnameh.sci.org .ir/TableShow/printversionEN.aspx, accessed April 2013. 21. On women’s employment in Iran, see V. Moghadam 1991, 2006, 2009; F. Moghadam 2004; Salehi-Isfahani 2005; Nomani and Behdad 2006; Farasatkhah 2008; Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011. 22. The data in this section are derived from the 2006 Iranian census and the Statistical Yearbook 1388 [2009]. (See Islamic Republic of Iran, various years, http://www.amar.org.ir), along with the online database of the International Labour Organization (LABORSTA, 1998–2008, http://laborsta.ilo.org); the World Bank’s online World Development Indicators (http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world -development-indicators); and the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2009, 2010, and 2011. It should be noted that figures on Iran do not always agree across these sources of data. The official female labor force participation figure is also at odds with the higher figure in the Socio-economic Characteristics of Households panel data, produced by the Statistical Center of Iran and used by labor economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani in 2005 and 2008 publications. 23. See ILO, LABORSTA, 2008. ILO data for 2008 were the most recent at the time of writing. 24. On preference theory, see Hakim 2003. 25. See Statistical Yearbook 1388 [2009], table 3-24, http://salnameh.sci.org.ir. 26. Hadi Salehi-Esfahani and Parastoo Shajari, “Gender, Education and the Allocation of Labor in Iran” (unpublished manuscript, July 2010). Similar findings on the effect of marriage on female labor force participation are reported in two recent studies on the Arab Middle East. See Fatemeh Moghadam and Rabia Naguib, “Women and Work in Dubai City: An Exploration in Institutional Barriers and Potentials” (2012); and Nadereh Chamlou, S. Muzi and H. Ahmed, “The Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in the Middle East and North Africa Region: The Role of Education and Social Norms in Amman, Cairo, and Sana’a,” prepared for the CAWTAR/World Bank seminar on women and economic participation, Washington, D.C., June 2012. 27. See Moser 1993; Chant 2008. The discussion that follows on femaleheaded households, including the tables, draws on Bahramitash, Kazemipour and Moghadam 2012. 28. See ILO 2010, p. 3. 29. Salehi-Isfahani and Egel 2007, Table 6-1, p. 24, and Table 6-2, p. 25. 30. See V. Moghadam 1998b, chap. 7; Bahramitash and Kazemipour 2008; F. Moghadam 2009.

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31. Blumberg 1984; Chafetz 1984, 1990; see also Moghadam 1998, chap. 1. 32. Saudi Arabia was the largest economy, and Egypt had the largest population. The discussion in this section draws from the World Bank’s “Country at a Glance” analysis for Iran, http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/iran. 33. Ibid. 34. Hakimian 2011, pp. 865, 871. 35. Temporary marriage (sigheh or muta’a) is a fixed-term, temporary marriage contract between a man and woman in Iranian Shia practice that lasts only for a contractually specified period of time, after which neither party has responsibility for the other. It is practiced by some Shias but frowned upon by others. 36. The term “bargaining with patriarchy,” or the “patriarchal bargain,” is from Kandiyoti 1988. 37. Cited in Rezai-Rashti and Moghadam 2011. 38. For an excellent discussion of the Family Protection Bill and the varied responses to it, see Bøe 2012. 39. Gender equality labels are labels, awards, and initiatives rewarding leading organizations committed to gender equality at work. 40. UNESCO 2011; World Bank 2012. 41. Abbas-Gholizadeh 2000. The paragraphs that follow draw on Moghadam and Gheytanchi 2010, pp. 278–280. 42. Author’s interview with Abbas-Gholizadeh, Toronto, August 4, 2008. 43. Shirin Afshar, “Everybody Condemned Violence: A Report of the Women’s Demonstration on 22 Khordad,” Zanan, no. 133 (Tir 1385 [August 2006]), pp. 12–17. Photos were posted on ISNA (www.isna.ir), Advarnews (advarnews.us), and Kosoof (www.kosoof.com). 44. The resolution is available on the website of the Broumand Foundation, http://www.iranrights.org/english/document-265.php, accessed March 2013. 45. Feminist School, http://www.feministschool.com/spip.php?article151, accessed April 2009. 46. Interview with an activist by Elham Gheytanchi, Berlin, February 2009. 47. See the following websites: Stop Stoning Forever Campaign, http://www .meydaan.com/English/aboutcamp.aspx?cid=46; Change for Equality Campaign, http://www.change4equality.com/english; Feminist School, http://feministschool .net and http://feministschool.net/campaign.

7

Democratic Transitions: Women and the Arab Spring

Prior to the outbreak of the Arab Spring, Middle East specialists were aware of the problems of authoritarian regimes, widening inequalities and income gaps, high rates of youth unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure and public services, and rising prices attenuated only by subsidies, issues that had been expertly examined in a prodigious body of academic and policy-oriented research.1 But no one could have predicted the timing of the mass social protests for democratization and justice that led to the collapse of long-standing authoritarian governments in the region. The Arab Spring began in Tunisia in late 2010 following the self-immolation of a young street vendor whose frustration at his inability to maintain a livelihood in the face of official obduracy seemed to reflect the loss of dignity of an entire people. The protests quickly spread to Egypt in the early part of January 2011 and then to Morocco in February, in a powerful surge of civil society. In Bahrain, the Shia population’s demands for full and equal citizenship rights remained peaceful even after the protests were repressed; in contrast, Libya, Yemen, and Syria saw the emergence of armed rebellions. The explosions of protests and rebellions led analysts to discuss causes and speculate about consequences and outcomes. Opinions were aired about the role of young people, of the demands of “the Arab street,” of the staying power of the regimes in Bahrain and Syria, and of the possible transition to a liberal or Islamist or coalition type of governance. Speculation abounded about the prospects for democratization in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco, as well as in other countries undergoing social and political protests and change. But what of women’s participation and rights? Chapter 2 examined nationalist movements, revolutions, and Islamism in terms of their gendered dynamics and their outcomes for women’s legal status and social positions. In this chapter I focus attention on the Arab Spring, the latest 211

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expression of major political change in the region. Tunisians and Egyptians speak of “revolutions” in their countries, though some scholars, including myself, refer to democratic transitions in those countries and in Morocco. Here I explore the prospects for women-friendly outcomes of the revolutionary transformations and/or democratic transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco. I do so by providing a conceptual and comparative perspective on gender and democratic transitions and by examining the three countries against the backdrop of women’s movements, demands, and achievements in the Middle East and North Africa region as a whole. In this chapter I also set the stage for the discussion of women’s mobilization and achievements. Before proceeding, it is useful to draw attention to five notable events that constitute an important backdrop to the mass protests and political revolutions of 2011. The first was the launch of the annual Arab Human Development Report in 2002, in which the authors identified three major deficits in the region: gender inequality, authoritarian rule, and restrictions on knowledge. Although the reports had their detractors, they were in reality sophisticated analyses of economic, political, and cultural developments in the region that also constituted honest self-examinations by a group of respected Arab intellectuals and social scientists. The second backdrop event was the reform of Moroccan family law in 2003–2004, the end result of an eleven-year feminist campaign that tied national development to women’s participation and rights. Among other things, this momentous legal reform revealed the influence of the women’s rights movement in Morocco as well as the capacity of the country’s political elite to effect change. Third, the 2005 Kefaya (Enough) movement in Egypt challenged the apparent permanence of the Mubarak presidency and heralded the later movement for political democratization. Meanwhile, a series of worker actions, especially the 2008 workers’ protests in Mahalla el-Kubra, a major industrial city located in the middle of the Nile Delta, constituted a call for economic justice.The One Million Signatures Campaign in Iran, launched by women’s rights groups in 2007 and adopted from the earlier and successful Moroccan petition drive, was the fourth event. A door-to-door grassroots movement for the repeal of discriminatory laws and a call for women’s equality through constitutional change, the One Million Signatures Campaign resonated with citizens throughout Iran and acquired international respect before being shut down by the authorities. Fifth, the Green Protests of June 2009 in Iran, challenging the results of a rigged election and calling for an end to authoritarian rule, were perhaps the first genuinely mass social protests of a democratic nature in the region in this century. Here, women were a large and vibrant presence, and calls for women’s rights and political transparency merged to constitute what could have been a vast social movement for political and social change. Indeed, in Iran and

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throughout the region, women’s groups have been key contributors to civil society activism. (See Table 7.1 for summary information on women’s organizations and their principal demands.) The events delineated above should be seen as precursors to the demands for democratization in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and elsewhere. They are part of the region’s history of collective action battling authoritarian rule, repression of dissent, and social inequalities. And they demonstrate why a key measure of a successful democratic transition will be women’s empowerment, as I explain in the sections that follow.

Democracy, the State, and Gender The literature on democracy offers different definitions of democracy, and the historical record shows that different models of democracy exist. In the minimalist definition, democracy is a type of political system in which

Table 7.1

Women’s Rights Organizations in MENA and Key Demands

Some women’s rights organizations in MENA

• Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights • L’Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates; Centre de Recherche et Développement des Femmes (CREDIF) Association des Femmes Tunisienne pour le Recherche et Développement (AFTURD); Réseau Rihana (Tunisia) • Center for Arab Women’s Training and Research (region-wide; based in Tunis) • Collectif Maghreb Egalité 95 • Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc; Springtime of Dignity coalition • One Million Signatures Campaign, Iran • Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, Palestine

Key legal and policy demands of women’s movements in MENA

• Family law reform • Criminalization of violence against women (honor killings, sexual harassment on the streets and in workplaces, domestic violence) • Equal nationality rights for women married to foreigners and their children • Enhancement of women’s participation in political bodies and in the workforce and establishment of institutions and policies that will ensure that participation

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power alternates through regular, competitive elections and citizens enjoy certain basic rights.2 Scholars note that models of democracy reflect configurations of class power and different conceptions of the role of the public sphere versus private interests; liberal democracy, for example, need not ensure that citizens have the material means to enjoy the civil and political rights that are afforded constitutionally. In a liberal democracy, a high degree of political legitimacy is necessary, as is an independent judiciary and a constitution that clearly sets out the relationship between state and society and citizen rights and obligations. Written constitutions serve as a guarantee to citizens that the government is required to act in a certain way and uphold certain rights. As Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl have noted, however, “The liberal conception of democracy advocates circumscribing the public realm as narrowly as possible, while the socialist or social-democratic approach would extend that realm though regulation, subsidization, and, in some cases, collective ownership of property.”3 This observation points not only to differences across models of democracy but also the difference between formal political rights and the material means to enjoy or exercise them—or what is discussed in Chapter 3 as the social and economic rights of citizenship.4 In a more expanded definition, democracy refers to a political regime in which citizens enjoy an array of civil, political, and social-economic rights that are institutionalized and they help shape the polity through formal political processes, civil society, and social movements; it also refers to a society or culture governed by the values of tolerance, participation, and solidarity. Anne Phillips has written extensively of “the politics of presence”; Graciela di Marco defines real democracy as residing at micro, meso, and macro levels, including the family, organizations, and the polity; and for Sylvia Walby, suffrage (all adults participating and voting), presence (ensuring broad representation of the citizenry), and depth (democratization of a range of institutions, including welfare, employment, and the military) constitute the principal criteria of democracy.5 Democratic transitions constitute another body of research, and studies have distinguished at least four pathways of democratization: political pacts, breakdowns between civil and military elites, international pressure, and grassroots movements demanding change. Steps toward the institutionalization of democracy may include liberalization, transition, and consolidation. In the first step, authoritarian regimes relax some restrictions, in response to breakdown of elite authority, international pressure, or grassroots movements. Transition is the stage between one political regime and another, during which time negotiations ensue and pacts are made, and new institutions and laws are enacted. Characterized by uncertainty, this stage determines whether democratization succeeds, the country returns to authoritarianism, or revolution breaks out.6

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What are the conditions that nourish pro-democracy social movements and enable democratic consolidation? Scholars have identified a number of causes or contributing factors: a society’s wealth, socioeconomic development, capitalism, an educated population, a large middle class, civil society, civic culture, human empowerment and emancipative values, a homogeneous population, foreign intervention. Barrington Moore famously identified a modernizing bourgeoisie as key to democratic development. In classic democratic theory, socioeconomic development supports a democratic polity and culture; likewise, sociologist Kenneth Bollen found a positive relationship between economic development and political development.7 In other words, structural conditions essential for the formation of a sustained pro-democracy movement include socioeconomic development, modern social classes, and resources for coalition building and mobilization. Whether a pro-democracy movement succeeds depends on a complex of factors, including the capacity of the state and its responses to the movement, the strength of the coalition, and the movement’s ability to resonate with the population at large as well as with world society. Barbara Wejnert has summarized the literature and gathered the factors enabling democracy into two categories: (1) endogenous or internal features, that is, socioeconomic development broadly defined; and (2) exogenous variables that influence democratization via forces that work globally and within a region. This second set of factors may be referred to as diffusion processes (or what some term “contagion”).8 Diffusion processes occur through group interaction, media, international organizations, and connections to transnational advocacy networks. In an era of globalization, with its feature of “time-space compression” as the result of technological advances, such diffusion processes are especially rapid and arguably more effective than in earlier periods or waves of democratization. Thus, whole countries may be influenced through diffusion processes. Citizens in one country can be informed and inspired by movements and processes in other countries. The spread of the “pink tide” in Latin America in the first decade of the twenty-first century may have been a reflection of that process, when one country after another elected left-wing governments. The Arab Spring similarly demonstrated diffusion effects. As noted, the mass social protests were launched by Tunisia and then spread to Egypt, Morocco, and elsewhere. Earlier inspirations may have been the process of democratization in Turkey since 2001, the Kefaya movement in Egypt in 2005, and the larger Green Protests in Iran in June 2009, the latter two being the first time in the new century when citizens boldly took to the streets to challenge authoritarian rule in those countries. At the same time, connections between the Egyptian April 6 youth movement and the Serbian youth organization Otpor, which had opposed Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, is another example of diffusion as well as the salience of international linkages.9

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Table 7.2 summarizes some of the key factors contributing to the Arab Spring and the political revolutions that took place, especially in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco. Factors such as a large middle class, civic activism, diffusion of new norms, and transnational links could also be salient to a successful democratic transition. An additional external factor should be included in the mix: it has been variously known as international intervention, imperialist intrigue, neocolonial mischief making, or the pursuit of state power and interests on the part of core countries or the hegemon. As we saw in Chapters 2 and 5, this factor has had such a potent history in the MENA region that to neglect it is to produce a seriously flawed analysis. External involvement in the popular protests in the Arab region in 2011–2012 was especially noticeable in the case of Libya, where NATO intervened ostensibly to protect citizens from Qaddafi’s troops and supporters, and the case of Syria, where the governments of France, the UK, the United States, and Turkey, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, came to the aid of the armed rebels. Related to the point just made is the proposition—elaborated in Chapter 5—that the presence or absence of violence in mass social protests also affects outcomes for women, because hypermasculinity in violent contention may exacerbate masculinist forms of rule and control over women in the postconflict period, especially if women’s groups were not present or recognized as major contributors to the struggle. In such cases, prospects for womenfriendly democratic outcomes are dim. Feminist scholarship on women, political participation, and democratization began in the aftermath of the democratic transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe, although in general it remains separate from the main-

Table 7.2

Factors Contributing to the Arab Spring Economic

Social, Political, Cultural

Endogenous

Corruption Unemployment Flexible labor markets High cost of living (effects of privatization and liberalization)

Exogenous

From structural adjustment policies to global trade agenda and neoliberal economics Global financial crisis and economic recession

Moral outrage over authoritarian rule and injustices Demands for dignity Human rights violations Civic activism Rise of the middle-class “Youth bulge” Demonstration effect of Iran’s Green Protests Transnational links (via social media networks) Wikileaks revelations Democracy norm diffusion

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stream literature on democratization. As political scientist Lisa Baldez has pointed out: “Two characteristics of the mainstream literature on democratization prove particularly problematic for the incorporation of women and gender: a narrow definition of what constitutes democratization and an elite focus.” Karen Beckwith further notes that “what is politically distinctive about women worldwide ‘is their exclusion from the political process and their collective status as political outsiders’; what is politically distinctive about men worldwide is their universal presence in national, international, and political institutions and their disproportionate dominance in these institutions.”10 What these observations point to is the gendered nature of power, which functions to privilege men over women and to privilege masculine traits, roles, values, and institutions over feminine equivalents in most social domains.11 Democracy itself, therefore, is gendered. Traditional approaches to democratization, most notably the classic study by Barrington Moore, found a strong relationship between economic development and democracy or between the presence of a large middle class and democratic development.12 Today, feminist social scientists argue that a polity is not fully democratic when there is no adequate representation of women. Nonetheless, many commentators and policymakers continue to address democratization, especially in connection with the Middle East, without taking women and gender issues into account. Steven Fish did link the underachievement of democracy in the region in part to the treatment of women, and a similar argument was made by Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, but they did not connect the quality of democratization with women’s presence or with broad institutional democratization.13 And yet, the historical record shows a strong relationship between women’s participation and rights, on the one hand, and the building and institutionalization of democracy on the other. Evidence from Latin America, subSaharan Africa, the Philippines, and Northern Ireland shows that women’s participation was a key element in the successful transitions, that outcomes could be advantageous to women’s interests, and that women’s political participation reflects and reinforces democracy building. At the same time, feminist scholars have drawn attention to what is known as the “democracy paradox,” or the gender-based democracy deficit: that is, the marginalization of women from the political process in a democratic polity, or the potential dangers posed to sex equality with the opening up of political space to very conservative forces. In other words, not all models of democracy or forms of democratic transitions serve women well. For example, Poland went through a period of political liberalization and a transition ushered in by a mass social movement known as Solidarnosc that is said to have resulted in a consolidated democracy. And yet, women became politically disempowered in the first democratic elections, when their parliamentary representation fell from about an average of 30 percent to 9 percent in 1991. The emergence of con-

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servative political parties, along with the reemergence of the Catholic Church as a major social and political force in Polish life, led to a decline in women’s reproductive rights. This outcome is what inspired the terms “male democracy” and “democratization with a male face” by feminist scholars such as Jacqueline Heinen. As I discussed in earlier chapters, Middle Eastern states implemented economic reforms in line with the global neoliberal agenda, but the political liberalization of the 1990s was limited and in most cases aborted in the early part of the twenty-first century. States such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Jordan were referred to as “liberalized autocracies” because the power remained vested in monarchs or presidents. The Islamic Republic of Iran, with its regular but controlled elections and restricted citizen rights, could be referred to as an “illiberal democracy.” Commentators such as Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway emphasized the need to establish “the core of democracy—getting citizens the ability to choose those who hold the main levers of political power and creating checks and balances through which state institutions share power.” Such commentators envisaged a scenario in which political parties were allowed to form and compete with each other in elections.14 And yet, one might argue that the distribution of political resources or power through competitive elections is a narrow definition of democracy— and may in fact be risky in a fledgling democracy where parties coalesce around sectarian interests. Elections can also be an authoritarian tool, as they have been in the Islamic Republic of Iran. An overemphasis on free elections obscures the importance of institutions and constitutional guarantees of rights that are echoed in other legal frameworks and protected by the courts. For democracy is as much about citizen rights, participation, and inclusion as it is about political parties, regular elections, and checks and balances. The quality of democracy is determined not only by the form of the political institutions in place and the regularity of elections, but also by the institutionalization of equal rights, the extent of citizen participation in the political process, and the involvement of diverse social groups in political parties, elections, parliaments, and decisionmaking bodies—or what Walby has called suffrage, presence, and depth.15 World-polity scholars have examined the worldwide expansion of women’s suffrage as evidence of norm diffusion and policy isomorphism.16 Feminist scholars point out that political rights notwithstanding, women have experienced a wide gap between formal and substantive equality. This gap explains contemporary demands for institutional changes and various political and social reforms to expand women’s public presence: childcare centers, paid maternity leave and paternity leave; and political party quotas. Such mechanisms will help “level the playing field,” allow women to catch up to men, and compensate for past marginalization and exclusion. In 1992,

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two feminist scholars in Africa observed that “many states have constitutional provisions against discrimination on gender and other grounds—but to what extent are women’s interests represented when political parties neither field women candidates nor make women’s issues a fundamental part of their policies?”17 How has the situation changed? Gender quotas have become the subject of feminist scholarship as well as advocacy by women’s rights groups, and the United Nations has advocated a benchmark of at least 30 percent female representation in legislative bodies. Voluntary party quotas, compulsory party quotas, and reserved seats for women are the three main types. The adoption of quotas accelerated in the new century such that by 2012, some 111 out of 190 countries had gender quotas. The main factors shaping the adoption of quotas appear to be domestic pressures from women’s organizations and from allies within political parties; international pressures in postconflict situations or from multilateral organizations; and interactions between domestic women’s groups, transnational feminist networks, and allies within international organizations. World-society influences are especially salient in peripheral countries that depend on aid from core countries, multilateral organizations, and international NGOs, especially in postconflict situations. Thus, Rwanda’s proportion of female parliamentarians dramatically increased after quotas were instituted in 2003, and by 2010 it ranked first in female parliamentary presence worldwide. Similarly, low-income and aid-dependent Nepal, which had just 3.4 percent female representation in 1998, has had 33.2 percent since 2008.18 But research has found little difference in the proportion of female members of parliament in countries with quotas versus those without quotas. In 2012, the average for countries with quotas was 21.6 percent female, whereas the global average was 20 percent female, according to the International Parliamentary Union. In particular, the “quota revolution” had made no significant difference in developed countries. The Nordic countries, however, still constituted the region with the highest proportion of women in parliament. Next in terms of regional performance came the countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC): ten of the fifteen SADC member states had quotas and a very large female presence in parliament, on the order of 36–44 percent. Research has found that a large presence of female parliamentarians is associated with less corruption and with more legislative bills connected with education, health, child welfare, and violence against women.19 Is the quota revolution a fast track for women’s empowerment? The consensus among feminist scholars is that quotas work best with strong political parties, especially in political systems with proportional representation that also have compliance mechanisms. In turn, quotas make a difference in women’s lives, and female political participation is enabled

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when certain material conditions are met: equality and justice within the family, security in the home and on the streets, and freedom from sexual harassment in the workplace. As an Egyptian women’s rights lawyer poignantly put it: “What use is the vote to a woman who is imprisoned in her home? Who cannot initiate a divorce even if she is trapped in a miserable marriage?”20 That is, democracy may be seen not exclusively as a process and procedure that takes place at the level of the national polity, but as a multifaceted and ongoing process at different levels of social existence: in the family, in the community, at the workplace, in the economy, in civil society, and in the polity. For MENA women, whose labor force participation rates are among the lowest in the world, the achievement of economic citizenship is a necessary condition for their participation in any democratic polity. The responsibility to ensure such rights of citizenship devolves on the state. Whether the Arab Spring will result in such rights-based democratic polities and cultures depends on many factors, and it is too soon to predict outcomes with any precision. An examination of gendered democratic transitions in other parts of the world offers a useful comparative perspective.

Women and Third Wave Democratic Transitions: Some Examples Research by scholars Sonia Alvarez, Jane Jaquette, and Georgina Waylen, among others, has shown that in Latin America, women’s movements and organizations played an important role in the opposition to authoritarianism and made a significant contribution to the “end of fear” and the inauguration of the transition. Here women organized as feminists and as democrats, and often allied themselves with left-wing parties. Where women were not key actors in the negotiated transitions, they nonetheless received institutional rewards when democratic governments were set up and their presence in the new parliaments increased. As Jaquette observed: “feminist issues were positively associated with democratization, human rights, and expanded notions of citizenship that included indigenous rights as well as women’s rights. This positive association opened the way for electoral quotas and increased the credibility of women candidates, who were considered more likely to care about welfare issues and less corrupt than their male counterparts.”21 Argentina, for example, reserved 30 percent of the seats in the legislature for women and in 2009 had a 38.5 percent female share as well as a female president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. In Chile the women’s policy agency SERNAM (Servicio Nacional de la Mujer) gained prominence, and even though the female share in the legislature was just 12 per-

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cent, the president elected in 2006, Michelle Bachelet, came from the feminist and social-democratic wing of Chile’s political spectrum. Brazil adopted a strong law penalizing violence against women, and in 2010 elected a female president, Dilma Rousseff. Jaquette notes that even after the women’s movement lost momentum in South America, women’s NGOs continued to advocate for women’s rights or to provide needed services for low-income women “without losing their feminist edge.”22 The important role of women in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa is yet another historic example. In South Africa as well as in Ghana, Burundi, and Rwanda, women’s roles in the democratic transitions were acknowledged and rewarded with political party quotas, gender budgets (to integrate women’s issues across government agencies), and well-resourced women’s research and policy centers. In turn, as Lindiwe Zulu, Kathleen Fallon, and Aili Marie Tripp have shown, such initiatives to support and promote women’s participation and rights served to reinforce and institutionalize democratic institutions. In the Philippines, too, women played important roles in the labor and liberation movements. The left-wing feminist coalition GABRIELA was formed in 1984 and challenged the 1985 presidential elections that Marcos won. Such groups, along with women in general, were a visible presence in the “people power” revolution that overthrew the Marcos regime. Subsequently, women continued to have a strong presence in politics as well as in the labor force. In Northern Ireland, the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement opened up new opportunities for women to participate in formal politics. In the first Assembly after the agreement was signed, 14 percent of those elected were women thanks to the activism of the Northern Ireland Women’s Rights Movement, which was founded in 1975, and the peace work of Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, the Belfast Women’s Collective, the Northern Ireland Women’s Aid Federation, and the Women’s Coalition.23 In contrast, Eastern European women were not able to influence the transition and lost key rights, as well as levels of representation, when postcommunist democratic governments were set up.24 As noted, Eastern European feminists coined the terms “male democracy” and “democratization with a male face” to describe the outcome of the transition from communism to liberal democracy, when women’s representation in parliaments dropped dramatically from an average of 30 percent to 8–10 percent. This outcome is usually attributed to a reaction against communist notions of equality, when many of the institutional arrangements that had guaranteed the participation of women, workers, peasants, and other groups were dismantled. The Eastern European case—an example of the “democracy paradox”—shows that liberal democracy is not necessarily women friendly and could in fact engender a male democracy, privileging men and sidelining women’s representation and voice.25

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When and where are women’s interests served by democratization, and when and where is democratization served by women’s participation? As was discussed in Chapter 2, the literature on gender and revolution has identified several factors as shaping “patriarchal” or “egalitarian” outcomes: preexisting gender relations and women’s legal status and social position; the extent of women’s mobilization, including the number and visibility of women’s organizations and other institutions; the ideology, values, and norms of the ruling group; and the revolutionary state’s capacity and will to mobilize resources for rights-based development. This analysis finds its complement in Georgina Waylen’s discussion of key variables shaping women’s experiences with democratic transitions: the nature of the transition; the role of women activists; the nature of the political parties and politicians involved in the transition; and the institutional legacy of the nondemocratic regime.26 (See Table 7.3 for an illustration of Third Wave democratic transitions and their outcomes for women.) In addition, research by Mala Htun and others on women and politics has found that party-list proportional representation systems, and those where one of the primary political parties is leftist, have significantly more women in political decisionmaking positions. External or international factors—transnational links or the promotion of women’s rights by international organizations—can play a role in influencing the direction of democTable 7.3

Gender Outcomes of Third Wave Democratic Transitions: Examples of Legal and Policy Gains and Losses

Egalitarian

Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, 1980s) Philippines (1986) South Africa (1990s) Northern Ireland (1998)

Well-resourced women’s policy agencies Women’s entry into decisionmaking positions Parliamentary quotas and high political representation Laws on violence against women

Patriarchal

Eastern Europe (1989) Russia (1991–)

High Communist-era parliamentary representation reduced Abortion rights withdrawn Motherhood discourses prevail Polygamy maintained; weak policies on violence against women; women hold 18 percent of seats in parliament Islamic values orientation: “democracy paradox”?

Indonesia (1998–1999)

Turkey (1991; 2001)a

Note: a. In 1991, military rule gave way to a coalition government. In 2001, the AKP was founded; it won the general elections in 2002 and still governed Turkey in 2013.

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racy or policies for women’s inclusion. 27 Research also has found that women’s organizing tends to be inclusive and that women’s organizations tend to be democratic in nature and play a significant role in the development of civil society.28 We can propose, therefore, that the gender of democracy matters in at least three interrelated ways. First, as Ann Phillips has explained, women have interests, experiences, values, and expertise that differ from those of men, due principally to their social positions. Thus women should be represented by women, at least until parity is achieved. Second, if the “core of democracy” is about the regular redistribution of power through elections, then attention must be paid to the feminist argument that power is gendered such that men are privileged in the distribution of power. Third, women are actors and participants in the making of a democratic politics, certainly in civil society and their own organizations, sometimes in government. Thus, if patriarchal and authoritarian regimes are to be supplanted by democratic governance, then women’s participation is key to effecting such a transition.

Linking Women’s Rights and Democratization in the Middle East If one indicator of political participation—not to mention the quality and depth of democracy—is women’s representation in parliaments, then the 8 percent average female representation of the MENA region in 2010 and the 10 percent share in 2012, as seen in Table 1.4, is evidence of the masculine nature of the region’s political processes and institutions. It should be noted that the world average for female parliamentary representation in 2012 was 20 percent, according to the Interparliamentary Union’s database on women in national parliaments. The Gender-Based Democracy Deficit in the Middle East Women’s parliamentary participation ranges from zero percent in most of the GCC countries and the lows of Iran and Egypt to the respectable figures of Tunisia and, most recently, Algeria. Tunisia’s female share since 1995 tended to be in the 23–25 percent range but increased to 27.6 percent after the 2009 elections. In Egypt, the female share jumped from 2 percent to 12.7 percent with the adoption of a quota system for the November 2010 elections, only to regress with the removal of the quota following Mubarak’s downfall and the “democratic” elections of October 2011. The generally low figures for the region may be explained at least in part by the fact that political rights were granted to women relatively recently, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s. Jordanian women won the right to vote in 1974 and

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Kuwaiti women in 2005. Only Turkey granted women political rights as early as 1930. Countries that have introduced parliamentary quotas include Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, which has helped to enhance women’s political representation. In most of the region, however, the levers of political power are almost exclusively in the hands of men, and this reality correlates with a high degree of authoritarianism and the persistence of patriarchal laws and norms. As a result, women’s groups have been calling for greater recognition and representation for at least a decade while also expressing caution about exclusionary political processes. The historical record shows that women can pay a high price when a democratic process that is institutionally weak, is not founded on principles of equality and the rights of all citizens, or is not protected by strong institutions, allows a political party bound by patriarchal norms to come to power and to immediately institute laws relegating women to second-class citizenship and controls over their mobility. This was the Algerian feminist nightmare, which is why so many educated Algerian women opposed the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) after its expansion in 1989. The quick transition unsupported by strong institutions did not serve women well. Algeria had been long ruled by a single-party system in the “Arab socialist” style. The death of President Boumediènne in December 1978 brought about political and economic changes, including the growth of an Islamist movement that was intimidating unveiled women and a new government intent on economic restructuring. The urban riots of 1988 were followed quickly by a new constitution and elections, without a transitional period of democracy building. The electoral victory of the FIS—which promised (or threatened) to institute sharia law, enforce veiling, and end competitive elections—alarmed Algeria’s educated female population. That the FIS went on to initiate an armed rebellion when it was not allowed to assume power following the 1991 elections only confirms its violent nature.29 The Algerian experience has been highly instructive; it compels us to appreciate the more expanded understanding of democracy, including strong institutions that promote and protect civil liberties, participation, and inclusion.30 Other examples of a disconnect between an ostensible democracy and women’s participation and rights are Iraq and the Palestinian Authority. In Iraq, the downfall of Saddam Hussein and the invasion and occupation by the United States and Great Britain were followed by pressure to institute a parliamentary quota for women. Since then, women’s formal presence has averaged 25 percent, but there is no evidence of women’s leadership or of the expansion of civil, political, and social rights for women in general. In the ten-year period following the US invasion, politics remained firmly in the hands of men, many of whom had patriarchal agendas. In Palestine, democratic elections in early 2006 did not bring to power governments committed to citizen’s or women’s rights, most notably in Hamas-ruled

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Gaza, where the ruling group showed no commitment to women’s political leadership or influence in key social institutions. The Israeli occupation has visited considerable hardship on Palestinians, but the hard-line, masculinist, and militarist politics of Hamas have not helped the people under Hamas rule (see also Chapter 5). While acknowledging the role of Turkey’s new feminist movement in the democratization process of the 1980s and 1990s, political scientist Yesim Arat more recently examined the Turkish version of the democracy paradox. She explored the gendered implications of the intertwining of Islam and politics that took shape after the process of democratization in Turkey had brought to power the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a political party with an Islamist background. This development, she argued, revived the specter of restrictive gender roles for women; the expansion of religious freedoms has been accompanied by potential as well as real threats to gender equality. Despite the public and media focus on Turkey’s long-standing ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities, Arat argued that a more threatening development was the propagation of patriarchal religious values that promote secondary roles for women through the public bureaucracy, the educational system, and civil society organizations.31 Prior to the political revolution in Egypt, calls had been issued for political reform and democracy, and the 2005 Kefaya movement reflected the country’s democratic aspirations. But in some quarters, such calls were gender blind and inattentive to matters of inclusion, participation, and especially women’s rights. The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, wanted “the freedom of forming political parties” and “independence of the judiciary system,” which are laudable goals, but they also called for “conformity to Islamic sharia law,” which is not conducive to gender equality or the equality of Muslim and non-Muslim citizens in all domains. After the political revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood won a large percentage of parliamentary seats, and the even more fundamentalist Nour party also won a large number of seats. This development raised a pertinent question: could Egypt effect a democratic transition if religion and politics were fused, if half the population were excluded from shaping the political process, and if women’s rights were ignored? As Egyptian feminist lawyer Mona Zulficar stated in the 2005 democracy conference in Cairo: “We don’t want democracy to have a gender. We want it to be inclusive. Unfortunately democracy is patriarchal, because it is rooted in patriarchal culture.”32 The World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer, and other polls have found strong support for democracy in Arab countries, but also high levels of religiosity (support for religious governance) and limited support for women’s equality and rights, including support for women as political leaders.33 One way of interpreting such findings is that many citizens may have understood democracy as a mechanism to rid themselves of unpopular

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regimes and establish Islamic laws and norms, rather than as a political system that guarantees the equality, freedoms, rights, and participation of all citizens. If so, this bodes well neither for women’s rights nor for the rights of religious minorities. And yet, the strongest supporters for an expanded definition of democracy are found in women’s rights organizations. Women as Agents and Allies of Democratization Across the region, women’s organizations self-identify as democratic as well as feminist, often issuing statements in favor of equality, participation, and rights. The region’s feminists are among the most vocal advocates of democracy and frequently refer to themselves as part of the “democratic” or “modernist” forces of society. Examples of such women’s rights organizations are the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates and the Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM), both of which are active in the Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité, a network of women’s rights advocates in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. In both their stated objectives and their practices, women’s rights groups are agents and allies of democratization. Political scientist Yesim Arat has pointed out that in the 1980s, at a time when Turkey’s civil society was under tight military control, the new feminist movement helped to usher in democratization through campaigns and demands for women’s rights, participation, and autonomy. In her study of the Palestinian women’s movement, Andrea Barron explained how women’s roles in the first intifada had received recognition; thousands of women had been arrested and thousands of others had provided important social services and logistical support. In the 1990s the three top priorities for women’s rights advocates were changing the personal status laws, fighting domestic violence, and increasing women’s political participation. The movement was identified as an agent for democracy “because of the substance of its goals—obtaining equal rights for half of Palestinian society— and because of the process it is using to accomplish its objectives.” In particular, Barron cited four “democratic practices” of the movement: (1) establishing an autonomous social movement with strong ties to political society, (2) expanding political participation and knowledge about the laws and customs that affect women, (3) campaigning for equal protection of the laws, and (4) cultivating a democratic political culture that supports pragmatic decisionmaking and respects political differences. Even after the second intifada emerged, the women’s movement was still regarded as an important national agent of democratization, although it subsequently faced many obstacles.34 A workshop that took place in Amman, Jordan, in December 2005 assembled women’s rights activists from an array of countries in the Gulf,

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Maghreb, and Mashrek; among them were members of parliament (e.g., in Iraq’s National Assembly) and candidates in upcoming elections in Kuwait and Jordan.35 During the discussions, a participant from Jordan said: “The performance of both men and women in the parliaments has been inferior. In general the political parties are weak. Only the Islamic ones are strong. We need and we want a culture of democracy.” She continued: “We are in favor of democracy. All countries went through a difficult stage of building democracy. Islamists should come to power and show themselves to be capable of doing good or of being incompetent. Let the Islamists join the parliamentary process. They will get exposed as having no program or plan. The problem in our country, though, is that too many people are selected and appointed.” In referring to democracy as a broad cultural as well as political project, a Moroccan woman participant said: “Democracy should be discussed at all levels—micro, meso, macro. Not just national politics, but also family, organizations, enterprises.” The workshop participants discussed strategies for integrating women into the democracy-building process and emphasized issues such as working within political parties to integrate women’s rights into party platforms; forming coalitions among women’s organizations, political parties, and trade unions; getting equality clauses into constitutions; reforming family laws to ensure gender equity; working with the media; advocating for political quotas; and supporting women candidates. They also spoke about the importance of engaging in Islamic ijtihad (reinterpretation of sharia-based jurisprudence to accommodate new conditions), establishing transnational linkages, and advocating for “true democracy.” There are many other examples of the democratic nature of MENA women’s rights organizations. A Tunisian feminist lawyer associated with the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates said in 2004: “We recognize that, in comparison with other Arab countries, our situation is better, but still we have common problems, such as an authoritarian state. Our work on behalf of women’s empowerment is also aimed at political change and is part of the movement for democratization.” On the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of Tunisia’s landmark personal status code, women’s groups joined with human rights groups and the country’s main trade union to celebrate women’s rights. A 2008 press release issued by the Association des Femmes Tunisienne pour le Recherche et Développement (AFTURD) declared that “no development, no democracy can be built without women’s true participation and the respect of fundamental liberties for all, men and women.”36 In Iran, after more than a decade of quiet activism, a feminist movement erupted on the political scene in 2006, quickly becoming a highly visible force for change and maturing into a nonhierarchical, nationwide, crossclass movement. It initiated a campaign for women’s equality and rights (the

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One Million Signatures Campaign) and another one to end the judicial sentence of stoning for adultery (the End Stoning Forever Campaign), staged public protests against arbitrary arrests and for a reform of the penal code, and called for democracy and rights. For this, activists experienced state repression, and many campaign members received prison sentences, especially after the Green Protests of 2009. A large number of feminist activists were forced into exile, but their cyberactivism continued.37 Yet another example comes from Morocco. Campaigns there for the reform of family laws, which began in the early 1990s, should be regarded as a key factor in the country’s gradual liberalization during that decade. When Abdelrahman Yousefi was appointed prime minister in 1998 and formed a progressive cabinet, women’s groups allied themselves with the government in the interest of promoting both women’s rights and a democratic polity. Subsequently, Moroccan feminist organizations endorsed the truth and reconciliation commissions that were put in place to assess the repressive years prior to 1998. A number of key Moroccan women leaders previously associated with left-wing political groups—notably Latifa Jbabdi of the Union d’Action Feminine—gave testimony about physical and sexual abuse during the years of repression. In 2010, women’s rights groups formed a coalition with physicians’ associations and human rights groups known as the Springtime of Dignity, in a new campaign for penal code reform spearheaded by the ADFM.38 All these activities enhanced the prominence of Morocco’s women’s rights advocates while also demonstrating the strong links between the advancement of women’s rights and the advancement of democratization. The examples above confirm that women’s rights movements are not “identity movements” but rather democratizing movements that entail redistribution as well as recognition and representation (as formulated by feminist political philosopher Nancy Fraser), and they confirm the findings in the literature on social movements that women’s movement activism often involves the explicit practice of democracy. In the next section I take a closer look at the gendered political revolutions and prospects for womenfriendly democratic transitions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco.

Tunisia Research shows that organizational resources may counterbalance the dampening effects of a closed political context, and Tunisia’s dissidents helped to develop a vibrant civil society across the decades even in the context of authoritarian rule. Trade unionists occasionally protested structural adjustments and neoliberalism, and human rights activists decried the

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arrests of Islamists and political repression generally. Women’s rights groups became especially active. Since the late 1980s, women’s groups have opposed political Islam and called for women’s equality. In the twentyfirst century, the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates and the Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche et de Développement (AFTURD) militated for gender equality in matters of inheritance. In addition to helping form the Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité, Tunisian women’s groups have worked together and with other civil society associations on matters such as human rights, social welfare, and fair elections. During this time, social and economic development, a well-organized social provisioning system, and friendly ties with Europe as well as the Arab world and Africa ensured stability. But the 2008 economic crisis took its toll on employment and the cost of living, and the 2010 WikiLeaks revelations of the corruption and self-enrichment of the president’s wife’s family enraged Tunisians. When a street vendor ordered to stop his trade resorted to self-immolation in December 2010 after being denied justice, his act seemed to symbolize a protest against the collective loss of dignity. The tragedy triggered massive street protests the following January with slogans such as “Ben Ali, d’égage” ([President] Ben Ali, Leave) and “L’Emploi, Notre Droit” (Employment Is Our Right).39 Leftists, secularists, feminists, trade unionists, and supporters of the long-banned Islamic movement all took to the streets, while young people kept up the momentum through social networking media. Meanwhile, the Internet had generally opened up space for Tunisian dissidents through blogs, discussion forums, and music. The Tunisian blog aggregator site Nawaat was created in 2004 to highlight the work of highprofile bloggers and form a community of bloggers. Contrary to Iran, where tech-savvy activists were barred from creating open source software to enhance communications, the Arab world, including Tunisia, had embraced the phenomenon. Al Jazeera was the first professional news organization to launch a Creative Commons repository, in 2008, and in 2009 the station hosted the first Creative Commons Arab Meeting. Technology, open source software, and Creative Commons events contributed to building a regional community. In 2008 and afterward, Arab Techies meetings were held in Cairo; a subgroup, Arab Women Techies, held its first meeting in 2010 in Beirut. Many bloggers and tech community members supported Nawaat in May 2010 during Nhar 3ala 3ammar (Day Against Censorship), a rally against online censorship. In 2011, the street demonstrations were captured on cell phone cameras and then uploaded as videos on known opposition sites and blogs, such as A Tunisian Girl (created by blogger Lina Ben Mhenni), Nawaat, and Les Révolutionaires de la Dignité, whose contents served as news feeds for satellite networks like Al Jazeera.

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Larbi Sadiki, writing in Al Jazeera online, noted that in the October 2011 elections, an-Nahda, an Islamist political party, may have won, but it did so in a context in which 3 million eligible citizens did not register to vote, and of the citizens who did register, few voted, giving an-Nahda a plurality (40 percent of votes cast) rather than a sweeping majority of the electorate. Sadiki added that in such a context, coalition building and partnership were called for.40 In fact, an-Nahda wisely followed his advice, offering prominent posts to leaders of two secular political parties and thus creating a coalition government, known as the “troika.” This was regarded as a positive move, despite the emergence of troublesome salafist groups bent on establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state in Tunisia. At the time of its political revolution, several aspects of Tunisian society made a women-friendly outcome more likely, including a respectable female share of employment, a female share of parliamentary seats that was larger than the global average, a relatively strong tradition of secular republicanism, an institutional legacy of a liberal family law, well-established feminist organizations and policy institutes, and even a woman leader of a political party (Maya Jribi; see Chapter 8). Tunisian women had perhaps the highest sustained level of female parliamentary participation in the MENA region, and that should be seen as an accomplishment, even accounting for the authoritarian nature of the ancien régime. Relatively small but well-organized, the Tunisian feminist movement had developed a sophisticated critique of the state and patriarchy, was an active member of the Collectif, and helped produce a number of important documents and reports on women’s conditions in Tunisia. The country’s ties to the European Union, and its strong trade union, the UGTT (Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens), were other advantages. Given the presence of these institutions, it was perhaps no surprise that Tunisia’s transitional governing body endorsed parity in political representation. In recognition of Tunisia’s role as the initiator of the Arab Spring and of the contributions of women’s groups and the UGTT, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) launched a new Arab women’s trade union network in Tunis on March 8, 2011, and ITUC secretary-general Sharan Burrow praised the Tunisian democratic movement while also calling for women’s continued participation: The winds of change, for more democracy, rights, social justice and decent work, now sweeping across the whole Arab region are an historic opportunity for women to win the equal standing that is their due in society, in the labour market and in their trade union organizations. Arab women must be fully involved in this surge towards democracy, in the policies and structures, and the ITUC is committed to giving its full support to this fight for equality in the Arab region.41

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In 2011, Tunisian civil society included many progressive organizations and political parties: (1) the UGTT and feminist organizations; (2) the Progressive Democratic Party, which was an-Nahda’s main secular rival during the elections; (3) the Modernist Democratic Pole, which included Tajdid, the former communist party; and (4)Haute Instance pour la Réalisation des Objectifs de la Revolution, de la Réforme Politique et de la Transition Démocratique, which had a female vice president (professor Latifa Lakhdar, a women’s rights activist and secularist) as well as many women members (such as women’s rights and human rights lawyer Alya Chérif Chammari). After an-Nahda’s electoral victory in October 2011, feminist organizations remained mobilized, insisting on women’s presence in the new political bodies and on the retention of the country’s fairly egalitarian family law, which, they pointed out, reflected the prevailing reality of family relations.42 In 2012, they protested an attempted move on the part of the constituent assembly to replace the word “equality” with “complementarity” in the draft constitution. The proposed new language was rescinded, but feminists and secularists faced another major challenge—that of the growing public visibility and assertiveness of bearded salafist men and heavily veiled salafist women demanding a place in universities, closure of establishments selling liquor, and censorship of art. The assassination in February 2013 of noted lawyer and secular political figure Chokri Belaïd was widely attributed to such radical Islamists. Meanwhile, the critical socioeconomic issues and demands for social and economic rights that had triggered Tunisia’s Dignity Revolution seemed to have fallen by the wayside.

Egypt By the turn of the twenty-first century, Hosni Mubarak’s presidency had come to be equated with cronyism, rigged elections, and repression of any and all dissidence. The government’s crackdown on the Islamist terrorism of the 1990s was perhaps appreciated by many, but sweeping or arbitrary arrests were not. Neoliberal economic reforms deepened the dissatisfaction. Indeed, between 2004 and 2010, nearly 2 million workers voiced grievances through strikes, sit-ins, and other forms of protest against poor living conditions caused by the erosion of wages, rising inflation, and precarious employment. At the same time, Egypt’s virtual public sphere and cyberactivism were expanding. In 2005, prominent blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah introduced the concept of citizen journalism. A few weeks after the sexual harassment of women who were protesting at the Journalists Syndicate in Cairo, Fattah posted a blog entry titled “Towards Popular Journalism” on the website he ran with his wife, Manalaa, and later printed it as a pam-

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phlet, distributing it during street demonstrations. Talk show hosts at satellite TV stations discussed it live. His post was read widely, and his ideas were taken seriously by activists, specially women and youth who had previously found themselves on the margins of opposition politics in Egypt. In 2008, the Egyptian “Facebook girl” Israa Abdel Rattah, a young woman in her twenties, used the new social medium to organize a campaign of civil disobedience to protest the deteriorating conditions of the average citizen. On the morning of a general strike by workers scheduled to take place on April 6, 2008, she was arrested and detained for eighteen days. The suppression of the workers’ strike resulted in the formation of the April 6 Youth Movement. Some Egyptian bloggers wrote of their empowering experiences participating in the online strike on April 6, 2009, which was organized on Facebook, and asked people to stay in their homes for a day to demonstrate solidarity with striking textile workers in the Delta.43 Meanwhile, sexual harassment of women had become a matter of national discussion, mainly as a result of efforts by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) to spotlight the issue. A 2008 survey was picked up by the BBC World Service, and the ECWR itself had a global distribution list through which it disseminated its press releases.44 In addition to calling for the prosecution of men accused of sexually harassing women on the streets or at workplaces, the ECRW advocated more integration of women into the political process. The ECWR’s presence on the Internet and use of social media to disseminate its messages helped it become one of the most effective women’s rights groups in Egypt. In 2009 it announced that it would monitor the upcoming elections in order to ensure transparency as well as track the progress of women candidates. In August 2010, it issued a statement criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood for mock presidential elections held by its Youth Forum that denied the request by the forum’s Muslim Sisters’ Group to be included in the nominations to the mock presidency. The ECWR statement asserted that the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision violated Egypt’s constitutional equality clause and the gender-egalitarian spirit of Islam. Of course, the constitutional equality clause had not exactly promoted gender equality in Egypt and had had no discernible effect on the gender composition of the parliament. In November 2010, the ECWR issued another press release protesting the conservative parliament’s overwhelming vote against the appointment of women judges.45 On January 18, 2011, and in the aftermath of the Tunisian protests, a young woman named Asma Mahfouz, active in the April 6 Youth Movement, uploaded a short video to YouTube and Facebook in which she announced, “Whoever says women shouldn’t go to the protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me [to Tahrir Square in Cairo] on January 25.” The same day, Wael Ghonim

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created a Facebook page in honor of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian blogger who was killed by police in Alexandria. The Mahfouz video went viral, countless Egyptians learned about Khaled Said, and the planned one-day demonstration became a popular revolution. The diffusion of the Tunisian protests encouraged and indeed emboldened Egyptian activists to issue demands: increasing the minimum wage, combating poverty and unemployment, ending the state of emergency, and removing the minister of the interior. Soon it became a single demand: the departure of longtime president Hosni Mubarak. The temporary Internet shutdown that marked the first week of revolt highlighted the significance of the new social media. One useful tool for Egyptian protesters was the “Speak to Tweet” application. It allowed Egyptians to leave voice recordings by calling an international phone number. The recordings were automatically transcribed and posted as messages on Twitter, and the tweets were then picked up by a separate group of volunteers and translated into various languages on the website Alive in Egypt. Camera cell phones, social media, opposition blogs, chat rooms, and Al Jazeera’s continuous coverage and advocacy journalism all served to form a feedback information loop, keeping the story alive, transmitting it to other Arab countries and to Western publics.46 The massive participation of women in the Tahrir Square rallies and protests was a sign of their opposition to the Mubarak regime and their dissatisfaction with their social and political exclusion. Increasing access to the Internet and familiarity with social media networking allowed them to blog, make appeals to national and international publics, and film and post the street demonstrations in a powerful demonstration of civil society activism, creativity, and innovation. The experience of cyberactivism during the uprising against Mubarak was empowering for many Egyptian women, but the sense of empowerment was short-lived, as women who came to Tahrir Square to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8 as well as to call for greater participation and rights for women in the new democratic Egypt were assaulted by men who found their presence and demands objectionable. In December 2011, women protesters were assaulted by police. The infamous scene captured on a cell phone of a young woman being dragged away by police, her top stripped away to reveal a blue bra and a policeman seemingly about to stomp on her stomach, immediately went viral, causing waves of outrage across the globe. After the downfall of the Mubarak government, the ECWR issued regular press releases and petitions criticizing the exclusion of women from the transitional bodies and calling for more women’s participation in the judiciary, local governance, and as provincial governors. In March 2011, the ECWR issued a press release objecting to the absence of women from the committee drafting Egypt’s new constitution. It also collected and dis-

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seminated a tally of discriminatory practices, assaults on women, and attacks on religious minorities. When its director, Nehad Aboul Komsan, was detained for her activities, a concerted media campaign and international appeals resulted in her quick release.47 Compared with Tunisia and with Morocco (see below), Egypt lagged behind in terms of legislation pertaining to women as well as the social conditions under which women lived, including a very conservative society and culture. Between 1995 and 2010, Egyptian women held just 2 percent of the seats in parliament, the chambers of the judiciary had only recently opened to women (and even then, the highest court remained closed to them), and the country’s family law privileged men. Long-standing religious tensions, which typically resulted in a disproportionate number of Coptic Christian deaths, continued after the political revolution. Such preconditions were not favorable to a transformation of gender roles in the immediate postrevolutionary situation or to an inclusive democratization in the longer term.

Morocco During the Arab Spring, Moroccans established the Mouvement 20 Février, which included representatives of youth groups and women’s groups among other civil society actors. The social movement was part of the diffusion of the protests from neighboring Tunisia as well as Egypt, but it was also part of a more gradual democratization process that began in 1998 with the formation of a progressive government and a decade-long feminist campaign for family law reform that succeeded in 2003. Morocco’s women’s movement has been a key participant in the country’s democratization process since at least the early 1990s, when it began to agitate for a more egalitarian family law and helped build the country’s nascent civil society. When the government of Prime Minister Abdelrahman Yousefi declared its support for the Action Plan for Development and Women’s Rights, which included a section on the reform of the country’s very patriarchal family law, the Moudawana, women’s groups formed an umbrella group called Chabaka (“network” in Arabic) and allied themselves with the government with the goal of promoting women’s rights, a democratic polity, and national development. Their communications strategy included narratives about the devastating effects of polygamy and unilateral male divorce on women, children, and the family. In the days before the widespread use of social media, the strategy of Moroccan women’s rights activists was to build consensus for the Action Plan. They sought to do this through a variety of research, advocacy, and educational activities, including publications, press releases, flyers, and advertisements and articles in

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the national dailies explaining the discriminatory provisions of legal texts in matters of repudiation, divorce, child support, and domestic violence. Their allies in government instituted a series of “social dialogues” to promote the plan, and women’s groups also took to the streets in support of the plan and of women’s rights. Huge rallies for and against the plan and family law reform took place in March 2000. In the face of sustained hostility from Islamist forces, the government felt compelled to withdraw the plan. The women’s organizations pressed ahead but shifted their strategy and framing. In a country overwhelmingly Muslim and pious, women’s groups formulated arguments rooted in an egalitarian interpretation of Islam, thus exercising ijtihad. Other frames were the imperatives of social development and poverty alleviation in Morocco and the rights of women and children. The family law reform was rightly lauded as a landmark event.48 The Mouvement 20 Février was a clarion call for the expansion of civil, political, and social rights of citizenship. It led to constitutional amendments, endorsed by a large majority in the July 2011 referendum, that limited the king’s power—something that the country’s progressives had been seeking for some time—while also recognizing the country’s cultural diversity. In a reflection of the importance of the women’s movement in Morocco, five of the eighteen members of the Consultative Commission for the Constitutional Reform were women. The Springtime of Dignity coalition issued a memorandum calling on the commission to incorporate international conventions, namely CEDAW, into the new constitution, to ensure equality for women and men, and to institutionalize affirmative mechanisms and measures for women’s equality. 49 Important steps also were taken in the area of social policy, including the expansion of health coverage to millions of low-income Moroccans. In the elections that took place in Morocco following the constitutional amendments, a moderate Islamic party, Le Parti du Justice et Développement (PJD), emerged with the largest number of votes. At the same time, women gained a larger number of seats in parliament, increasing their proportion from 11 percent to 19 percent. Like Tunisia and Egypt, Morocco had been affected by the information technology revolution. The country had a very high rate of Internet usage, and women’s groups recognized the utility of the new social networking media. In 2004, a national network of seventeen Moroccan women’s organizations and centers for battered women launched the website Anaruz to promote women’s freedom from violence as “a right and not a privilege,” as Loubna Skalli explained. During 2011 and 2012, they continued to mobilize for women’s rights, online and off-line. For example, a high-level meeting in Rabat in May 2011, hosted by the ADFM and focused on women and the democratic transitions in the MENA region, was attended by then Moroccan minister of women’s affairs Nouzha Skalli, along with representatives of the

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new United Nations agency UN Women, among other international organizations, all of whom expressed their support for the democratic transitions and demanded equality for women. The seminar was publicized online by ADFM’s US-based partner, the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace.50 When a young woman who had been forced to marry her rapist, Amina Filali, committed suicide rather than continue to live with her abusive husband, outraged women and youth took to the streets after hearing of the news through social networking media, and the protests were covered by the mainstream print and electronic media. The three case-study countries—Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco—were chosen for this comparative analysis because they represent the nonviolent aspect of the Arab Spring. Of the three countries, two—Tunisia and Egypt—experienced political revolutions and regime change, with elections for a constituent assembly and many public debates and protests about the direction of change. In Morocco, protests forced the king to agree to constitutional amendments and electoral reforms, expanding the democratic space and public sphere that had opened in the late 1990s. In all three cases, women and feminist groups played prominent roles in the protests and public debates about the new laws and policies, though prospects for a womenfriendly democratic transition are arguably strongest in Morocco and in Tunisia, where feminist groups are mobilized and women’s rights advocates are present across the new political bodies. Table 7.4 provides a summary illustration of the discussion above, with comparative social and gender indicators and a tentative prediction of the gendered outcomes.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the recent historical record on democratization and identified the major factors that appear to shape the gendered outcomes. Whether outcomes are patriarchal or egalitarian depends on women’s legal status and social conditions prior to the transitions, the type of transition taking place and the nature of the groups leading it, the ability of women to mobilize and organize, and transnational links and influences. In this regard, Tunisian women have a more advantageous position than do Egyptian women; in Morocco, women’s rights groups have made considerable headway. In all cases, however, women’s participation is key to building a democratic culture as well as to consolidating democracy. Many commentators have focused on the participation (and transformation) of Islamist parties as key to the transition to democracy in the Middle East, but they tend to overlook another key constituency, a natural ally of democratization, and the social base for a democratic politics—women and their feminist organizations. Women may need democracy in order to flourish,

Table 7.4

Women’s Prospects in the Democratic Transitions of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, 2010–2012 Egypt

Tunisia

Morocco

24%

40%

12%

23

27

26

2.9 2–3%

1.9 23–28%

First appointed in 2002; total 32 (out of 12,000) Family law privileges men

First appointed in 1965; 28% of total Liberal family law since 1956

2.4 11% (after quotas); 15% after November 2011 elections 610, or 19% of total

State of women’s movement

No organized women’s movement (as distinct from women’s NGOs)

Nature of transitional government, 2011

Military

Well-known feminist organizations and policy institutes, with transnational links Civilian

Government and constituent assembly in 2012

Muslim Brotherhood–dominated

Possible gender outcomes

Patriarchal

University enrollment (percentage of females of university age enrolled at university) Women’s mean age at first marriage Total fertility rate Female share, seats in parliament (1995–2010) Women in the judiciarya Family law

Coalition of three parties (“troika) in constituent assembly dominated by an-Nahda Relatively egalitarian

Egalitarian reform of Moudawana 2004 Same as Tunisia

Constitutional monarchy (constitutional amendments in July 2011) PJD-dominated

Relatively egalitarian

Sources: WEF, Global Gender Gap Report 2011 (Geneva: World Economic Forum); Morocco CEDAW Report (September 18, 2006), http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/ GEN/N06/563/69/PDF/N0656369.pdf?OpenElement; Féderation Internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH), http://arabwomenspring.fidh.net/index.php?title=Morocco Note: a. UNESCO Women in the Judiciary Project, 2005.

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but the converse is also true: democracy needs women if it is to be inclusive, representative, and enduring. The quality of democracy also matters. Feminist scholars have long criticized the gap between formal and substantive equality, along with women’s marginalization from political decisionmaking. Since at least the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, these issues have been placed on the global agenda, and various mechanisms, such as gender-based quotas, have been proposed to ensure and enhance women’s political participation and representation. The era of globalization favors the expansion of democracy, but scholars, policymakers, and many activists are largely inattentive to the gendered nature of democratization processes. What is more, they seemed enamored of a neoliberal model of democratization rather than an expanded social democracy predicated on concepts of citizen participation and rights. Equating “democracy” with “free and fair elections” presents at least two problems. First, the distribution of political resources or power through competitive elections is an overly narrow definition of democracy; it obscures the importance of institutions, state capacity, and constitutional guarantees of rights no matter which party wins an election. A related problem is that elections can be a tool of authoritarian leaders—as has been the case in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Second, it occludes the gendered nature of politics and the long-standing marginalization of half the population. As we have seen, “free and fair elections” may perpetuate inequitable representation. Democracy by fiat or by decree or from above cannot ensure the citizen participation and rights that are key to a successful democratic transition. Successful democracies emerge from strong and healthy civil societies that include local actors, political parties, trade unions, professional associations, and other NGOs. Advocacy for citizen rights by those groups paves the way for the expansion and codification of rights for women, minorities, and other excluded social actors. Eric Hobsbawm has correctly noted that the conditions for effective democratic governance are rare: an existing state enjoying legitimacy, consent, and the ability to mediate conflicts between domestic groups, along with strong and effective institutions. 51 Although these conditions are rare in MENA, they are most likely to be established there through programs for women’s empowerment, institutions for gender equality, and policies to increase women’s political participation in government, political parties, the judiciary, and civil society. If the modernizing bourgeoisie was the lynchpin of democracy in Barrington Moore’s schema on the transition from agrarian to industrial society, today it is the “modernizing women” of the Middle East and North Africa who are the principal agents of democratization—and of cultural change— in the region. Given that exclusion, notably the exclusion of women, has been part of the logic of the authoritarian state in the Middle East and North

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Africa, the inclusion of women in the political process could help to change the nature of the state. A rights-based model of democracy, along with a rights-based model of economic development and growth, will realize the aspirations of those who launched the mass protests of January–February 2011 and since then.

Notes 1. See, for example, Moghadam 2008; Beinen 2010; Bayat 2010. This chapter draws in part on Moghadam 2013b. An earlier version was presented as the Keynote Address at the Eighty-Second Annual Meeting of the Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences and appeared in the academy’s journal JIASS 15 (2012). 2. One definition of liberal democracy is a political regime with three characteristics: adult suffrage, regular elections with a high degree of political participation, and rights and liberties for citizens. See Dahl 1971. 3. Schmitter and Karl 1991, p. 77. See also Barber 1984. 4. For more on formal and substantive democracy, politics, and citizenship rights, see Marshall 1950; Crick 2000, Lister 2003. 5. Phillips 1995; Di Marco 2011; Walby 2009. 6. See, for example, O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Przeworski 1995. 7. Cited in Korzeniewicz and Awbrey 1992. See also Moore 1966. 8. Wejnert 2005. 9. On the ties between April 6 movement and Otpor, see Kirkpatrick and Sanger 2011. 10. See Baldez 2010, p. 200; Beckwith 2010, p. 160. In chronological order, the following major works on women and democratization appeared in the 1990s: Alvarez 1990; Phillips 1991; Bystydzienski 1992; Heinen 1992; Arat 1994. In the twenty-first century, studies include Rai 2000; Eschle 2000; Dahlerup 2006; Waylen 2007, 2010; Paxton and Hughes 2007; Viterna and Fallon 2008; Jaquette 2009; DiMarco and Tabbush 2011; Moghadam 2013b. 11. Here power is understood not as an individual trait but in structural terms as deriving from and inhering in social relationships. Across history and in today’s world, the social relations of gender have marginalized women from political power; what is more, the neoliberal era prioritizes what may be regarded as masculine or masculinist institutions (e.g., the financial sector, large corporations, the military) over feminine ones (e.g., welfare sectors). See Eschle 2000; Connell 1987; Lorber 1994; Peterson and Runyan 2010. 12. Moore 1966. See also Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992. 13. Fish 2002; Inglehart and Norris 2003b. See also Diamond, Plattner, and Brumberg 2003. 14. Carothers and Ottaway 2005, p. 258. See also Brumberg 2002; Lust 2010; Schwedler and Gerner 2008; UNDP 2002, 2004b. 15. One may raise serious questions, for example, about the quality of “democracy” in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia, where oppressive blasphemy laws prohibit dissent and critical thinking while also creating a climate of fear for those from minority religions. Indonesia is lauded for pluralism and diversity in an Islamic context, but see “Wave of Islamic Anger,” Time, February 21, 2011, p. 19.

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16. Ramirez, Soysal, and Shanahan 1997; Paxton and Hughes 2007; Weldon 2011. 17. Imam and Ibrahim 1992, p. 18. 18. Blumberg 2012. 19. Ibid. 20. Mona Zulficar, comments at the International Conference on Democracy and Human Rights in the Arab World, Cairo, December 19–20, 2005, from Moghadam’s notes. Zulficar also presented a paper entitled “Women, Politics, and Democracy in Egypt.” 21. Jaquette 2001, p. 114. 22. Jaquette 2009: 216. 23. On Africa, see Fallon 2008, Tripp 2001, Zulu 2000; on Ireland, see Roulston and Davies 2000 and Cowell-Meyers 2003; on the Philippines, see Santiago 1995 and Roces 2010. 24. Heinen 1992; Waylen 2007; Rueshmeyer and Wolchik 2009; Fabián 2010. 25. There are other paradoxes associated with democracy or democratic transitions. Wide social inequalities are found in democracies such as Brazil, India, the Philippines, and South Africa; and in mature democracies such as the United States and UK. In addition, democratization has been known to foment ethnic conflict, especially in fragmented or ethnically divided societies. See Chua 2003. 26. Waylen 2010 argued that relatively drawn-out transitions with negotiation processes that are relatively open, transparent, and accountable are more likely to be accessible to women actors (and minority groups). By contrast, during rapid transitions, women’s groups and candidates do not have sufficient time to mobilize and insert themselves into critical democratization processes, resulting in their exclusion from the new democratic transitions. 27. See, for example, Htun and Jones 2002; Dahlerup 2006; Paxton and Hughes 2007; Viterna and Fallon 2008. See also Keck and Sikkink 1998. 28. On women’s democratic organizing, see Beckwith 2010; Eschle 2000; Moghadam 2005a; Vargas 2009; Krook 2010; Krook and Childs 2010. 29. For more on women in Algeria, see Bennoune 1995; Cherifati-Merabtine 1995; Messaoudi and Schemla 1995; Moghadam 2011; Salhi 2011. The Refah Party in Turkey faced a similar outcome but chose to reorganize itself rather than take up arms. 30. Tessler 2007 makes the interesting observation that Algerian respondents to the fourth wave of the World Values Survey (collected between 2000 and 2002) show less attachment to religiosity. Only one-third of respondents agree or strongly agree that it would be better for the country if people with strong religious beliefs held political office (p. 114). This is no doubt a result of their experience with Islamist intégrisme and terrorism—and this may explain, too, that only Algeria did not witness the victory of Islamic parties during the region’s democratic elections of 2011–2012. 31. Arat 2010. 32. Mona Zulficar, comments at the International Conference on Democracy and Human Rights in the Arab World, Cairo, December 19–20, 2005, from Moghadam’s notes. See also Brown, Hamzawy, and Ottaway 2006 on the Muslim Brotherhood. 33. al-Braizat 2002; Inglehart and Norris 2003b; Rizzo 2005; Jamal 2007; Moaddel 2007; Tessler 2007, 2010; Tessler, Jamal, Robbins 2012. The Arab Human Development Report 2004 (UNDP 2004b) reported more encouraging findings on the basis of its own survey, but questions have been raised about the reliability of

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the methodology and findings. Mark Tessler, personal communication, Washington, DC, January 2009. 34. Arat 1994; Barron 2002, pp. 80–81. 35. Strategizing Women’s Role in Influencing Legislation, conference organized by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Middle East Project, ” Amman, Jordan, December 2–5, 2005. I was a participant, and the quotes are from my notes. 36. See AFTURD 2008; Chékir and Arfaoui 2006. The person quoted at the beginning of the paragraph is Bochra Ben Hmida of Femmes Démocrates, in a conversation with the author, Helsinki, Finland, September 9, 2004. 37. See the following sites: Stop Stoning Forever Campaign, http://www.mey daan.com/English/aboutcamp.aspx?cid=46; Change for Equality Campaign, http:// www.change4equality.com/english; Feminist School, http://feministschool.net/ and http://feministschool.net/campaign. 38. On Morocco, see Slyomovics 2005; Sadiqi and Ennaji 2006; Skalli 2007; Moghadam and Gheytanchi 2010; Women’s Learning Partnership, http://www .learningpartnership.org/lib/morocco-springtime-dignity-coalition, accessed December 2012. For information on Tunisian and Arab cyberactivism, I am grateful to Elham Gheytanchi. 39. From my notes at a seminar on the Arab Spring organized by UNESCO, Paris, June 21, 2011, “Démocratie et Renouveau de Monde Arab.” For more details on Tunisia’s political, economic, and social policy conditions before the mass protests, see Ben Romdhane 2006. 40. Larbi Sadiki, “The Arab Spring: Voting Islamism,” Al Jazeera, December 7, 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011126105646767454 .html. 41. ITUC 2011. 42. Personal communication from Khedija Arfaoui, Bellagio, September 14, 2011, and various e-mail exchanges; see also Tchaicha and Arfaoui 2011. Over the years I have collected many documents and reports issued by Tunisian women’s organizations, and in March 2013 I attended several feminist workshops at the World Social Forum, held in Tunis, and spoke with well-known Tunisian feminists such as Hafidha Chékir and Amel Grami. 43. Beinin and Vairel 2011, p. 249; Khosrokhavar 2012. 44. See, for example, Magdi Abdelhadi, “Egypt’s Sexual Harassment ‘Cancer,’” BBC News, July 18, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7514567 .stm. 45. See Komsan 2010a, 2010b. See also www.ecrw.org. 46. Eltantawy and Wiest 2011, p. 1216. 47. See www.ecrwonline.org. 48. Sadiqi and Ennaji 2006; Skalli 2007; Moghadam and Gheytanchi 2010. 49. WLP, “News from May 2011 Rabat Convening on Women and the Political Transitions in the MENA Region, and a Call for Action,” http://www.learning partnership.org/print/3940; Silverstein 2011. 50. Ibid. 51. Hobsbawm 2005.

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Modernizing Women

In their international and comparative study of women’s movements during the twentieth century, Janet Chafetz and Gary Dworkin situate the impetus for “female revolt” and opportunities for gender-based mobilization within broad sociodemographic changes. Female educational attainment is particularly important, as well as participation in the urban workforce: both provide women with increasing expectations, an emergent gender consciousness, and a clearer understanding of societal constraints, injustices, and opportunities. Education, employment, and smaller households give “modernizing women” more time for other public activities and the capacity to make demands on governments for equality, autonomy, and empowerment. Research has found that the observation of disparities between women’s legal status, social position, and aspirations and those of men leads to the articulation of grievances and collective action of various types.1 Social movement theorizing has given rise to the concept of the “political opportunity structure,” which pertains to the broad political (but also economic and social) environment in which grievances emerge, collective action is possible, and movements and organizations can take shape. The concept revolves primarily around the nature of the state and its relations to society, and key questions pertain to the open or closed nature of the state, unity versus cracks within the political elite, and the presence or absence of elite allies for emerging movements.2 At the same time, the reality of globalization has compelled theorists to examine global or transnational opportunities for social movement organizing, including norm diffusion by international organizations and the proliferation of all manner of nongovernmental organizations in the context of a changing global political economy.3 Of particular relevance here is the global women’s rights agenda, the product of advocacy sponsored by the United Nations since the World Decade for Women (1976–1985) and advanced by the four world confer243

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ences on women that took place from 1975 to 1995. In that context, governments have adopted international conventions and norms on women’s equality, human rights, and empowerment, including the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Women, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), notably goal 3 to promote gender equality and empower women. As such, the global women’s rights agenda fosters a global opportunity structure for feminist advocacy; enables crossborder organizing and networking; contributes to the making of world culture; and provides space, legitimacy, and funding for women’s rights and human rights organizations across countries. In the popular imagination, journalistic accounts, and even in much scholarship, the Middle East and North Africa region is often portrayed in terms of oil or conflict or Islamism. The presence of strong movements for women’s rights is rarely acknowledged, and it is conspicuously absent in the culturalist and formalist literature that I critiqued in Chapter 1. Throughout this book, I have made references to women’s movements and feminist campaigns, and in Chapter 7, I drew attention to the democratic and modernizing nature of women’s movements and to the positive relationship between women’s movements, participation, and rights and the building of democratic cultures and polities. In this concluding chapter, I show how the emergence of women’s rights activism in the MENA region is connected both to domestic factors and forces and to the influence of world society, provide an inventory of campaigns and achievements in legal and policy reform, and assess strengths and weaknesses. I also include a case study of the feminist movement in Algeria, which in my judgment deserves more recognition as well as further study.

Women in Movement: Claims and Gains In recent years, women’s movements or feminist organizations have played a prominent role in a number of significant events. I briefly discuss four. The first has been referred to several times in this book—the reform of the patriarchal Moroccan family law, the Moudawana, and its replacement in 2004 with a more egalitarian set of laws and norms for marital life and family affairs. One of the feminist organizations associated with the reform explains how the reform was negotiated, how it will be enforced, and how it can help Morocco to meet the goals set forth in the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: The groundbreaking introduction of Morocco’s new Family Code in 2004 gave women greater equality and protection of their human rights within

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marriage and divorce, as mandated by Article 16 of the Convention. The new law embodies the principle of shared family responsibilities between the spouses. It was the product of extensive public discussion of challenges women faced under the previous law, as well as analysis of the implications of human rights standards and religious texts. To help ensure effective implementation of the new rights that have been guaranteed, the legislative changes were also accompanied by the creation of dedicated Family Courts, and the Ministry of Justice is enhancing the provision of support services and training for judges and court officials.4

Introduction of the new family code has been part of a broader wave of important reforms within the country, including changes to the labor code to introduce the concept of sexual harassment in the workplace (2004), to the penal code to criminalize spousal violence, to the nationality code (2007) to give women and men equal rights to transmit nationality to their children as required by CEDAW’s Article 9, and to the electoral code, which introduced a “national list” that reserved thirty parliamentary seats for women (2002). The second significant event in the region was the One Million Signatures Campaign for women’s equality in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was the end result of a series of activities dating from the early 1990s, when Iranians began to form discussion groups; to set up women’s rights magazines, a women’s studies journal, NGOs, and “women’s cultural centers”; and to produce literature and films that put women’s family and social problems at the center of the narratives. Although it was relatively short-lived (2006–2009), the campaign was rather audacious, considering the authoritarian political context within which it emerged. The One Million Signatures Campaign attracted young women (and men) from all social classes and from religious or conservative families and relatives of “martyrs”—such as one activist who had lost two brothers in the Iran-Iraq War. It had branches in sixteen cities across Iran—galvanizing and energizing thousands of young people—as well as in Europe and North America. The campaign was also cross-generational, consisting primarily of a large cadre of young activists but also appealing to older women who had reached adulthood during the Pahlavi era. As Chicago-based Iranian feminist Manijeh Marashi commented about the One Million Signatures Campaign in the period after the Green Protests of June 2009: “I would not say that the movement did not succeed. It’s had a tremendous impact on the people.”5 The third and fourth events were two remarkable challenges regarding discursive and policy issues in 2012: the protests by Tunisian feminists that compelled the constituent assembly and the ruling Islamic party to withdraw the proposed constitutional language that would replace “equality” with “complementarity,” and the protests in Turkey that forced the prime minister to withdraw his attempt to ban abortion.

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In Tunisia, women’s rights activists quickly mobilized when it became clear that the Dignity Revolution in which they had taken part would come to favor the Islamic party, an-Nahda, which had been banned since the early 1990s. Recalling the Islamic party’s reactionary stance on women’s issues in the 1980s, Tunisian feminists staged a protest on the eve of the leader’s return from exile in January 2011, and held several other rallies throughout the year, even while some of them were members of the provisional government that organized elections for a national assembly that would draft the country’s new constitution. (See Chapter 7 for details.) When the constituent assembly, which was dominated by an-Nahda, sought to replace the term equality with words akin to complementarity or partnership, women’s rights activists and their male supporters in the secular and leftwing parties took to the streets and to the domestic and international media in protest. The constituent assembly kept the term equality. At around the same time, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Islamic AK Party, announced that he would seek to ban abortion, which he likened to mass murder. Feminists and secularists in Istanbul and Ankara staged street protests with signs reading: “My Body, My Choice,” “Hands Off Women, Male State,” “AKP, Keep Your Hands Off My Body,” and “Tayyip, It Is None of Your Business.” Along with protests, marches, and sit-ins, women’s groups organized an online petition under the title “Say No to Abortion Ban,” which said in part: Women’s right to sexual and reproductive health includes having control over their own bodies and access to safe abortion; limiting these rights is an open violation of fundamental human rights and women’s human rights. In accordance with its domestic legislation and the international conventions it is party to, Turkey is under obligation to provide adequate, comprehensive, and accessible sexual and reproductive health services. . . . However, in a country where contraceptives are not easily accessible, withdrawal is the most prevalent form of birth control, female employment rates continue to drop and female poverty is rapidly increasing, restricting or banning women’s right to on demand pregnancy termination is an act of blatant discrimination that will push women to seek unsafe abortions.

In just one week, the petition collected 42,000 signatures from both individuals and groups. By the end of December 2012, there were over 60,000 individual Turkish signatories and 286 organizational signatures to the petition.6 The government was forced to retreat. Patterns of women’s political activism vary across MENA and are affected by the nature of the state, social class, ethnicity, and ideology. Not all MENA countries exhibit the same patterns of feminist collective action as the four discussed above. Grievances and demands are shaped by con-

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text, but some common patterns may be identified. One is that at least since the United Nations World Decade for Women (1976–1985), MENA women have been inspired by the global women’s rights agenda, launching campaigns to improve their legal status and social positions and to ensure that their governments implement the agreements that they have signed. Another is that the spread of fundamentalist movements, political Islam, and Islamist parties has affected women across the Muslim world, in many cases leading to new forms of organizing and mobilizing among women. A third observable pattern is that women are major contributors to, and participants in, civil society and democracy movements; they see a democratic polity as both a desirable alternative to authoritarianism and a pathway to their own equality and rights. Fourth, activism by feminist groups such as the examples provided above represents a maturing of the women’s rights movement. In turn, such maturity is the result of (1) changes in the sociodemographic characteristics of the female population in most of the large countries of the region and (2) the influence of world society, with its political features of international organizations, conventions, and agreements, and its cultural features of norm diffusion through the above processes as well as through social media and transnational advocacy ties. As was seen in Chapters 3 and 4, MENA women have made significant advances in educational attainment, with impressive enrollments in higher education and entry into an array of professional fields. Participation in media, including a feminist press, enables women to access the public sphere and thus national debates and dialogues. The rising age at first marriage and smaller family size have enabled such educated women to form or join professional associations, feminist groups, or development-related NGOs, while travel abroad, access to satellite TV, and knowledge of information technology facilitates international connections. Women’s awareness of society, stratification, and the world created by education, employment, travel, social media, and international links fosters the kind of civic and feminist activism that has been described throughout this book. At the same time, the MENA region participates in the world economy and world society, which makes it vulnerable to the vagaries of the capitalist global economy as well as to developments in the world polity. Thus, when MENA states began implementing structural adjustment policies from the late 1970s into the 1990s, not only unions but also the burgeoning feminist groups began to raise objections. While the unions protested on the streets of North African countries, the feminist groups wrote critiques in their domestic publications as well as in documents prepared for the UN’s Third World Conference on Women, in Nairobi in 1985, and the Fourth World Conference, in Beijing in 1995.7 When the Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité was formed by feminists in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia in the run-up to the Beijing conference, the

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group was able to draw on the emerging global women’s rights agenda, as well as funding from German foundations, to advance its case for an egalitarian family code. Moreover, the Collectif relied on the support of other transnational feminist networks, such as Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), which was formed in 1984 in opposition to Islamic fundamentalism and discriminatory family laws, and later the Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace (WLP), established in 2000 as an international partnership of twenty women’s organizations in Bethesda, Maryland. The WLP’s translation service produced an English-language version of an important Collectif study of family law across the Maghreb, and a conference that it organized brought together Moroccan and Iranian feminists in a peer-to-peer learning process that led to the adoption by the Iranian feminists of the One Million Signatures Campaign.8 The formation of the Collectif took place in the regional context of the emergence of an array of women’s organizations. The 1950s–1970s saw women involved almost exclusively in either official women’s organizations or charitable associations, but during the 1990s, many types of women’s organizations were founded and flourished. In previous publications, I have identified seven types of organizing and mobilizing by women in MENA countries since the 1990s: (1) service or charitable organizations; (2) professional associations; (3) women’s auxiliaries of political parties; (4) women’s auxiliaries of trade unions; (5) women-in-development NGOs; (6) development research centers and women’s studies institutes; and (7) women’s rights or feminist organizations.9 These types of organizations may be intersecting: some women-in-development NGOs, for example, exhibit strong feminist objectives. Women’s peace movements, highly visible across the world, may be found in the Middle East too, especially in Israel, where Women in Black and Machsom Watch became prominent as well as controversial. These groups have different priorities and activities, and they may frame issues in the language of their professional field, the global women’s rights agenda, their country’s political culture or history, or Islamic feminism, but in general, the women’s organizations carry out the following activities: • They conduct research on the conditions under which women live, disseminating the results through the media, domestic and international conferences, and connections to government and international organizations. • They engage in advocacy campaigns and raise awareness of women’s rights issues through the media and their publications, sometimes initiating petition drives or staging rallies and protests.

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• They lobby government officials or members of parliament regarding legal or policy issues pertaining to women; or they may lobby international organizations for more attention to women’s issues in their country. • They form or take part in coalitions with each other or with other civil society organizations such as human rights groups, peace organizations, progressive trade unions, and political parties. • Like other civil society actors, Middle Eastern feminists are aware that the state is an unavoidable institutional actor. They therefore make claims on the state for the improvement of their legal status and social positions, or they insist that the state live up to commitments and implement the international conventions that it has signed. The emergence and proliferation of women’s associations reflected the changing sociopolitical dynamics of women’s activism, with its discourse of women’s participation, human rights, civil society, modernity, citizenship, and democratization. Advocacy became more pointed, with a focus on the need to reform discriminatory family laws and bring them in line with constitutional guarantees of equality and with global standards and norms; to criminalize domestic violence and other forms of violence against women, including “honor crimes,” and prohibit sexual harassment; to grant women equal nationality rights so that their children may acquire citizenship through the mother and not just the father; and to create mechanisms to facilitate women’s access to employment and political decisionmaking. Even the most conservative societies—such as those in the Gulf region—have felt pressure as activists demanded that women receive their rights as full citizens. There may be a connection between the fact that liberal arts colleges for women have mushroomed in the Gulf countries and that women’s claims-making associations have also emerged in those same countries. Women’s educational attainment correlates with employment and involvement in professional and civic associations; it is also a powerful predictor of activism for women’s rights. In the Gulf countries, the right to vote and run for office has been a key demand of women activists, and in recent years they have won this right. Helen Rizzo’s research on Kuwait has shown that women’s networking and involvement in professional associations—itself highly correlated with women’s education—is a strong predictor of engagement with the political process. 10 Globalization processes, including links to world society and pressure from multilateral organizations, have forced some changes in gender policies—even in Saudi Arabia, where the king announced that women would be able to vote and take part in elections, albeit not until 2015.

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Political Self-Empowerment Indeed, participation in the body politic as full and equal citizens is a key demand of women’s rights groups across the region. The reasons are clear—in aggregate terms, women’s access to political power in the MENA region is low by global standards. The region’s educated women see this reality as a problem, and they are aware that the UN’s global women’s rights agenda, as well as MDG 3, includes the enhancement of women’s political participation. Some states have encouraged women’s political presence through parliamentary quotas and ministerial appointments, but only in a few cases does the presence of larger numbers of women represent women’s own efforts or changing attitudes on the part of political parties or the public. Iraq, for example, has a constitutional gender quota of 25 percent female representation, but as discussed in Chapter 5, women can hardly be said to have political influence. In the case of the UAE, only one of the nine women representatives on the Federal National Council was elected; the other eight were appointed.11 At 27 percent without a gender quota, Tunisia has done best in the region, with female representation that compares favorably with other parts of the world. Indeed, Tunisia held its own after its political revolution; in the 2011 election for members of the constituent assembly who would write the country’s new constitution, 58 women, or nearly 27 percent of the total, were elected. Morocco, too, has done well with respect to women’s political representation, electing 67 women, or 17 percent of parliamentary seats, an increase from the previous parliament. In contrast, Egyptian women lost the parliamentary quota that had been established in the final year of the Mubarak regime, and they won a mere 2 percent of parliamentary seats in the November 2011 election. The most impressive statistic was found in Algeria in 2012, where an unprecedented 31 percent of the seats in the National Popular Assembly came to be occupied by women. This results not from tokenism but from feminist advocacy, lobbying, and activism over time, which I discuss in more detail later in this chapter. It was a promising sign that in 2012, two political parties in the region were led by women. In Algeria, the Workers’ Party was founded in the 1990s by Louisa Hanoune, a long-time socialist and feminist activist, and in 2005 she was elected the party’s secretary-general. In Tunisia, Maya Jribi, another longtime socialist activist, was elected secretary-general of the Progressive Democratic Party in 2006. (After being elected to the Constituent Assembly in 2011, she helped form the Parti Républicain and as of March 2013 had joined a new coalition of progressive parties in preparation for the fall 2013 elections.) For far too long, political power was an exclusively male prerogative in the MENA region. Women’s exclusion from the corridors of power has

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usually meant their more active participation in civil society. That is indeed an arena more amenable to women’s activism and—at least in principle— their access to decisionmaking positions. Here women may be involved in an array of associations, from professional associations to human rights groups to women’s rights organizations. And yet, in most countries, the presence of women decisionmakers in civil society organizations as a whole has been negligible. Yemen’s Tawakkol Karman may have won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize (sharing it with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, and her countrywoman Leymah Gbowee), but as the Arab Human Development Report 2005 noted, despite the presence of eighty-seven women’s associations in Yemen, the proportion of women in decisionmaking positions did not exceed 6 percent; in parliament, they occupied less than 0.5 percent of the seats. Indeed, women have been absent even from associations for the defense of civil rights: out of a total of twenty-five members of the steering committee of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights, only three were women. The same was true of Egypt and Morocco.12 The Arab Human Development Report also labeled the establishment of the Arab Women’s Organization (AWO) a form of tokenism. Even though its founding in 2002 would indicate the special attention that Arab governments were now giving to women’s issues, the AWO and similar regional intergovernmental organizations were not given the resources or the authority to influence broader decisionmaking, much less take part in decisions pertaining to economic development or peace and security. Because of their exclusion from the corridors of power in the state and the leadership of civil society (with a few exceptions), the main form of women’s civil society participation has been found in women’s own organizations. The highly educated women of the region have formed and become active in organizations such as Egypt’s Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, Morocco’s Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc, Algeria’s SOS Femmes en Détresse, Iran’s Women’s Cultural Center and the Change for Equality Campaign, Tunisia’s Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates, and Turkey’s Women for Women’s Human Rights New Ways. All these movements, organizations, and campaigns have been spearheaded by educated women, most of whom are professionals in an array of fields. It is in their own organizations that critically minded, educated women can establish their authority, take part in decisionmaking, engage with various publics, develop their civic skills, and exercise their political rights. Another form of women’s participation in civil society in MENA has involved literary efforts, including the publication of books, journals, and films. Morocco’s Editions Le Fennec has produced numerous books on women’s rights issues as well as many literary works by women. From the 1990s, the very lively women’s press in Iran acted as a stand-in for an orga-

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nized women’s movement, until the movement burst onto the national scene in 2005. Shahla Lahiji’s Roshangaran Press published important feminist works as well as historical studies, while the Women’s Cultural Center organized by Noushin Ahmadi-Khorassani and others, produced feminist analyses, calendars, compendiums, and journals. Feminist newspapers are produced in Turkey, and the Women’s Library in Istanbul contains research and documentation on women’s and gender issues. Al-Raida, a quarterly feminist journal of the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World at the Lebanese American University, has published issues since 1976 on topics such as women in Arab cinema, women and the war in Lebanon, women and work, violence against women, sexuality, and criminality. Fatima Sadiqi and I have termed the combination of women’s literary production, advocacy efforts, mobilizing structures, access to various media, and engagement with various publics a gradual “feminization of the public sphere” in the Middle East.13 Feminist activism—as a subset of women’s activism—is a global phenomenon with many similarities across regions in world society, but regions and even countries may have specific discourses, priorities, and strategies. In all cases the focus is on the equal participation and rights of women, as well as recognition of women’s contributions to social reproduction through childbearing and family care. As such, feminist groups call for changes in laws, policies, and institutions to facilitate women’s entry into the labor force and the polity. Abortion and gay and lesbian rights are priorities in some regions and countries, but not everywhere; in some cases this hesitancy is a principled position and in other cases a matter of setting goals within a movement, network, or coalition. In certain countries, feminist or women’s groups may focus on conflict resolution and peacebuilding or on democratic consolidation. Another difference may pertain to the use of the very term feminist. Where the term is either associated with the global North or imperialism or otherwise strategically inadvisable, advocates instead speak of women’s rights or of legal reform. In some MENA countries, women’s rights groups frame their struggle as one for civil society, or for democracy, or for national development as well as for women’s rights. The term feminist is rarely used by women’s rights advocates in Jordan or Egypt. By contrast, Iranian women’s rights activists defiantly call themselves feminists, and even secular feminists, although doing so puts them at risk vis-à-vis the Islamic authorities. The defiant use of the term feminist is also true of the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates and of several Algerian women’s groups. The strategies deployed by activists to advance women’s participation and rights are rarely confrontational and as such differ markedly from the tactics and strategies of many Islamist movements. Since women’s groups tend to have limited leverage and relatively few resources, and since many

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governments in the MENA region are authoritarian, consensus building is a reasonable strategic choice as well as a democratic practice. In fact, many women’s groups call themselves “democratic” as well as “feminist,” and their practices contribute to the making of democratic society. As mentioned above, women’s rights groups tend to engage in research, advocacy, education of the public, lobbying, and coalition building. When the state is unresponsive or repressive, women’s groups turn to their international connections, which may include feminist elements of the country’s expatriate community, the global press, or international NGOs and transnational feminist networks. For example, the arrest and imprisonment of Iranian women’s rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh became an international cause célèbre in 2012 as a result of the constant online updates from the Feminist School, petitions launched by the feminist diaspora, and the dissemination of information by the WLP to international NGOs. Feminist collective action, therefore, takes place within and across national borders. The MENA region itself has produced a prominent transnational feminist network, the Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité. Members of the Collectif have taken part in activities of the Marche Mondiale des Femmes, a transnational initiative of Québecoise feminists against poverty and violence. Likewise, and as already noted in this book, Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign drew heavily on its transnational links, especially in a context of growing state repression and the hostility of the authorities toward feminist activism. Tunisian feminists have received considerable support from French, Québecoise, and other international women’s rights groups, and a focus on women’s rights was one of the defining features of the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2013. Such mobilizations and forms of international solidarity result from the global diffusion of the UNsponsored women’s rights agenda, coupled with the expansion of a population of educated and employed women in MENA with social, economic, and political concerns and connections to world society. One of the strengths of women’s rights movements in the MENA region lies in their propensity to build broad social bases, collaborations, and coalitions. They engage in activism with men, with religious and secular women, and with young people and more veteran activists. Although women’s rights groups have long been accused of Westernization, cultural alienation, atheism, and so on, the reality is that their modes of organizing and mobilizing have tended to be inclusive rather than exclusionary. On cross-class inclusion, women’s groups in some countries do better than others. Efforts to enhance women’s social rights and economic citizenship are found throughout the region, but in North Africa in particular, women’s rights groups have worked with human rights organizations and trade unions to push for reform, raise public awareness, and build institutions. For example, the various centres d’écoutes—counseling centers or shelters

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for female victims of domestic violence or sexual harassment—are products of feminist activism that result from attention to the concerns of working-class women and entail collaboration with other local actors as well as with international donors. The issue has been framed in terms of the urgent need to combat all forms of violence against women, to promote the rights and dignity of working women, and to make the workplace conducive to women’s participation and contribution to development. The Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates was responsible for the advocacy that led to the passage in 2004 of the country’s first legislation combating sexual harassment; the association also established the first centre d’écoute.14 It was followed by one in Algeria hosted by the country’s main trade union. More recently, Moroccan feminist groups helped form a coalition with physicians’ groups and human rights organizations, called the Springtime of Dignity, to urge the government to reform the penal code to criminalize all forms of violence against women and “preserve the dignity of women, their physical and psychology integrity, and their autonomy.”15 Also more characteristic of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia than some other MENA countries is attention to labor laws to address the problems and needs of women in the workforce. In February 2004, for example, a coalition to ensure the implementation of Morocco’s new labor law was launched by the Centre des Droits des Gens, the Ligue Démocratique pour les Droits des Femmes, and the Association Marocaine des Droits des Femmes, and in November of that year it was joined by the Union Marocaine du Travail, the Confédération Démocratique du Travail, and the Association Marocaine des Droits Humains. The campaign also issued a report entitled Protection des Droits des Femmes, which, among other things, pointed out that Morocco had yet to sign and ratify ILO Convention 183 on maternity protection (designed to protect the rights of working mothers).16 In the future, the feminist organizations in these countries will no doubt strengthen ties with the women’s sections of the trade unions, along with the relevant units in the progressive political parties, to ensure that economic and social policies advance rather than undermine the participation and rights of working-class women. Advocacy for the establishment of more generous support structures for women in the labor force, from longer paid maternity leaves to subsidized quality childcare centers, would be especially effective in achieving the economic citizenship of working-class women, as I discussed in Chapter 3.17 Tables 8.1 and 8.2 present summary information on selected women’s organizations in MENA and Afghanistan, their priority issues and campaigns, and the legal and policy changes that have ensued since the turn of the century. Women’s rights groups have brought about change, whether working by themselves or collaborating with other civil society organiza-

Table 8.1

Women’s Organizations in Selected MENA Countries and Priority Campaigns, 2010 Issues, Priorities, and Campaigns

Afghanistan: Afghanistan Institute for Leadership (AIL)

Health and education needs of Afghan women, children, and communities Political awareness

Algeria

Replacement of the family law by an egalitarian law Criminalization of all forms of violence against women Social and psychological support for victims of violence in the 1990s

Bahrain Women’s Association for Human Development

Equal nationality rights for women Implementation of CEDAW, including guarantees of women’s legal rights and an end to gender violence and sexual harassment

Egypt: Forum for Women in Development (FWID), ECWR, Assoc. for the Development and Enhancement of Egyptian Women (ADEW)

Increased female political participation Legal literacy Economic empowerment and support for female-headed households

Iran: various women activists

One Million Signatures Campaign for equal rights Stop Stoning Forever Campaign Adoption of CEDAW, including an end to violence against women and equal nationality rights for women

Jordan: Sisterhood Is Global Institute (SIGI/J)

Repeal of CEDAW reservations Equal nationality rights for women An increase in women’s political participation (e.g., raising the quota, committing political parties to a minimum of two female candidates endorsed by women’s NGOs) An end to violence and “honor crimes”

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Issues, Priorities, and Campaigns Lebanon: Collective on Research & Training on Development-Action

Women’s rights Equal nationality rights for women Economic empowerment of women “White Ribbon” campaign in universities to raise awareness about violence against women and the draft bill to criminalize it; press conferences; refutations of Sunni and Shia religious councils’ opposition to the draft bill

Morocco: ADFM

Repeal of CEDAW reservations Membership in Spring of Dignity coalition of thirty associations for penal code reform (regarding rape and the ban on abortion) Consolidating of democracy Empowerment of rural women

Palestine: WATC

An end to violence against women Implementation of CEDAW principles An increase in women’s participation in peace and security Support for SCR 1325

Tunisia: ATFD, AFTURD

Equality for women in all areas Full implementation of CEDAW, including equal inheritance rights Support for working women

Turkey: Foundation for Support of Women’s Work

Guarantee of human rights for women Support for low-income women and their cooperatives

Yemen: Women’s Forum for Research and Training

Legal literacy on women’s rights in Islam Civic education

Source: Women’s Learning Partnership, “Where We Are [Country pages],” www.learningpartnership.org; discussions and interviews at WLP Transnational Partners Meeting, Jakarta, April 10–11, 2010; personal communications.

Table 8.2

Legal and Policy Changes in Selected MENA Countries, 2005–2012 Policy Changes

Algeria 2005 2012 Bahrain 2009 2010

2011 Egypt 2008 2010

The nationality code is amended to permit an Algerian woman married to a non-Algerian to confer citizenship on her children. A gender quota is adopted by parliament, enabling women to win more seats in the National Assembly; women win an unprecedented 31 percent of parliamentary seats. The Council of Ministers approves free public education and healthcare services to children of Bahraini women married to foreign nationals. The Shaikha Sabika Award for Bahraini Women’s Empowerment is established by the Supreme Council for Women (SWC) to motivate employers to appoint women to executive and other important posts and to motivate women to be involved in national development. Houda Ezra Ebrahim Noonoo is named the first female ambassador from Bahrain to Washington. She is also Jewish. The government withdraws its reservation to CEDAW Article 9(2), which concerns gender equality regarding the nationality of a woman’s children; it follows 2004 nationality law establishing equality. The government begins to combat female genital mutilation (FGM) through education, outreach, and passage and enforcement of legislation criminalizing FGM. Courts issue the first two convictions on sexual assault charges.

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Jordan 2007 Municipal councils reserve 20 percent of their seats for women. 2008–2009 Jordan removes its reservation to Article 15 of CEDAW, which grants women the right to travel freely and choose their place of residence. The 2001 khul’a bill, granting women the right to divorce (albeit with financial implications), is confirmed. 2010 Minister of Political Development Musa Maaytah announces a study of the idea of increasing women’s quota in the lower house of parliament from 6 women to 12, or setting a 20 percent benchmark. New domestic violence legislation was passed in 2008 prohibiting honor killings (Article 340 of the penal code). According to Asma Khader, SIG/J director. “There are now two shelters for women victims of violence. Since Sept. 2009 there is a court that hears such cases, and since then no one has received a sentence of less than 10 years.”

Table 8.2

continued

Kuwait 2005 2009 Lebanon 2009 2010

Morocco 2007 2008 2011 Syria 2009 Saudi Arabia 2011 Tunisia 2011 2012 Turkey 2012

Women get the vote. Four liberal-leaning women are elected to Kuwait’s 50-seat parliament. They lose their seats in the 2012 elections. Lebanon’s minister of the interior urges that free, unconditional five-year residency permits be issued to children and spouses of Lebanese women. Lebanon’s cabinet approves an increase in women’s quota to 20 percent for municipal elections. Council of Ministers approves KAFA (Enough) draft law on the Protection of Women from Family Violence, placing it under the jurisdiction of the penal law. The Women’s Learning Partnership Claiming Equal Citizenship campaign achieves a success when Morocco changes its nationality code, allowing women who are married to foreign Muslim men to pass their nationality on to their children. In 2008 King Mohammed VI announces he will bring the country’s domestic laws into compliance with CEDAW. Morocco lifts all reservations to CEDAW. A decree is passed granting children of Syrian women married to nonnationals equal rights to state-subsidized higher education, acknowledging the mother’s status as equal citizen. King Abdullah announces that Saudi women will be given the right to vote beginning in 2015. The transitional government declares parité and lifts the remaining reservations on CEDAW. An attempt by the Constituent Assembly, dominated by the Islamic party an-Nahda, to replace the word “equality” with “complementarity” is defeated as a result of large protests by feminist groups and supporters. An attempt by Prime Minister Erdogan to begin procedures to ban abortion is defeated as a result of large protests by feminist groups and supporters.

Sources: “Bahraini Govt Will Reward Firms Empowering Women,” Khaleej Times, via e-mail, 2008; Joseph Mayton, “Egypt Passes Law Banning Female Circumcision,” All Headline News, 2008, http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011210977; personal communications; remarks by participants in the Women’s Learning Partnership Transnational Partners Meeting, Jakarta, April 10–11, 2010; Human Rights Watch, “Tunisia: Government Lifts Restrictions on Women’s Rights Treaty,” September 7, 2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/06/tunisia-government-lifts-restrictions-women-s-rights-treaty; UNIFEM, “CEDAW Success Stories,” http://www.unifem.org/cedaw30/success_stories; Sanja Kelly and Julia Breslin, eds., Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance (Washington, DC, and Lanham, MD: Freedom House and Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

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tions such as human rights groups, trade unions, and progressive political parties; with elite allies in and around the state; or with transnational advocacy networks. International feminist networks such as WLUML or WLP provide solidarity, financial assistance, technical advice, and training and help disseminate information. As was discussed in Chapter 7, MENA women’s rights groups are among the chief proponents of democratic development and its correlates of civil liberties, participation, and inclusion. That chapter provided examples of women’s democratic organizing, with extended discussions of Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco, as well as examples from Iran, Palestine, and Turkey. Here I examine three waves of Algerian women’s collective action since the 1980s: against the new family code in the immediate post-Boumediènne period, against the Islamist movement and le terrorisme (terrorism) of the 1990s, and for gender justice in the new millennium. Little known outside a relatively restricted francophone community of scholar-activists, the Algerian women’s movement challenges continued stereotypes about the absence of independent mobilizations in the Arab region. The case study elucidates the links among demographic changes, the political opportunity structure, the articulation of grievances, and the emergence of women’s mobilizations. Characteristics of the Algerian women’s movement include a propensity to build and sustain organizations and networks; effective coalition building, both within Algeria and transnationally (especially within the Maghreb); engagement with government, domestic policies and laws, and the global women’s rights agenda; and a rather remarkable fearlessness.

Organizing Women: The Case of Algeria The first wave of the Algerian women’s movement emerged in the period following President Houari Boumediènne’s death in December 1978. This period was marked by a conservative move at women’s expense, in line with a shift away from Algerian socialism and toward a market economy and in response to the growth of political Islam and fundamentalism (intégrisme) in the region, with movements either overtly challenging the authority of governments or calling for the return of Islamic law. Phase One: The Struggle Against the Draft Family Law Just two months after Boumediènne’s death, the Ministry of Justice announced the creation of a commission to draft a family code. On March 8, 1979, some 200 university women convened an open meeting at the industrial workers’ union headquarters in Algiers to demand the disclosure of the identity of the members of the commission and to express their con-

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cerns and demands. Significantly, they called themselves “the commission of women who work at the university” and defined themselves as workers rather than as professionals, partly as an homage to the waning socialist heritage and partly to underscore their identity as employed women.18 In January 1980 the government of Chedli Bendjedid handed the embryonic feminist movement a new issue to protest against when it abruptly prohibited Algerian women from leaving the country without the permission of a male guardian. According to Khalida Messaoudi, a mathematics teacher and one of the organizers of the women’s protests on March 8, 1980: “We organized a huge general assembly and decided to demonstrate in the streets, demanding that the order which hampered women’s freedom of movement be definitively lifted. The government retreated: the ministerial order was cancelled.”19 Messaoudi adds that at this time, when it became clear that the official women’s organization could or would do nothing to protest the government, the first independent women’s collective was formed, consisting of about fifty women. The introduction of the draft family code alarmed many middle-class Algerian women, who saw it as an attempt to placate a growing Islamist tendency by institutionalizing second-class citizenship for women. The 1981 proposal offered six grounds for divorce on the part of the wife, allowed a woman to work outside the home after marriage if specified in the marriage contract or at the consent of her husband, and imposed some restrictions on polygyny and the conditions in which the wives of a polygynous husband were kept. According to the scholar and activist Lucie Provost, the code envisaged a “Muslim family” and adhered to a patriarchal model inasmuch as the family was regarded as a private institution in which the agnates hold power. She noted that this was at odds with the constitutional discourse of the socialist era, which placed the family within the purview of the state, though it was consistent with the constitutional article stating that Islam was the “religion of the state.”20 Algerian feminists responded quickly. According to Cherifa Bouatta, “They gathered in front of the parliament building to reject the process of drawing up and adopting laws without a preliminary consultation of the most concerned.”21 The feminists joined with the Moudjahidates—women veterans of the war of liberation—and demonstrated together on December 3, 1981. On January 21, 1982, the group issued a six-point demand, calling for monogamy, the unconditional right of women to seek employment, the equal division of family property, the same age of majority for women and men, identical conditions of divorce for men and women, and effective protection of abandoned children.22 The debate over the family code and the presence of the Moudjahidates forced the government to withdraw its proposal, but an even more conservative revision was presented in 1984 and quickly passed by the National

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Popular Assembly before much opposition could resurface.23 In the revised code, Algerian women lost their right to contract marriage—they now had to be given in marriage by a wali (guardian). Provisions for divorce initiated by women were sharply curtailed, as were the restrictions on polygyny; fathers became the sole guardians of children; and women were given an unequal share in inheritance. The only positive aspect of the new family code was that the minimum marriage age was raised for both women and men (to eighteen and twenty-one, respectively). Feminists objected that the family code contravened the equality clauses of the constitution, the labor code, and international conventions to which Algeria was a signatory. 24 Protests were again organized, but given the fact that the bill had already passed, they had little impact. Among the new organizations created during the period of the struggle regarding the family code was the Association pour l’Egalité des Droits entre les Femmes et les Hommes (known as Egalité), established in May 1985 with Khalida Messaoudi as its first president. Also prominent in the group was Louisa Hanoune, a Trotskyist and women’s rights activist. Cherifa Bouatta, a participant in the movement, succinctly summarizes the origins of Algerian feminism: Under the shadow of the one-party system, the political monolith [le pouvoir], some women attempted to create spaces of independent expression through cultural and trade union groups. Psychology students created a working group and a cine-club. In Oran, study and reflection workshops on Algerian women were organized in early 1980, with contributions from historians, economists, sociologists and psychiatrists. The proceedings of these workshops were published and the organizers created a women’s journal, ISIS. Other groups were then created, such as the Moudjahidates collective and groups that studied and criticized official proposals for a new Family Code. This latter effort gave life to the women’s movement, and is indeed regarded as the spark that led to the emergence, the objective and the strategies of Algeria’s feminist movement.25

This first wave of the Algerian feminist movement was preoccupied with the family code. Despite the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the growing influence of Islamism in Algeria, the new feminist movement did not focus its energies on fundamentalism until the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Still, the significance of this first cycle of women’s protests was clear. As Khalida Messaoudi puts it: Apart from the Berber cultural movement, it has been women—yes, women, and they alone—who have been publicly questioning the F.L.N. since 1980–81 and demanding that universal principles be enforced. Do you realize what holding four demonstrations in quick succession to

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Modernizing Women demand freedom, equality, and citizenship represents in a country where no one talks about the Algerian personality except as something forged by Islam and Arabism?26

Phase Two: Mobilizing Against Intégrisme During the 1980s, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) slowly emerged as a major political and cultural force in Algiers and other major cities. It attacked the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) for corruption and declared that it would help implement sharia law, which it claimed was superior to Western-style civil codes. Many prominent feminists warned of the dangers of intégrisme and the unconstitutional nature of religious-based parties; in response, the leadership of the FIS issued statements condemning the anti-fundamentalist women. When Egalité seemed to equivocate over the nature of the fundamentalist uprising, Khalida Messaoudi left to form another organization, the Association pour le Triomphe des Droits des Femmes.27 In this second wave of the Algerian feminist movement, the strategic priority became the struggle against fundamentalism. During the latter part of the 1980s, Algerian feminists had become alarmed when fundamentalists began to bully and attack women who lived alone or were unveiled. It was as if the feminists were anticipating the terrorism that was to be carried out by the FIS and the Group Islamique Armée (GIA) in the 1990s. Launching a second cycle of protests, Algerian feminists held demonstrations against the FIS and the establishment of an Islamic state. When the FIS made major electoral gains during the December 1991 parliamentary elections, the government moved to annul the elections and ban the FIS. President Bendjedid—now reviled by feminists and leftists—was removed in January 1992, but his popular successor, Mohamed Boudiaf, was assassinated just five months later. Despite their distaste for the authoritarian government of the FLN and the military (le pouvoir), many Algerian feminists welcomed the banning of the FIS. The extreme violence that followed the cancellation of the election results was largely carried out by the GIA. After shooting to death one young woman in April 1993 and decapitating a mother and a grandmother in separate incidents early the next year, the GIA issued a statement in March 1994 classifying all unveiled women who appeared in public as potential military targets—and promptly gunned down three teenage girls.28 The violence against women escalated during that year and included kidnappings and rapes. Women were denounced in mosques by imams, and fatwas were pronounced against them, condemning women to death. Lists of women to be killed were pinned up at the entrance to mosques.29 March 1995 saw an escalating number of deaths of women and girls. Khalida Messaoudi was officially condemned to death by the fundamental-

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ists and forced to live underground. Zazi Sadou, who had founded the Rassemblement Algérien des Femmes Démocrates (RAFD) in 1993 and took public positions against theocracy and authoritarianism, was similarly put on an Islamist death list. Nabila Diahnine, an architect and president of the feminist group Cri de Femmes, was assassinated in February 1996 while on her way to work in the northern city of Tizi Ouzou.30 Women took to the streets to protest the sexual violence and the threats against unveiled women, as well as the military government’s inability to protect women. After one public protest in the spring of 1994, the independent newspaper Al Watan wrote: “Tens of thousands of women were out to give an authoritative lesson on bravery and spirit to men paralyzed by fear, reduced to silence. . . . The so-called weaker sex . . . refused to be intimidated by the threats advanced by ‘the sect of assassins’ [Islamists].”31 In fact, after the onset of le terrorisme, many feminist groups advanced the slogan “No dialogue with the terrorists.” General Liamine Zeroual, the country’s new president, committed himself to working with the opposition. Berber organizations and new democratic associations similarly condemned the terror while also protesting the government’s incapacity. The outcome of the November 1995 presidential election showed that the government retained popular support. The government was again vindicated by the June 1997 general elections, though fewer people participated, and there was much criticism of electoral rigging and government authoritarianism. Throughout, Algerian feminists remained active, staunch opponents of Islamism and of terrorism. In a 1995 interview, while still living underground after her death sentence, Khalida Messaoudi’s courage and political acumen were in full display: More than 80 people a day are being killed by Islamic fundamentalists. . . . Intellectuals, teachers, writers, thinkers—these are the people killed because it is they who defend traditional notions of liberty. But sometimes simple citizens are killed, too, randomly, just for the purpose of terror. . . . They kill women who oppose their views of how we should behave. They cannot allow difference. That is why they insist on veils to cover the difference. They are fascists who claim Allah is on their side and that they are marching under the banner of righteousness. . . . That is not to say that the fundamentalists don’t have a popular base. After years of one-party rule people are desperate and many feel the FIS will make a difference. They [the FIS] just want to be the new dictatorship. If necessary they will compromise and absorb members of the FLN Government into their ranks. But it will simply be the old one-party state with a new face.32

An unintended consequence of Algeria’s economic and political crisis, along with the constitutional reforms of 1989, was the emergence of an incipient civil society that included a large number of independent interest groups emerging as political parties. 33 The conciliatory stance of the

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state and cracks in the unity of the political elite favored the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations as well as new political parties, and henceforth the government would have to tolerate, respond to, and interact with them. Azzedine Layachi has described how interaction between the state and elements of the nascent civil society intensified after 1993, and he listed those nongovernment organizations, professional associations, and parties that were represented in meetings with the High State Council.34 Missing from the list, however, was the array of women’s organizations that emerged in Algeria during the 1980s and 1990s. According to Cherifa Bouatta, twenty women’s associations attended their first national meeting in late 1989 and perhaps as many as twenty-four in 1993. They included women’s studies and research associations such as Aicha, Dafatir Nissaiya, and Fondation Nyssa; women-in-development organizations such as Femmes, Environment, Dévéloppement; social-professional associations such as SEVE, which sought to promote and assist women in business; a number of service and delivery organizations; and several notable feminist organizations. The period 1989–1994 saw the formation of such feminist organizations as the Association Indépendante pour le Triomphe des Droits de la Femme (Triomphe), the Association pour l’Emancipation des Femmes (Emancipation), the Association pour le Défense et Promotion des Femmes (Défense et Promotion), Rassemblement Algérien des Femmes Démocrates, Cri de Femmes, Voix des Femmes, El Aurassia, and SOS Femmes en Détresse. The organizations called for the abolition of the family code; full citizenship for women; enactment of civil laws guaranteeing equality between men and women in areas such as employment, marriage, and divorce; abolition of polygyny and unilateral male divorce; and equality in division of marital property. During the 1990s, Egalité focused on educational campaigns about the family code, with a view to mobilizing support for its abolition. As Cherifa Bouatta has explained, Egalité organized seminars on such themes as “democracy and the principle of equality,” campaigned for political parties that defended women’s rights, and convened annual general assemblies. In 1995 Egalité was said to have around 500 members, mostly between the ages of thirty-five and forty. Triomphe likewise organized conferences to discuss the family code, as well as a series of workshops and lectures on the situation of women, and it published a legal guide for women. In 1995 it was said to have about 200 members, mostly between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Emancipation organized roundtables on subjects such as women’s employment and representations of women in textbooks, exhibitions of photographs and paintings, and film debates. According to Cherifa Bouatta, the membership numbered about 150 and consisted largely of the former members of the women’s film club,

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students, and workers. Défense et Promotion engaged in activities similar to those of Egalité, Triomphe, and Emancipation: debates and conferences on the family code and campaigns for women’s legal awareness, cultural activities, workshops on women’s employment, and the promotion and sale of goods made by women.35 Throughout the 1990s, these and other organizations participated in a variety of national and international independent initiatives on violence against women, including a March 1994 tribunal in Algeria “to judge symbolically the responsible Islamists and the former president of the Algeria Republic for their crimes against humanity.” All the women’s groups built coalitions to organize street demonstrations in Algeria to defend democracy and the citizenship of women.36 The RAFD actively documented human rights violations, particularly those by Islamists against women. It collected women’s testimonies and produced a publication entitled Algérie RéveilleToi, C’est l’an 2000!, a compilation of news articles about the atrocities. The RAFD was part of the network Women Living Under Muslim Laws, and its founder, Zazi Sadou, received an award in 1997 from the US-based network Women, Law, and Development International, in recognition of her work for Algerian women’s human rights.37 In her book on women in Algeria, Lucie Provost highlights the role played in the Algerian women’s movement by women lawyers and jurists such as Leila Aslaoui and Anissa Smati.38 Like other organizing women in the Middle East, North Africa, and elsewhere in the global South, Algerian feminists were products of the country’s social development: they were urban employed women, mostly with higher education, although some working-class women participated in the feminist organizations. Many Middle Eastern feminists (e.g., Iranian, Turkish, Palestinian) began as members of left-wing organizations, but what is distinctive about the Algerian women’s movement is the extent to which the feminist movement was dominated by left-wing women—which may account for its audacity and organizational capability. When Egalité was formed in 1985, its officers and members were associated with the Socialist Organization of Workers. Members of Emancipation belonged to the Socialist Workers Party, and those of Défense et Promotion belonged largely to the Parti de l’Avant-Garde Socialiste, the former communist party. Bouatta explained their mindset: The founding members of the women’s movement are, in their majority, influenced by the ideology of the Left. . . . They are mostly academics, students, workers, and union representatives. They convey a message of an emancipatory project based on the equality of the sexes, employment and education, which are considered as the main criteria of women’s promotion and socialization. . . . They are women of the post-independence

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Algerian women activists became known for their trenchant critiques of both the state and the Islamists. At the height of the Islamist terror, Saida Ben Habylas, a teacher and official Algerian representative to a UN-sponsored regional meeting that took place in Amman in November 1994, gave an impassioned speech denouncing the violence against women and calling for Arab solidarity with the women of Algeria.40 In a newspaper interview, she boldly emphasized the complicity of both the state and the FIS: The history of the FIS and other terrorist groups is a series of alliances with a corrupt “politico-financial mafia” that helped bring about the economic and social inequalities in Algeria during the 1970s and 1980s . . . Political pluralism and democracy could have meant exposure of corruption of the old order. This old order allied themselves with the FIS in the 1980s and agreed to “share power.” There was a deal.41

Not only was the new women’s movement among the principal social movements of 1990s Algeria, but Algerian feminists became more visible and more prominent in the established political structures. One outcome of the 1997 general elections for municipal and parliamentary seats was the election of eleven women to the National Popular Assembly, among them several well-known activists and feminists. The emergence of a feminist politics critical of both fundamentalism and the state shaped the composition and orientation of the newly elected women. Among them were Louisa Hanoune, leader of the Workers’ Party; Khalida Messaoudi, who joined the Rally for Culture and Democracy; and Dalia Taleb of the Socialist Forces Front.42 All three women were known for their radicalism. During its first and second waves, Algeria’s new feminist movement was unified in its condemnation of the family code and of fundamentalists and developed effective links with international feminists, transnational feminist networks, and European foundations. The movement was active within the Collectif and took part in the research that led to the publication of books on the legal status of women in North Africa, issued by the Morocco-based Editions Le Fennec. WLUML and the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, a feminist think tank at Rutgers University in the United States, sponsored the participation of Khalida Messaoudi at the UN’s World Conference on Human Rights, which took place in Vienna in June 1993, where she testified on Islamist terrorism before the Women’s Tribunal. Two years later, the Collectif was the major organizer behind the “Muslim Women’s Parliament” at the NGO Forum that preceded the Beijing Conference.43 Their participation at the Beijing conference, as well as

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the preparation and translation of several books, were made possible by funding from German foundations.44 In 1997, Rhonda Copelon, director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the City University of New York and a well-known international women’s rights lawyer, filed a lawsuit in the United States on behalf of RAFD and Algerian women victims of terror, with the participation of WLUML. The defendants were the FIS and Anwar Haddam, the “representative-in-exile” of the FIS in the United States.45 These examples demonstrate how Algerian feminists collaborated with other North African feminists and with international feminist groups, making effective use of the global women’s rights agenda in condemnations of patriarchal laws, political Islam, and the authoritarian state. Cracks in the movement appeared in the twenty-first century, however, in the context of postconflict “normalization” during the presidency of Abdelazziz Bouteflika. Louisa Hanoune’s tendency to placate the Islamic opposition irked many Algerian feminists, as did Khalida Messaoudi’s acceptance of the position first of adviser to the president and then of cabinet minister, which was seen as compromising her independence.46 Still, the women’s movement was defined by both its feminist and pro-democracy stances, a point similarly stressed by Lucie Provost. Third Wave Priority: Gender Justice The new century brought with it a certain normalization of the political scene in Algeria, along with efforts by the political authorities to bring an end to the intense political and ideological schisms that had developed in the 1980s and 1990s. President Bouteflika made several moves to change direction in Algeria: in addition to seeking greater integration into the world economy and—after September 11, 2001—participating in the global “war on terror,” he promised to reward women for their sacrifices and collective action in the previous decade, and he sought to “close the chapter” on Algeria’s violent past through a peace charter, an amnesty, and a referendum. Thus in the summer of 2002, he appointed an unprecedented five women to his cabinet (including Khalida Messaoudi) and put in place mechanisms for an evaluation of the family code with a view toward reform. Although feminists had fervently demanded “no dialogue with the terrorists,” Bouteflika’s government desired national reconciliation, even if it meant an amnesty for the armed militants of the past. These developments brought with them new priorities for the women’s movement. The third wave of the Algerian feminist movement was characterized by a demand for gender justice in the form of (1) protests against the referendum and amnesty, (2) a new mobilization for an egalitarian family code, and (3) attention toward ending violence against women and sexual harassment at the workplace. I consider each in turn.

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In addition to the continuing work of the Collectif, new organizations became prominent, such as the Centre d’Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l’Enfant et de la Femme (CIDDEF). The Wassila network, founded in 2000, comprised women’s NGOs (including SOS Femmes en Détresse) and individual professionals, many of whom were psychologists addressing postconflict traumas (such as Cherifa Bouatta and her Société pour l’Aide Psychologique, la Recherche, et la Formation). The Centre d’Ecoute et d’Assistance aux Femmes Victimes d’Harcèlement Sexuel was a counseling service hosted by the country’s main trade union, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens (UGTA). The network and campaign 20 Ans Barakat (20 Years Is Enough) was a coalition of Algerian women’s organizations calling for the abrogation of the old family code and its replacement with an egalitarian law. Most of these organizations had fought the terrorism of the 1990s and criticized the way the government handled it. President Bouteflika’s civil harmony law, passed in July 1999, offered immunity or reduced sentences to members of armed groups who gave up their arms and disclosed their actions, but it soon became a blanket amnesty for crimes by all who declared they had repented. This infuriated feminist groups and the families of the disappeared. Although most of the 200,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared of Algeria’s civil war were men, it was women who formed new organizations dedicated to opposing the blanket amnesty.47 In his 2005 charter for peace and reconciliation, President Bouteflika sought to “close the chapter” on Algeria’s violent past. The referendum of September 29, 2005, was based on a simple proposition—were people for or against peace? There were Algerians within the country and in the diaspora who found the wording deceptive enough to boycott the referendum, but it won the majority of votes cast.48 Many Algerians remained embittered by the experience, perhaps none more so than feminists who had been on death lists or forced to live underground in the 1990s. Some wished for a truth and reconciliation process like South Africa’s; others felt it would amount to impunity for murderers. In 2002, at a meeting in Marrakesh of the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region, I discussed the likelihood of a truth and reconciliation process with two Algerian feminist participants, but they felt that such a development was neither feasible nor desirable. Wendy Kristianasen of Le Monde Diplomatique received similar responses when she interviewed Algerian women: “Truth and reconciliation on the South African model wouldn’t work here: we Algerians aren’t made like that.” And: “I want peace, but not this peace with impunity that the charter is forcing on us. In South Africa it wasn’t like this.”49 Clearly, feelings remained strong concerning the events of the 1990s. Turning now to the campaign against the family law—which feminists have referred to as un text infamant et dégradant (an infamous and degrad-

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ing text)—it will be recalled that President Bouteflika promised to reform it. In order to accelerate the reform, the coalition 20 Ans Barakat was formed on March 8, 2003, almost twenty years after the passage of the family code. One of the coalition founders was Akila Ouared, a well-known moudjahidate, who called the family code “Algeria’s dishonor, an insult to women.” Some of the coalition members had been present on the political scene since 1984, including Triomphe, SOS Femmes en Détresse, Défense et Promotion, and Pluri-elles Algeria. Framed in the language of the global women’s rights agenda and of secular feminism, the coalition’s petition asserted, “The issue of women’s equality in Algeria and their recognition as full citizens is the essential and urgent Algerian question of today and tomorrow” and noted that Tunisia and Morocco had introduced reforms for gender equality.50 The coalition helped effect amendments to the family code in February 2005, as well as a change to the nationality law that allowed Algerian women married to foreigners to pass on their nationality to their children. The amendments made marriage consensual and relations between spouses equal. In a divorce, custody of any children would be granted to whichever parent had care and control, and the father was required to provide a decent home for the mother and child. Activists continued to object, however, to the retention of guardianship (wali) over women, polygyny, and unequal family inheritance, with sons still receiving two-thirds and daughters receiving only one-third. One argument was that such clauses were insulting to women’s dignity. Another was that they were irrelevant and at odds with the social reality, given that women were increasingly helping to support their families—a point also stressed in the 2003 book on family law by the Collectif, Dalil pour l’Égalité dans la Famille au Maghreb. Polygyny, moreover, was rare—although at 5.5 percent of the population, it was more prevalent than in Morocco.51 Nadia Aït-Zaï, a lawyer and professor of law at Algiers University and a director of CIDDEF, was quoted as saying of the family code: “It could have been abolished. . . . Parliament was supposed to vote on the amendment. Instead, Bouteflika had it quietly passed as a presidential decree. As a jurist, I find the reform incoherent: it’s got one foot in modernity, the other in the past.”52 A prominent Algerian women’s rights activist and former cabinet minister expressed doubts that the concept of matrimonial wilaya, (guardianship) could be abolished.53 Another set of priorities for the women’s movement in its third wave pertained to domestic violence, family abuse, and workplace harassment. Earlier in the new century, the Collectif had conducted a survey on violence against women and publicized its disturbing findings on the extent of the problem and the persistence of anachronistic ideas concerning husbands’ privileges. President Bouteflika referred to the survey in his International Women’s Day address of 2002. Shortly thereafter, work began on establish-

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ing the country’s first counseling center, and several others were subsequently set up. The Centre d’Ecoute et d’Assistance aux Femmes Victimes d’Harcèlement Sexuel was created following a consciousness-raising campaign by the National Commission of Women Workers and human rights groups, and in December 2003 the center’s director, Soumia Salhi, also started a hotline for female victims of sexual harassment. The center was initially housed at the UGTA and financed by the trade union. According to one account, there were thousands of calls from female victims and supporters soon after the center opened.54 The work of the union, the women’s commission, and the Algerian League for Human Rights resulted in the government’s adoption of a new policy against sexual harassment. In October 2004, Algeria’s National Popular Assembly adopted an amendment to Article 341 of the Algerian penal code. Sexual harassment was now an offense defined as abusing the authority conferred by one’s function or profession in order to give orders to, threaten, impose constraints on, or exercise pressure on another person for the purpose of obtaining sexual favors. A person convicted of this offense would be subject to imprisonment of two months to one year and a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 dinars.55 One labor and women’s rights activist, Souad Charid, said that the law against workplace sexual harassment and the establishment of the Centre d’Écoute had been a major victory.56 But, according to Boudjemâa Ghechir, chair of the Algerian League for Human Rights, “Attitudes remain the main obstacle preventing complaints by sexual harassment victims.”57 Thus the challenges were to encourage women to break the wall of silence, to ensure enforcement of the law, and, by extension, to achieve gender justice. CIDDEF, SOS Femmes en Détresse, and other women’s NGOs that were part of the Wassila network addressed an array of issues related to women’s rights to dignity and a life free of sexual and family violence, as well as incest, the problems of unwed mothers, and illegal abortions. The Wassila network held workshops on those topics, convened a weekly clinic for children, and published papers. In an interview with Le Monde Diplomatique, Louisa Aït Hamou, a lecturer at Algiers University, explained that the network provided professional help, engaged in reflection about the country and its future, and took action: We are breaking the silence on taboo subjects: sexual aggression against women and children, family violence, rape, battered women, economic violence. Take Hassi Messaoud, a new oil-rich city: 30 women went to work there, where working women are unusual. The local imams accused them of being prostitutes and, in 2001, they were raped and knifed. One was buried alive. Wassila, with other NGOs, ended the long silence over this and supported the women in their search for justice, though only three of the 30 dared attend the appeals court on 3 January 2005.58

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Among the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, Algeria is one of the most instructive case studies of feminist activism. Although women played prominent roles in the national liberation movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the rise of a radical women’s movement and of feminist organizations was a feature of the 1980s and 1990s. Algerian women were once intimately connected to the project of national liberation and postcolonial state building through a version of Arab socialism, but the new women’s movement extricated itself from those projects to demand rights, equality, and security—and all in the language of secular feminism. Though they never separated themselves from the project of building a modern and progressive Algerian polity, they have insisted that women’s rights are necessary for the achievement of democracy and modernity. During one of the many feminist workshops of the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2013, Nadia Aït-Zaï of CIDDEF said that “during the years of terrorism, women were always the defenders of the Republic, and we fought, without international solidarity. We then demanded our rights as women. Many of the laws in our country were based on French laws. But we still have a penal code that allows a rapist to escape penalty by marrying his victim, even though this loophole disappeared in France. We are determined to change the laws to bring about women’s equality.”59 The new women’s movement in Algeria emerged in the context of a growing international women’s movement, economic crisis and restructuring, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and the weakness of the state, and was constituted by a population of educated and employed Algerian women—teachers, professors, artists, lawyers, magistrates—who were conscious of gender issues. The attack on women’s legal status in the immediate post-Boumediènne period triggered the initial mobilization, which was sustained over time by the establishment of various organizations, coalitions, and campaigns. Coalition building with other progressive civil society organizations, as well as alliances with political elites, helped the women’s movement grow and achieve policy successes. The global women’s rights agenda provided additional legitimacy, while transnational feminist networks and European foundations offered resources necessary for the movement’s wider reach. As the period of terrorism ended, Algerian women were able to enjoy a number of advantages rarely seen in the MENA region. As of 2006, women reportedly represented 50 percent of teachers, 53 percent of medical doctors, and 37 percent of magistrates (prosecutors and judges).60 Is it any wonder that the penal code was amended to criminalize sexual harassment? Or that Article 6 of the nationality code, amended in 2005, stipulated that a child is considered Algerian when born to a father or a mother of Algerian citizenship? In 2011, uniquely among Arab countries holding elections, the Islamist party in Algeria did not win a majority. At the same time, women won an unprece-

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dented proportion of parliamentary seats—31 percent—giving Algeria the top ranking in women’s political representation in the region and a high proportion by international standards. There is still work to be done to achieve women’s full and equal citizenship, but clearly, Algerian feminism and the new women’s organizations must be regarded as key players in the country’s cultural modernization and democratic transition. They constitute a significant part of the emergent civil society and have helped to redefine the concepts of citizenship, human rights, and political participation.

Conclusion: MENA Women on the Move The effects of socioeconomic development and the contradictions of globalization in most of the semiperipheral countries of the Middle East and North Africa have produced at least two generations of organizing women. The population of educated and employed women with smaller families and more time to devote to civic activities is a significant demographic in MENA that has also contributed in large measure to the growth of civil society in the region. The global women’s rights agenda and the UN conferences of the 1990s—especially the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which took place in Cairo, and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing—created a favorable opportunity structure that allowed feminist organizations and women-led NGOs to proliferate in the Middle East. In some countries, increasing state conservatism forced women’s organizations and feminist leaders to assume a more independent stance than they had before. In other countries, alliances with supportive government officials as well as civil society groups enabled legal reform and policy changes. Using the language of human rights as well as emancipatory Islam (“Islamic feminism”), and referring to international conventions and norms, feminists have pursued institution building and reform of legal codes and public policies that impede women’s empowerment and equality. Indeed, feminism has emerged as an alternative to the master frame of religio-nationalism, offering a very different vocabulary, critique, and set of objectives. In the discourse of contemporary MENA feminism, the “ideal society” is one in which women participate fully in the development of their societies, have equal status with men in the family, and are able to function within civil society and the political process to expand civil, political, and social rights of citizenship to all. The relationship among women’s education, employment, and civic engagement is clear. Although some have suggested that the “NGO-ization of the women’s movement” in Arab countries represents co-optation by the state, a more plausible hypothesis is that participation in NGOs and especially in women’s rights organizations has contributed to civil society and

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to the development of civic skills necessary for building democracy.61 Such civic skills—along with women’s continued participation in the new political parties—will be vital to the success of the democratic transitions occurring in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and elsewhere.

Notes 1. Chafetz and Dworkin 1986; Margolis 1993; Moghadam 1998b, chap. 8. See also Molyneux 2000. 2. Other key elements within social movement theorizing are mobilizing structures (the capacity to mobilize financial and human resources and build organizations) and framing processes (the interpretive, cultural, discursive, and symbolic aspects of movement building). See McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996. 3. See authors cited in Chapter 1, nn. 15, 23. 4. ADFM, “Report on the Application of CEDAW in the Arab World,” May 2009, http://cedaw.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/adfm-report-on-the-application-of -cedaw-in-the-arab-world.pdf. 5. Cited in Moghadam and Gheytanchi 2010, p. 282. 6. See the following sites: “Thousands Protest at Turkey Anti-Abortion Law Plan,” Reuters, June 3, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/03/us-turkey -abortion-idUSBRE85207520120603, accessed December 2012; Say No To Abortion Ban, “To the Policies of the Prime Minister and the Government of Turkey That Target Gender Equality, Women’s Bodies, Reproductive Rights, and Sexuality, Our Response Is a Resounding ‘No!’” http://saynoabortionban.com, accessed December 10, 2012. 7. I first documented these developments in Moghadam 1998b, chap. 8. 8. WLP founder Mahnaz Afkhami has explained the process to me in a number of discussions. 9. Moghadam 1998b, chap. 8; Moghadam 2003. 10. Rizzo 2005. 11. Dabbagh and Nusseibeh 2009. 12. UNDP 2006, p. 132. 13. Moghadam and Sadiqi 2006. 14. See Chékir and Arfaoui 2006, 2011. 15. WLP, “Springtime of Dignity: Coalition for a Penal Code That Protects Women from Discrimination and Violence,” http://www.learningpartnership.org/ lib/morocco-springtime-dignity-coalition, accessed December 2012. The coalition also sought to lift the ban on abortion, which tends to harm poor, low-income, and working-class women far more than upper-class Moroccan women. Personal communication, Rabéa Naciri, Jakarta, April 12, 2010. 16. See Protection des droits des femmes: Agissons pour l’application effective de la législation du travail, http://www.tanmia.ma/IMG/pdf/Brochure_Campagne _1_.pdf. 17. For an elaboration of such coalitions involving feminists and trade unionists, see contributions in Moghadam, Franzway, and Fonow 2011. 18. Emphasis in the original. Knauss 1987, p. 130. 19. Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, p. 49. 20. See Provost 2002, p. 226. Lucie Provost, an expert on Muslim family law, was born in Algeria in 1932 and obtained a law degree in Tunisia. The book cited

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here was published in Algeria rather than France because it was addressed to an Algerian audience. 21. Cherifa Bouatta 1997, p. 5. 22. Bouatta 1997; see also Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, p. 50. 23. See the description of these events in Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, pp. 51–52. See also Entelis and Arone 1994. 24. Cherifati-Merabtine 1995; Bouatta 1997. 25. Bouatta 1997, p. 4. 26. Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, p. 57. 27. A rift developed between former friends and comrades Khalida Messaoudi and Louisa Hanoune when the latter chose not to criticize the FIS but to direct her verbal attacks against the regime. Hanoune went on to lead the Workers’ Party and stay in the opposition, whereas Messaoudi remained in the women’s movement and subsequently joined the government. 28. Bennoune 1995. 29. Mahl 1995; Salhi 2011. 30. Shirkat Gah, Women Living Under Muslim Laws Newsheet 9, nos. 1–2 (1997), pp. 19–23. 31. “Algeria: Women’s Revolt,” World Press Review, July 1994, p. 34. 32. Richard Swift, “Interview—Khalida Messaoudi,” New Internationalist, 1995, via Internet. 33. Entelis and Arone 1994, p. 211. 34. Layachi 1995. 35. Bouatta 1995; Provost 2002, p. 314. Provost also mentions the Rassemblement contre le Hogra et pour les Droits des Algeriennes on p. 330. 36. Women, Law, and Development International Bulletin, January 1998, p. 4. 37. Mahl 1995. See also ibid. 38. See Provost 2002, pp. 299–300. Provost adds that law experts and practitioners have played a singular role in the Collectif 95 Maghreb Egalité, of which Algerian feminist organizations have been members. 39. Bouatta 1997, p. 15. 40. My observation and notes at the pre-Beijing meeting, Amman, November 1994. 41. Cited in Bennoune 1995, p. 194. 42. The Workers’ Party is Trotskyist. The RCD’s goals are “secularism, citizenship, a state based on rights, the repeal of the Family Code, recognition of Algeria’s Berber dimension, social justice, educational reform, etc.” (Messaoudi and Schemla 1995, p. 94). Likewise, the Socialist Forces Front stands for democracy and Berber rights. 43. Based on my observations and notes at the NGO Forum in Huairou and discussions with participants. See also their documents: Women in the Maghreb: Change and Resistance; and One Hundred Measures and Provisions for a Maghrebian Egalitarian Codification of the Personal Statute [sic] and Family Law, available from the author. 44. Personal communication, Emil Lieser of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Cairo, July 7, 2008. 45. Laura Flanders, “Algeria Unexamined,” On the Issues 7, no. 2 (Spring 1998), p. 27; and Gayle Kirshenbaum, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights,” Ms. 8, no. 3 (March–April 1998), p. 25. Disclosure: I wrote an affidavit on behalf of the suit. The plaintiffs did not win the case but felt that the experience had been important politically.

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46. Personal communications from two Algerian women’s rights activists, Marrakesh, July 2002. 47. Kristianasen 2006. 48. While employed at UNESCO in 2005, I spoke with approximately fifteen Algerians who were opposed to the referendum. 49. Kristianasen 2006. 50. Original wording: “la question du statut égalitaire des femmes en Algérie, et au delà, celle de leur reconnaissance pleine et entière en tant que citoyennes, est une question essentielle et urgente de l’Algérie d’aujourd’hui et de demain.” See http:// 20ansbarakat.free.fr/petition.htm. See also http://famalgeriennes.free.fr/declarations/ APEL_decl_111203.html and http://20ansbarakat.free.fr, last accessed July 25, 2008. 51. Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité 2005, p. 66. For the French original, see Collectif 2003. 52. Cited in Kristianasen 2006. 53. Boutheina Cheriet, professor of comparative education and former minister of women’s affairs, in a conversation with the author, Paris, October 24, 2006. 54. http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/femmes/harcelement_sexuel.htm. 55. http://www.unfpa.org/parliamentarians/news/newsletters/issue59.htm. 56. See her interview on http://www.categorynet.com/v2/index.php/content/ view/4518/400/; see also http://www.afrol.com/articles/15853, both accessed December 2012. 57. Original quote from Boudjemâa Ghechir: “les mentalités restent le principal obstacle qui continue d’empécher les victimes de harcèlement sexuel de se plaindre.” http://www.wluml.org/french/newsfulltxt.shtml?cmd%5B157%5D=x-157-347521. 58. Cited in Kristianasen 2006. 59. My notes and translation from the French, workshop on violence against women organized by the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates, March 27, 2013, World Social Forum, Tunis. 60. Marzouki 2010, p. 45. 61. On NGO-ization, see Jad 2004; Jamal 2007.

Acronyms

ADFM AFTURD AHDR AHRO AIDS AIHRC AIS AISHA AKP ALN AMEWS ASEAN ATFD AWC AWO AWSA CAWTAR CEDAW CIA CIDDEF

CLEF

Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc Association des Femmes Tunisienne pour le Recherche et Développement Arab Human Development Report Arab Human Rights Organization acquired immune deficiency syndrome Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission Armée Islamique du Salut (Islamic Salvation Army, Algeria) Arab Women’s Forum Justice and Development Party (Turkey) Armée de Liberation Nationale (Army of National Liberation, Algeria) Association for Middle East Women’s Studies Association of Southeast Asian Nations Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (Tunisian Association of Democratic Women) Afghan Women’s Council Arab Women’s Organization Arab Women’s Solidarity Association Center for Arab Women’s Training and Research Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (UN) Central Intelligence Agency Centre d’Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l’Enfant et de la Femme (Information and Documentation Center on the Rights of Children and Women, Algeria) Centre pour le Leadership Féminin (Center for Feminist Leadership, Morocco) 277

278 CPA CREDIF CUP DDR DFLP DHS DOAW DRA DYO EAP ECWR EFU EOI EPZ ERF ESCWA EU EWCDP FDI FGM FIS FLN FWCW FTZ GAD GAO GCC GDP GIA GNP GUPW GUYW HDI ICCPR ICESCR ICFTU ICPD IDF

Acronyms

Coalition Provisional Authority Centre de Recherche et Développement des Femmes (Center for Research and Development on Women, Tunis) Committee of Union and Progress (Turkey) demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine Demographic and Health Survey Democratic Organization of Afghan Women Democratic Republic of Afghanistan Democratic Youth Organization (Afghanistan) economically active population Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights Egyptian Feminist Union export-oriented industrialization export-processing zone Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran, and Turkey Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia European Union Eastern Women’s Conference for the Defense of Palestine foreign direct investment female genital mutilation Front Islamique du Salut (Islamic Salvation Front, Algeria) Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front, Algeria) Fourth World Conference on Women (UN) free trade zone gender-and-development Government Accountability Office Gulf Cooperation Council gross domestic product Group Islamique Armée (Armed Islamic Group, Algeria) gross national product General Union of Palestinian Women General Union of Yemeni Women Human Development Index (UNDP) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights International Confederation of Free Trade Unions International Conference on Population and Development (UN) Israeli Defense Forces

Acronyms

ILO IMF IRI ISAF ISI ITUC MDG MENA MFL MNC MOWA MVA NAPWAD NATO NGO NIC NIF NLF OPEC OWFI PA PAWC PDPA PDRY PFLP PJD PLC PLO PNA PSC PWWS RAFD RAWA RCD RPP SADC SCR

279

International Labour Organization; International Labour Office (Geneva) International Monetary Fund Islamic Republic of Iran International Security Assistance Force (Afghanistan) import-substitution industrialization International Trade Union Confederation Millennium Development Goals Middle East and North Africa Muslim family law multinational corporation Ministry of Women’s Affairs manufacturing value added National Action Plan for Integrating Women in Development (Morocco) North Atlantic Treaty Organization nongovernmental organization newly industrialized country National Islamic Front (Yemen) National Liberation Front (Yemen) Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq Palestinian Authority Palestine Arab Women’s Conference People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Le Parti du Justice et Développement (Party for Justice and Development, Morocco) Palestine Legislative Council Palestine Liberation Organization Palestinian National Authority Tunisia’s Personal Status Code Palestinian Working Women Society Rassemblement Algérien des Femmes Démocrates (Rally of Democratic Algerian Women) Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan Rassemblement pour la Culture et le Développement (Rally for Culture and Democracy, Algeria) Republican People’s Party (Turkey) Southern African Development Community Security Council Resolution

280

Acronyms

SOEs UAE UGTA UGTT UK UN UNDP UNESCO UNFA UNFPA UNFT UNHCR UNICEF UNIFEM UNLU UNRWA USFP USSR VAW WAPHA WATC WCLAC WFS WID WIDE WILPF WISTAT WLP WLUML WTO WVS

state-owned enterprises United Arab Emirates Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Development Programme United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization Union Nationale des Femmes Algériennes (National Union of Algerian Women) United Nations Fund for Population Activities Union Nationale des Femmes Tunisiennes (National Union of Tunisian Women) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations Development Fund for Women (since 2010 dissolved and incorporated into UN Women) Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (Palestine) United Nations Relief and Works Agency Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires (Socialist Union of Popular Forces, Morocco) Union of Soviet Socialist Republics violence against women Women’s Association for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (Palestine) Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (Palestine) World Fertility Survey women-in-development Women in Development Europe Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Women’s Indicator and Statistics Database Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace Women Living Under Muslim Laws World Trade Organization World Values Survey

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Index

Abbas-Gholizaeh, Mahboubeh, 181, 201–202 Abduh, Muhammad, 38 Abdul-Latif, Leila, 157 Abed, Yamina, 56 Abortion: decriminalization of, 129; Iran’s prohibition, 121, 177; Turkey’s attempt to criminalize, 17, 19, 131; women challenging Turkey’s ban, 245–246 Abu Ghraib prison, 160 Achakzai, Sitara, 151 Action Plan for Development and Women’s Rights (Morocco), 234 Ad Hoc Coalition of Palestinian and Israeli Women, 145 Administrative jobs, 87 Adultery, 150, 228 Afghanistan: colonialism, 10; conflict affecting women’s social gains, 31; conflict and gender justice, 164; conflict history, 137, 146–155; gendered international conflict, 138; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); male women’s rights advocates, 38; obstacles to revolution, 26; peace process failure, 164; Saur Revolution, 51, 63–66, 139(table), 146; social and gender indicators, Muslimmajority countries by region, 7(table); timeline of war and conflict: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 139(table); women’s emancipation as objective of liberation movements, 41; women’s lives, 2003–2011, 153–155(table); women’s

organizations and priority campaigns, 255(table) Africa: fertility rates, 120; MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table); social and gender indicators, Muslimmajority countries by region, 7(table); women’s participation in democratic transition, 217, 221. See also specific countries Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Brownmiller), 164 Age: entrepreneurial women, 91; Iran’s female unemployment, 190; Iran’s unemployment by gender, age, and education, 191(table); women in the workforce, 87 Agriculture and agrarian societies: international trends away from, 80; precapitalist family and patriarchal structures, 115–117; underreporting women’s contribution, 84 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 131, 181–183, 205, 206 Aimounmen, Mishkat, 157 Aït-Zaï, Nadia, 269, 271 Akrour, Djoher, 55 Al Jazeera, 229 Al-Aqsa intifada, 139(table), 141, 143 Albania: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Algeria: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010,

309

310

Index

88(table); centres d’écoute, 254; demographic transition and fertility change, 121; educated women’s labor force representation, 86; family law, 71, 259, 269; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 83; gender justice, 267–272; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); import-substitution industrialization, 20, 81; Islamic feminism, 68; Islamist movement and militant feminist movement, 27; Islamist terror activities, 75(n74); legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 257(table); mass education empowering girls and women, 124–125; military spending, 137; mixed oil economy, 15; mobilization against intégrisme, 262–267; national liberation and revolution, 55–57; parliamentary share, 250; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); refugee camps, 29; regime type, 16; sexual purity and family honor, 116; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); veiling of women, 27–28; weak democratic processes threatening women’s rights, 224; women in higher education, 126; women in university-sector jobs, 184; women’s labor force participation, 85; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 255(table); women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Allawi, Iyad, 157 Amajan, Safia, 151 Amanullah (king), 65 Amin, Qassem, 38 Amnesty International, 149 April 6 Youth Movement (Egypt), 215, 232 Arab Barometer, 5, 225 Arab Human Development Report, 122, 212, 251 Arab socialism, 156 Arab Spring protests: armed conflict and, 137; contextual events, 212–213;

diffusion effects, 215–216; Egypt, 231–234; factors contributing to, 216–217, 216(table); impact on women’s economic and political situations, 9; indicating desire for democratization, 5; Internet and Facebook usage, 184–185, 184(table); Morocco, 234–236; obstacles to democratic transition, 33–34; onset of, 211, 229; Tunisia, 228–231; women’s participation, 25–26; women’s prospects in the democratic transition in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, 237(table) Arab Women’s Organization (AWO), 251 Arafat, Yasir, 26, 141 Argentina, 220–221 Armed conflict. See Conflict and war Armée de Liberation National (ALN, Algeria), 55 Arms spending, 137, 138 Ashrawi, Hanan, 47, 143 Aslaouni, Leila, 69 Assassinations: Afghani women, 151; Algerian feminists, 262–263; Anwar Sadat, 44; Chokri Belaid, 231; Iraqi women, 158–159, 161; Mohamed Boudiaf, 69, 262; Murteza Mutahhari, 74(n57) Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc (ADFM), 226 Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour le Recherche et Développement (AFTURD), 227, 229 Association for Women’s Rights in Development, 205 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 94 Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region, 268 Association pour le Triomphe des Droits des Femmes (Algeria), 68 Association pour l’Egalité des Droits entre les Femmes et les Hommes, 261, 262, 264, 265 Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrats, 129, 226, 227, 229, 254 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 38, 39, 41–42, 51, 53 Athletes, women, 46, 69 Austerity measures, 83 Authoritarian bargain, 82 Authoritarian regimes: democratic transition, 214; economic citizenship, 78, 101–102; Egypt under Mubarak, 44

Index Authoritarian republican regimes, 10 Authoritarian-privatizing regimes, 16 Authoritarian-socialist states, 16 Autonomy: Muslim family law, 71 Average manufacturing value added (MVA), 97 Azerbaijan: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Azza Khawy, Jamal Sudki, 38 Baath Party (Iraq), 46, 139(table) Baathist revolution (Iraq), 42 Bachelet, Michelle, 221 Badran, Amneh, 145 Bahrain: Arab Spring protests, 211; female labor force participation, 86(table), 92, 93; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 257(table); political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); religious diversity across the region, 15; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 255(table); women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Balkan wars, 53–54 Bangladesh: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Bani-Etemad, Rakhshan, 197 Basic Laws (Palestine), 48, 141 Bat Shalom, 144–145 Battle of Algiers (film), 56 Bedouins, 116, 118 Behbehani, Simin, 203 Behdad, Sohrab, 194 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), 11–12, 13(table), 101, 244, 247–248, 266–267 Belaïd, Chokri, 231 Belfast Women’s Collective, 221 Belhadj, Ali, 68 Ben Ali, Zein al-Abedin, 45, 229 Ben Bella, Ahmed, 56

311

Ben Bouali, Hassiba, 56 Ben Habylas, Saida, 266 Bendjedid, Chedli, 57, 68, 260, 262 Berwari, Nesreen, 157 Beyond the Veil (Mernissi), 125 Bin Laden, Osama, 147 Bisan Center (Palestine), 144 Blogosphere, 229, 231, 233 Bolshevik Revolution, 37–38, 163 Bonn Agreement (2001, Afghanistan), 147 Boserup, Ester, 78 Bouatta, Cherifa, 260, 264, 265–266 Bouazza, Djamila, 55 Boudiaf, Mohamed, 69, 262 Bouhired, Djamila, 55, 56 Boulmerka, Hassiba, 69 Boumediènne, Houari, 57, 68, 224, 259 Bourguiba, Habib, 39, 44 Bouteflika, Abdelazziz, 267, 268, 269–270 Bouyali, Mustafa, 75(n74) Brain drain, 28 Brazil, 221 Bremer, Paul, 156–157, 158, 159 BRIC countries, 97 Brownmiller, Susan, 163–164 B’Tselem, 142–143 Burqa, 149. See also Veiling of women Burrow, Sharan, 230–231 Business ownership, 88–92 Cairo agreement (Israel-Palestine), 144 Capital resources, 15 Capitalist states, 19, 118 Catholic Church: religious women’s struggles, 6 Center for Arab Women’s Training and Research (CAWTAR), 90, 144 Central Asia/Caucasus: MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table); social and gender indicators, Muslimmajority countries by region, 7(table) Central economic planning, 20 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 65 Centre d’Ecoute et d’Assistance aux Femmes Victimes d’Harcèlement Sexual, 268, 270 Centre d’Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l’Enfant et de la Femme (CIDDEF), 268 Centres d’écoutes, 253–254 Chabaka (“network”) group, 234 Chad: social and gender indicators, Muslimmajority countries by region, 7(table)

312

Index

Charter of Women Workers Rights, 101 Child abandonment, 134(n3) Child custody rights, 40, 59, 117–118, 196–197 Child labor: international conventions signed by selected MENA countries, 13(table) Child mortality rate, 121–122, 143 Childbearing, 115, 131 Childcare: Nordic welfare states, 37–38; wages for, 98; women’s economic inactivity, 87 Children, mother’s role in the socialization of, 110 Chile, 220–221 China: gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); MNC relocation, 81; son preference, 8 Christian minority populations, 15 Christianity: patriarchal origins, 117; religious women’s struggles, 6 Citizen journalism, 231–232 Citizen participation, 16–17 Citizenship: Algerian code, 271–272; civil, political, and social rights of, 101(table); instruments determining women’s right to, 99; Morocco’s call for expansion of rights, 235; Muslim family law, 71; women’s economic citizenship, 100–103; women’s rights organizations and key demands, 213(table). See also Economic citizenship Civil conflict. See Conflict and war Civil rights, 99, 102 Civil society: family relationships and patterns, 109–110; feminist activism, 252; parliamentary participation and, 251. See also Arab Spring protests Class and Labor in Iran (Nomani and Behdad), 194 Class structures: democratic consolidation, 215; diversity in the MENA countries, 15–16; effects of globalization and, 22–24; elements of social change, 1, 2, 29; gender differences, 24; Iranian women in the labor force, 186; models of democracy, 214 Cold War: Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution, 63; alliances formed during, 10 Collectif 95 Maghreb-Egalité, 68, 213(table), 226, 229, 247–248, 253 Collective action, 1, 253 Colonialism: Algerian liberation movement, 55–57; distorting institutions

and social structures, 10; nationalism, socialism, and women’s rights, 42; socioeconomic and cultural diversity within and across regions, 15 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, Turkey), 51, 54 Communist movement, and the woman question, 38 Conflict and war, 137–138; Afghanistan, 146–155; Algeria’s civil harmony law, 268; atrocities against women, 164; causes of, 163; conflict and gender justice, 162–168; increasing women’s parliamentary participation, 173(n54); Iraq’s history of conflict and women’s rights, 156–162; long-term effects on women, 138, 140; from modernism to religious nationalism, 43; Palestinian women’s participation, 141–146; social change stemming from, 30–31; timeline of war and conflict: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 139(table); violence against women, 140; women’s role, 165–166. See also Iran-Iraq War Consensus building as feminist strategy, 253 Constitutions: Afghanistan, 148; Iran’s women’s rights movement, 204; Islamic Iran, 62; Morocco’s reform, 235 Consumption patterns: transnational capitalist class, 23–24 Contagion processes, 215 Contraception: family as haven, 110–111; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); Iran under Khomeini, 177; Iran’s prohibition of, 121 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 11–12, 13(table), 17, 101, 119, 148, 244–245 Conventions and declarations, 11–12; international conventions signed by selected MENA countries, 13(table) Cooperative conflicts, 111 Copelon, Rhonda, 267 Core countries, 2, 10, 11 Corrigan, Mairead, 221 Corruption: Iraqi reconstruction, 159–160; Tunisia, 229 Creative Commons events, 229 CREDIF (Tunisia), 45 Cuba: gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table)

Index Cultural identity: Arab response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 27; Iran, 61 Cultural symbol, idealized woman as, 37 Cultural-ideological structure: social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.) Culture, 1; cultural constraints and economic citizenship, 79–80; revolutionary programs, 50; sexuality and cultural change, 129–132; socioeconomic and cultural diversity within and across regions, 14–19 Cyprus: sexual purity and family honor, 116 Dalila, 57 Dastjerdi, Vahid, 131 Data collection issues, 84 Davoudi-Mohajer, Fariba, 202 Decolonization: nationalism, socialism, and women’s rights, 42 Demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR), 149 Democracy: different models and pathways, 218; equating free and fair elections with, 238; factors enabling, 215; gender-based democracy deficit, 223–226; gendering, 216–217, 223; models and definitions, 213–214; women’s rights organizations and key demands, 213(table); women’s role in democracy movements, 247 Democracy paradox, 221, 225 Democratic consolidation, 215 Democratic Organization of Afghan Women (DOAW), 64 Democratic transition: Arab Spring and armed conflict, 137; characteristics and pathways of, 213–214; role of women, 238–239; third wave, 201, 220–223; women’s prospects in Arab Spring transitions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, 237(table) Democratization: Arab Spring sparking debate over, 211; gender and sexuality attitudes as obstacles to, 5; Iraq’s women’s rights, 158–159; political participation, women’s rights and, 223–228; serving women’s interests, 222; women as agents and allies of, 226–228. See also Arab Spring protests Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), 122 Demographic transition, 5–6

313

Demographics: Algeria under Boumediènne, 57; contribution to social divergence, 4–5; demographic transition and the impact on fertility rate, 120–123; factors in social change, 1; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); state and economic development, 29–30; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 153(table) Dependency theory, 9–10 Development, economic, 2, 10, 19–22 Diahnine, Nabila, 263 Diffusion processes for democratization, 215 Dignity revolution (Tunisia), 231, 246 Division of labor, 24, 25, 30, 80, 133–134 Divorce: Abrahamic religious norms, 6; during economic crisis, 83; empowerment of women, 125; entrepreneurial women, 91; Iran’s family law, 195–197, 199; Iran’s Pahlavi era, 40; Muslim family law, 71, 99; Tunisia under Bourguiba, 39; weakening the family, 110–111; Yemen’s Marxist reforms, 59 “Divorce Iranian Style” (documentary), 196–197 Domestic help, 22, 133–134 Domestic violence, 141–142; Afghanistan, 149, 155(table); Algeria’s women’s movement mobilizing, 269–270; feminist activism addressing, 253–254; increasing awareness of, 163–164; Iraq after US intervention, 158; against Palestinian women, 145–146 Dowlatabadi, Sediqheh, 39 Dowry, 71, 117, 125, 197–199. See also Mahr/mehrieh Dress code. See Veiling of women Dual-income households, 87 East Asia and Pacific: industrialization and female labor force share, 97; MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table) Eastern Europe: gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); romanticization of the family, 112; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); women’s role in democratic transition, 221

314

Index

Ebadi, Shirin, 204, 205 Economic citizenship: MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table); Muslim and non-Muslim countries, 78–80; social rights, 100–103; ties to work and employment, 77–78 Economic crises: affecting women’s employment, 82; Algeria’s emerging civil society, 262–263; factor behind Arab Spring, 216; Islamic Iran, 177–178; Tunisian women’s outrage over corruption, 229 Economic growth: as obstacle to Iranian women’s employment participation, 206–207; women’s occupational choice increasing during, 82 Economic indicators: Iran, 196(table) Economic power: determining gender inequality, 24–25 Economic processes: diversity across the region, 15–16; economic difficulties and migration, 6; factors in social change, 1; Iran, 194; revolutionary programs, 50; social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.); threatening Tunisian women’s gains, 45 Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran, and Turkey (ERF), 90 Economic structure: elements of social change, 29 Economic zones (of the world-system), 21 Edip, Halide, 39, 53 Education: changing family patterns, 109; democratic consolidation, 215; demographic transition and fertility change, 121; early women’s gains, 39–40; educated women taking to the veil, 27–28; educated women’s labor force representation, 86; educating women during conflict, 31; Egypt’s modernization, 43; empowerment of women, 123–129; entrepreneurial women, 90, 91; fertility rate decline, 122; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); Iranian women in the labor force, 186, 188; Iranian women’s advances and constraints, 183–185; Iranians’ attitudes towards women, work, and family, 200(table); Iran’s Islamic cultural revolution, 177; Iran’s Islamization, 176; Iran’s liberalization, 176, 178–179, 179–180; Iran’s

neofundamentalist era, 181–183; Iran’s unemployment by gender, age, and education, 191(table); Iraq’s modernization, 45–46; Islamist Iranians’ fear of, 61; male women’s rights advocates, 38–39; middle class growth, 20; nonagricultural employment, 21; post-independence Algeria, 57; ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); revolutionary programs, 51; Saudi Arabia’s opening to women’s education, 49; socioeconomic and cultural diversity within and across regions, 14, 15; Taliban attacks on schools, 148; unemployment among educated women, 87–88; unemployment in oil economies, 93; UNESCO Convention: Discrimination in Education, 13(table); women admitted to universities, Iran, 180(table); women’s activism and, 248; women’s employment opportunities, 82; women’s entry into public life, 104; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 153(table); women’s prospects in the democratic transition in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, 237(table) Egalitarian systems, 222(table) Egypt: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; age and marital status of the labor force, 87; Arab Spring protests, 211, 212, 215, 231–234; democracy paradox, 225; early educational and employment gains for women, 40; economic recession and job loss, 83–84; education and fertility rate, 122; empowerment of women in the family, 125; entrepreneurial women, 91; family law, 71; female parliamentary share, 223–224; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 83; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); industrialization, 20, 81, 97; international labor migration, 28; Internet and Facebook usage, 184(table); Kefaya (Enough) movement, 212, 215, 225; labor migration affecting women’s employment, 81; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 257(table); liberalized autocracy, 218; male women’s rights advocates, 38; mixed oil economy, 15; modernization and

Index emancipation of women, 43–44; parliamentary share, 250, 251; patriarchy and the family, 119; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; sexual purity and family honor, 116; social and gender indicators, Muslimmajority countries by region, 7(table); temporary marriage, 130; total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); veiling of women, 27–28, 70; women’s emancipation as objective of liberation movements, 41; women’s labor force participation, 85; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 255(table); women’s prospects in the Arab Spring transitions, 237(table) Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), 232, 233–234 Egyptian Feminist Union, 42 El Salvador: gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table) Elections: Afghanistan, 147, 151; Algeria’s ban on the FIS, 69–70, 262; as authoritarian tool, 218; Egypt, 232; equating democracy with, 238; Iran’s Green Protests, 5, 182, 205, 212, 215, 216(table), 228, 245; Iraq, 160–161 Elites as transnational capitalist class, 23–24 Emasculation, conflict and, 163 Emigrants, emancipation of, 32–33 Employment: class and the effects of globalization, 22–24; economic citizenship, 77–78, 100–104; education and empowerment of women in the family, 123–129; education and nonagricultural employment, 21; female employment as threat to the family, 111–112; global restructuring of productive and financial capital, 80–81; Iranian women’s employment-topopulation ratio, 200; Iranians’ attitudes towards women, work, and family, 200(table); Iran’s economically active population by industry and status in employment, 188(table); Iran’s economically active population by occupation and status in employment,

315

187(table); Iran’s education jobs, 183–185; Iran’s liberalization, 178; labor law reform, 254; occupational distribution, 85–86, 85–87; postindependence Algeria, 57; revolutionary programs, 51; self-employment and business ownership, 88–92; underreporting women’s contribution, 84; women’s empowerment, 78; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 154(table). See also Labor force shares Endogamy, 117 Endogenous factors in democratization, 10–11, 215, 216(table) Engels, Frederick, 116 England: population and fertility rate, 120 Enloe, Cynthia, 164 Entrepreneurship, 88–92 Equality Now, 145 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 17, 19, 131, 246 Ethiopia: gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table) Ethnic diversity, 15 Europe: international labor migration, 28; MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table); refugees in, 29; women’s property rights, 8 Exile: changes in women’s conditions, 29; Iranians’ social gains, 32. See also Refugees Exogenous factors in democratization, 10–11, 215, 216(table) Export processing zones (EPZs), 78 Export-oriented development, 96–97 Extended household, 115, 118 Extremism: Israeli right-wing harassment of women, 144–145; nationalist movements, 26. See also Islamism Facebook usage, 184(table), 232, 233 Factory labor, 87 Family: child abandonment, 134(n3); child custody rights, 40, 59, 117–118, 196–197; demographic transition and fertility, 120–123; division of labor, 133–134; domestic abuse, 134(n3); education and empowerment of women, 123–129; as haven, 110–115; Iranians’ attitudes towards women, work, and family, 200(table); Iran’s liberalization, 178; Iran’s total population and characteristics of household heads, 189(table); Iran’s traditional gender

316

Index

roles, 195–197; mother’s role children’s socialization, 110; Palestinian women, 142–143; patriarchal society, 115–120; sexuality and cultural change, 129–132; women challenging traditional roles, 128 Family law, 10; Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution, 64, 151; Algeria, 68; Algeria’s reform, 259–262, 268–269; conflict surrounding, 70–72; democratization and women’s rights, 220; as index for social change, 119–120; Iran under the Shah, 175–176; Iran’s neofundamentalist era, 181–182, 197, 199; Iran’s traditional gender roles, 195–197; Iraq, 157–158; Islamic Iran, 62; Islamist movements, 66–70; Maghrebian women mobilizing for reform, 247–248; male women’s rights advocates, 39; Morocco’s reform, 212, 234, 244–245; neopatriarchal states, 17, 18; Ottoman Law of Family Rights, 42–43; post-independence Algeria, 57; regime type and state ideology, 24–25; strong states reinforcing patriarchal structures, 21; women in the labor force, 87; women’s prospects in the democratic transition in Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco, 237(table); women’s rights organizations and key demands, 213(table); Yemeni revolution, 51, 58–59, 59–60. See also Muslim family law; Religion-based law Family planning, 182. See also Abortion; Contraception Family Protection Act (1967, Iran), 40, 176, 181, 199 Family values, 114–115 Fanon, Frantz, 57 Fattah, Alaa Abdel, 231–232 Fattah, Manalaa, 231–232 Female genital mutilation, 162 Female-headed households. See Head of household Feminine mystique, 30 Femininity, culture defining, 25 Feminist activism: Algeria, 264–267; conflict creating space for, 163; global spread and regional diversity, 252; Iran’s women’s rights movement, 201–205; Islamic feminism, 67–68, 128, 179, 201–205. See also Women’s movement; Women’s rights organizations Fernandez de Kirchner, Christina, 220

Fertility rate: Afghanistan’s rural areas, 152; demographic transition and, 120–123; education and employment affecting, 21, 122, 123–124; female labor supply, 193; Iranian women’s weak labor force attachment, 192–193; Iran’s decline during liberalization, 179; post-independence Algeria, 57; state and economic development, 29–30; temporary marriage, 131; total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table) Feticide, 8. See also Abortion Feudalism, 51 Filali, Amina, 236 Financial rights, 125 Food industries, global relocation of, 80–81 Foreign debt, 82–83 Foreign direct investment (FDI), 83, 96, 195 Foucault, Michel, 120 Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW), 115, 201 France: Algerian liberation movement, 55–57; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); population and fertility rate, 120 Free Education Law (Iraq), 45 Free trade zones, 78, 195 Freedom of religion: Syria, 17 French Revolution, 37, 51 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN, Algeria), 55, 57, 68, 261–262 Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Algeria), 68, 69, 75(n74), 224, 266 Functionalism: Muslim family, 110 Fundamentalism: contention around hijab and family law, 70–72; defining, 3; women’s support of, 34. See also Extremism; Islamism Fundamentalist movements, 25–26 GABRIELA movement (the Philippines), 221 Galtung, Johann, 164 Garment industry. See Textile industries Gender: defining, 24; gender arrangements and norms, 2; gender consciousness, 1; indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); as obstacle to democratization, 5 Gender justice, 162–168, 267–272

Index Gender parity in Iran, 201 Gender quotas, 219–220, 223–224, 250 Gender-and-development (GAD) field, 78 General Union of Palestinian Women, 144 Gharbzadegi (Westernization), 61 Ghonim, Wael, 232–233 Global Gender Gap Report, 126, 199 Globalization: class structures and, 22–24; factors in social change, 1; impact on women’s economic and political situations, 9; industrialization of the Middle East, 96; internationalization of productive and financial capital, 80–84; social movement opportunities, 243; states and development in the capitalist world system, 19–20 Gökalp, Ziya, 38, 53, 54 Grassroots movements, democratic transition and, 214 Greece: sexual purity and family honor, 116 Green Protests (Iran), 5, 182, 205, 212, 215, 216(table), 228, 245 Greenblatt, Terry, 145 Greenstock, Jeremy, 156–157 Groupe Islamique Armée (GIA, Algeria), 69–70, 262 Guardian Council (Iran), 181 Guardianship, male, 71 Guerroudj, Jacqueline, 55 Gulf Cooperation Council, 94 Gulf crisis, 49, 138, 156 Haddad, Taher, 38 Haghighatjoo, Fatemeh, 202 Haki, Zakia, 156 Hakimian, Hassan, 195 Hamas, 146 Hamidou, Djennet, 56 Hamza al-Janabi, Abeer Qassim, 160 Hanoune, Louisa, 250, 261, 267 Hashemi, Akila, 159 Hashemi (Rafsanjani), Faezeh, 179, 202 Hashemi-Rafsanjani, Ali (Hojatoleslam), 177, 178, 201 Head of household, women as: Afghanistan under the Taliban, 148–149; Iranian women in the labor force, 188; Iran’s total population and characteristics of household heads, 189(table); labor migration, 28; Palestinian women, 142; women in the workforce, 87 Health indicators: Afghan women, 152

317

Healthcare: Iraq, 162; military spending and, 137 Hijab. See Veiling of women Hobbes, Thomas, 111 Hocine, Baya, 55 Home-based economic activities: Iran, 190–191 Homosexuality, 5 Honor, women’s: honor killings, 134(n13), 140, 141, 159, 213(table); US soldiers’ violence against Iraqi women, 161–162; virginity and good conduct, 116 Human capital formation, 16 Human development, political economy and, 16(table) Human development index: Afghanistan, 155 Human Development Report, 183 Human rights, 11–12 Human Rights Watch, 148 Human security, 137, 158 Huntington, Samuel, 4–5, 201 Hussein, Saddam, 31, 46, 139(table), 156 Hypermasculinity, 30, 163 Ideal society, 40–41 Identity construction, 27, 40–41, 61, 70 Ideology: Algerian women’s movement, 265–266; family as women-tended haven, 113–115; Iranian Revolution, 176–177; Iran’s traditional gender roles, 195–196; political Islam, 3–4; regime type and state ideology influencing the gender system, 24–25; role of the family in the ideal society, 112; socioeconomic and cultural diversity within and across regions, 14; Turkey’s Kemalist revolution, 51, 53 Ikhwan Muslemin (Muslim Brotherhood), 67 Illiberal democracy, 218 Import-substitution industrialization (ISI), 20, 81, 95 Inan, Afet, 53 Income inequalities: transnational capitalist class, 23–24 India, property rights and son preference, 8 Indonesia: gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Industrialization: factors in social change, 1; fertility rate and, 120; import-

318

Index

substitution industrialization, 20; Iranian Revolution arresting the process of, 97; Iranian women in manufacturing, 185; Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table); obstacles to, 94–95; patriarchal family structures, 118; women’s labor force participation, 93–94. See also Globalization Inequalities: complex, 24; economic power and gender inequality, 24–25; Iranian law addressing, 199–200 Infant mortality, 8, 121–122, 143 Infanticide, 8, 117 Infrastructures: Marxist framework, 1; social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.) Inheritance laws: Abrahamic religions, 117; female labor involvement and, 99; Iran, 197; Tunisian women’s groups addressing, 229 Institutions and structures, 1 Intégrisme , Algeria’s, 68–70, 240(n30), 259, 262–267 Intellectuals: male women’s rights advocates, 38–39 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), 101 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Their Families (1990), 13(table) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966), 11, 13(table) International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), 11, 13(table), 99, 100–101 International Labour Organization (ILO), 11, 13(table), 85, 101, 186, 254 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 23, 83 Internet usage, 184(table), 233; Arab Spring, 229; Iran’s women’s rights movement, 203, 205; Morocco, 235–236 Intifada, 138, 139(table), 141. See also AlAqsa intifada Iran: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; Afghanistan intervention, 146; attitudes towards women, work, and family, 200(table); average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); colonialism, 10, 15; conflict affecting women’s social gains, 31–32, 32–33; economic indicators, 2007–2011, 196(table); economically active

population by industry and status in employment, 188(table); economically active population by occupation and status in employment, 187(table); educated women’s labor force representation, 86; export-oriented development, 97; family law, 71; family role of women, 113; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); feminist movement, 227–228; fertility rate, 120, 121; gender policies in the neofundamentalist era, 181–183; gender policies under the Shah, 176–178; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); Green Protests, 4–5, 182, 205, 212, 215, 216(table), 228, 245; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); illiberal democracy, 218; import-substitution industrialization, 20, 81; infant and maternal mortality, 122; institutional obstacles to female employment, 195–197; international labor migration, 28–29; Internet and Facebook usage, 184(table); Islamism and family law, 66–67; Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, 26–27; liberalization and reform, 1992–2005, 178–181; male women’s rights advocates, 38; mehrieh, 197–199; military spending, 137–138; mixed oil economy, 15; One Million Signatures Campaign, 212, 228, 245, 253; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); pronatalist policy, 121; ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; revolution and Islamization, 60–63; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); structural and institutional obstacles to women’s labor force participation, 193–201; temporary marriage, 209(n35); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); total population and characteristics of household heads, 189(table); veiling of women, 27–28, 70; women admitted to universities, 180(table); women in higher education, 126; women in the judicial system, 9; women in the labor force, 185–191; women’s educational advances and

Index constraints, 183–185; women’s emancipation as objective of liberation movements, 41; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 255(table); women’s political participation and power, 192–193; women’s rights movement, 201–205, 206; women’s sexual rights, 129–130; women’s suffrage, 40; women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Iran hostage situation, 176–177 Iranian Revolution (1977–1979), 26, 31–32, 43, 60–63, 175, 176 Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), 156, 176–177, 245; changing Iraqi women’s gains, 46; long-range effects, 138; patriarchal control of women’s dress and behavior, 31 Iraq: armed conflict, 137; conflict history and women’s rights, 156–162; early women’s gains, 39–40; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); gender quota, 250; gendered international conflict, 138; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); honor killings, 140; Iran-Iraq War changing women’s social gains, 46; male women’s rights advocates, 38; mixed oil economy, 15; mobilization of female labor during conflict, 31; modernization and emancipation of women, 45–46; peace process failure, 165; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); social transformation through land reform, 42; timeline of war and conflict: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 139(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); weak democratic processes threatening women’s rights, 224–225 Iraqi Women’s Network, 157 Ireland, Republic of, 21 Isho, Pascal, 157 Islam: authentic and pseudo, 4; determining role in genderization, 2–9; disadvantaging women in Western societies, 8; as one factor in position of

319

women in the Middle East, 6; plasticity of, 9; political Islam, 3–4; role of marriage and family, 112–113, 113–114 Islamic cultural revolution, 177 Islamic feminism, 67–68, 128, 179, 201–205 Islamism: Algerian women activists’ criticism of, 266; defining, 3–4; family law, 66–70; fighting Westernization in Iran, 61, 62; higher education for women, 128; Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 26–27; legalizing sexuality, 129–132; mobilizing women across the Muslim world, 247; regional regime types, 16; rise of Palestinian movement, 48; scholarship strands, 2–3; Tunisia’s increasing conservatism, 45; veiling of women, 27–28; women’s support of, 34. See also Extremism; Fundamentalism; Iran; Muslim family law Israel: colonialism, 15; economic crisis of the 1990s, 83; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); industrialization, 97; IsraeliPalestinian conflict, 138, 141, 142–143; military violence against Palestinian women, 145–146; non-oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); religious-based law, 6, 8; total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women in higher education, 126, 127(table) Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 26–27, 138, 140, 164–165 Japan: industrialization in South Korea, 95 Jbabdi, Latifa, 228 Jerusalem Link, 144–145 Jobs. See Employment; Labor force shares Jordan: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; age and marital status of the labor force, 87; division of labor in the family, 133–134; education and fertility rate, 122; family law, 71; female parliamentary share, 18(table), 223; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 83; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011,

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126, 126(table), 127(table); industrialization, 97; labor migration affecting women’s employment, 81; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 257(table); liberalized autocracy, 218; non-oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; social and gender indicators, Muslimmajority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 255(table); women’s role in democratization, 227; women’s role in the holy war, 67; women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Joya, Malalai, 151 Jribi, Maya, 250 Judaism: family as natural unit or haven, 110; gender configurations in Abrahamic religions, 6; patriarchal origins, 117; religious-based law, 6 Judicial systems: Algerian women’s participation, 69; Iran’s women’s rights movement, 204; Islamic Iran, 176; in a liberal democracy, 214; post-Taliban Afghanistan, 150–151; women’s participation in, 9 Justice, gender, 162–168, 267–272 Justice and Development Party (AKP, Turkey), 225, 246 Kakar, Malalai, 151 Kamal, Zahira, 48, 141, 143, 165–166 Karman, Tawakkol, 251 Karroubi, Mehdi, 205 Karzai, Hamid, 147, 150, 155 Kazakhstan: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Kefaya (Enough) movement, 212, 215, 225 Khaled, Leila, 47, 143 Khalfallah, Zahia, 55 Khamenei, Ali, 131, 181 Khatami, Mohammad, 176, 179–180, 181, 201, 202, 206 Khemisti, Fatima, 56 Khider, Mohammed, 56–57 Khomeini, Rouhollah, 60, 176, 177, 206 Khula divorce, 71

Kinship systems, 10, 26; biological basis of, 110; child custody rights, 117–118; patrilineality and family law, 70–71; state and economic development, 29–30 Komsan, Nehad Aboul, 234 Kristianasen, Wendy, 268 Kurdistan, Iraqi, 162 Kuwait: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); female labor force participation, 92; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); labor migration affecting women’s employment, 82; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); suffrage, 223–224; total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s labor force participation, 85 Kyrgyzstan: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Labor force shares, 6; average rate of female participation, 85; characteristics of the female labor force, 84–93; class and the effects of globalization, 22–24; education increasing women’s nonagricultural employment, 21; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); Iran, 185–191; Iranian women’s weak attachment despite education and fertility rate, 192–193; Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table); Iran’s hydrocarbon sector, 194–195; Iran’s institutional obstacles to, 195–197; Iran’s liberalization, 179; Iran’s structural and institutional obstacles to women’s labor force participation, 193–201; Nordic welfare states, 38; oil, industrialization and female proletarianization, 93–100; oil economies, 92–93; Tunisia under

Index Bourguiba, 44–45. See also Employment Labor import and export, 15–16 Labor laws, 254 Labor markets changing structure under internationalization, 80 Labor migration: economic, political, and cultural influences, 28–29; labor force data, 84; migrant flows, 6; oil economies, 92–93; social gains of Iranian migrants, 32 Labor-intensive industries, 80 Land Day (Palestine-Israel), 144 Land reform policies, 42, 63 Latin America and Caribbean: economic citizenship, 78–79; gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); industrialization, 94–95; MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table); MNC relocation, 81; pink tide, 215; women’s participation in democratic transition, 217, 220 Law. See Family law; Muslim family law; Religion-based law Layachi, Azzedine, 264 Lebanon: average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); division of labor in the family, 133–134; entrepreneurial women, 90; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); industrialization, 97; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); mobilization of female labor during conflict, 31; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women in higher education, 126; women’s emancipation and nationalist movements, 41; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 256(table) Legal status of women, 9–10, 46 Legitimacy, political, 16 Levine, David, 120 Liberal democracy, 24–25, 214, 221

321

Liberalized autocracies, 218 Liberation movements, 1; Palestine, 47–48; revolution and, 50; women’s activist role, 166; women’s emancipation as objective of, 41–43 Libya: Arab Spring protests, 211, 216; armed conflict, 137; average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); international labor migration, 28; military spending, 137; oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; restoration of polygamy, 164; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table) Life expectancy, 122 Linguistic diversity, 15 Literacy: Afghanistan’s Saur Revolutionary reforms, 64, 65; Iraq, 45–46; neofundamentalist Iran, 182–183; Saudi Arabia, 49; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 153(table) Literary efforts, 251–252 Longinotto, Kim, 196–197 Loya Jirga (Afghanistan), 147–148 Machsom Watch, 144–145 MADRE, 158, 173(n57) Madrid peace process, 141, 143 Mahalla el-Kubra, Egypt, 212 Mahdavi, Pardis, 130 Mahfouz, Asma, 232–233 Mahr/mehrieh (dowry), 64, 71, 98, 125, 193, 197–199, 206–207. See also Dowry Majid, Abdul, 39 Malaysia: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Male feminists, 38–39 Maleki family law, 118 Mali: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Malkum Khan, Mirza, 38 Managerial jobs, 87

322

Index

Manufacturing: import-substitution industrialization, 81; women in the labor force, 87; women in WWII factory production, 162–163. See also Industrialization Marashi, Manijeh, 245 Marche Mondiale des Femmes, 253 Marriage: changing patterns of, 109; family strength and, 110–111; female labor supply, 193; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); increase in average age, 125; Iran’s mehrieh, 197–199; marital status of women in the workforce, 87; marriage rate in post-independence Algeria, 57; mass education empowering girls and women, 124–125; pleasure marriage, 129–130; temporary marriage, 129–130, 131, 197, 198, 209(n35); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s control over, 117; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 153(table). See also Divorce; Family law; Muslim family law Marshall, T. H., 99, 100, 101(table) Marxist structures in revolutionary Yemen, 58 Marxist-feminist theory: sexual division of labor, 24; states and development in the capitalist world system, 19 Masculinity, culture defining, 25 Maternal mortality, 122 Maternalist politics, 165–166 Maternity rights, 218, 254; international conventions signed by selected MENA countries, 13(table); Iraq, 46; Nordic welfare states, 37–38 Media: Arab Spring protests, 231–232; Iran’s feminist press, 169–170, 178, 179, 202, 251–252; social networking, 203 Medical education, 49 Médicins sans Frontières, 149 Mehran, Golnar, 180 Mehrieh. See Mahr/mehrieh Merchant class, 87 Mernissi, Fatima, 70, 124, 125, 128 Messaoudi, Khalida, 68, 70, 260, 261–262, 262–263, 267 Mexico: economic citizenship, 78; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table) Microenterprises, 89 Middle class: Algeria’s family law, 260; democratic transition and, 238–239;

diversity in the MENA countries, 15–16; economic development and, 20; importance in democratic consolidation, 215; Iran’s home-based economic activities, 190–191; Iraq, 156; traditional and modern, 23 Middle East and North Africa (MENA). See specific countries Migration. See Labor migration Military spending, 137 Millennium Declaration and Goals (2000), 11–12 Milosevic, Slobodan, 215 Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, 196–197 Mixed oil economies, 15–16, 16(table), 94 Modernity and modernization: Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution and emancipation of women, 63–66; contribution to social divergence, 4; Egypt’s modernization and emancipation of women, 43–44; emancipation of women and, 27; Iraq’s modernization and emancipation of women, 45–46; Palestine’s modernization and emancipation of women, 47–48; Saudi Arabia, 48–49; Tunisia’s modernization and emancipation of women, 44–45; Turkey’s Kemalist Revolution, 51, 53; women’s emancipation as objective of liberation movements, 41 Modernization theory, 10 Mohammed, Yanar, 157, 158, 161–162 Monogamy, 125 Moore, Barrington, 215, 217 Morocco: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; Arab Spring protests, 211, 234–236, 237(table); average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); division of labor in the family, 133–134; education and fertility rate, 122; entrepreneurial women, 91; factory labor, 87; family law, 10, 71, 118, 212, 244–245; family role of women, 113–114; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 83; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); industrialization, 97; Internet and Facebook usage, 184(table); Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign, 204–205; justice and reconciliation process, 167; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); liberalized autocracy, 218;

Index mass education empowering girls and women, 124–125; maternal mortality, 122; non-oil economy, 15; parliamentary share, 250, 251; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); postindependence patriarchal family law, 10; ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); refugee camps, 29; regime type, 16; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women in university-sector jobs, 184; women’s labor force participation, 85; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 256(table); women’s organizations for democratization, 228; women’s prospects in the Arab Spring transitions, 237(table); women’s reproductive rights, 129; women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Mortality rate, 120 Mossadegh, Mohammad, 26 Moudawana reform, 71 Moudjahidates model of Algerian womanhood, 56 Moussavi, Mir Hussein, 205 Mouvement 20 Février (Morocco), 234, 235 Mubarak, Hosni, 44, 231 Mujahidin (Afghanistan), 146–147, 164 Multinational corporations (MNCs), 78, 81 Muslim Brotherhood, 67, 225, 232 Muslim family law (MSL): common regional patterns, 70–71; inheritance, 99; male control of the family, 117–118; as obstacle to women’s labor force participation, 98–99, 100; patriarchal gender contract, 87; reinforcing gender attitudes, 200; women’s right to work, 102–103. See also Family law; Religionbased law Muslim Sisters’ Group, 232 Muslim Women’s Parliament, 266–267 Mutahhari, Murteza, 61, 112 Najibullah, Mohammad, 146–147 Najmabadi, Afsaneh, 62–63–63 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 10, 43 Nasserism, 40 National Action Plan for Women (NAPWA, Afghanistan), 152

323

National Liberation Front (Yemen), 58 National liberation movements. See Liberation movements National security, 137 National symbol, idealized woman as, 37 National Union of Tunisian Women, 45 Nationalism and nationalist movements: Islamism and family law, 66–70; from modernism to religious nationalism, 43; Palestinian women, 143; state building, women, and, 41–43; women’s participation, 25–26, 39; women’s role in Turkey’s struggle, 53–54 Neo-Destour Party (Tunisia), 45 Neofundamentalism (Iran), 176, 181–183 Neoliberalism, 6, 19, 231 Neopatriarchal states, 16–17, 120; Egypt under Mubarak, 44; gender system, 24–25; legalizing sexuality, 131 Nepal: female parliamentary share, 219 Networking: entrepreneurial women and, 89–90 New managerial state bourgeoisie, 20 Newly industrialized country (NIC), 80, 97 Nicaragua: gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table) Nigeria: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Nobel Peace Prize, 204, 205, 251 Nomani, Farhad, 194 Non-Aligned Movement, 10 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 159, 248; Iran’s women’s rights movement, 202, 206; Palestinian women, 144 Non-oil economies, 15–16, 16(table), 94, 96, 98 Nordic welfare states, 37–38, 199–200; female parliamentary share, 219 North Africa: international labor migration, 28; women’s labor force participation, 85 North America: MENA women’s labor force participation rates, 79(table) Northern Alliance, 147, 150, 174(n60) Northern Ireland, 217; gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); women’s role in democratic transition, 221 Northern Ireland Women’s Aid Federation, 221 Nuclear family, 109 Nursing jobs, 49, 87, 93, 100

324

Index

Occupational distribution, 85–87, 177, 178, 180, 180(table) Oil economies: average age at first marriage, 125; economic citizenship, 101–102; female labor force participation, 92–93; industrialization, 95; international labor migration, 28; Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table); Iran’s gender policies, 194–195; labor force data, 84; labor migration affecting women’s employment, 81; political economy and human development in MENA, 16(table); regional economic diversity, 15–16; states and development, 20; women’s labor force participation, 93–94, 95–96; women’s occupational choice and employment patterns, 82 Oman: educated women’s labor force representation, 86; female labor force participation, 86, 86(table), 92; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); military spending, 137; oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women in higher education, 126; women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Omar, Manal, 156 On the Islamic Hijab (Mutahhari), 61 One Million Signatures Campaign (Iran), 204–205, 212, 213, 228, 245, 253 Optional Protocol (1999), 13(table) The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Engels), 116 Oslo Accords, 141, 143 Othman, Nermin, 157 Otpor (Serbian youth organization), 215 Ottoman Empire, 10, 39, 51–55 Ottoman Law of Family Rights (1917), 42–43 Our Times (documentary, Iran), 197 Pahlavi era, Iran’s, 26, 60–61, 176–178 Pakistan: intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, 138; social and gender indicators,

Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, 146 Palestine: armed conflict, 137, 138; average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); conflict affecting women’s social gains, 31, 141–146; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); honor killings, 140; international labor migration, 28; Israeli military violence against Palestinian women, 145–146; Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 26–27, 138, 140, 164–165; modernization and emancipation of women, 47–48; patriarchy and family, 119; political economy and human development, 16(table); timeline of war and conflict: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 139(table); veiling of women, 28; women’s emancipation and nationalist movements, 41; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 256(table); women’s role in democratization, 226. See also West Bank and Gaza Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 26, 143 Palestinian Authority (PA), 138, 140, 224–225 Palestinian Women’s Charter (1994), 141 Palestinian Working Women Society (PWWS), 144 Parliamentary share: Afghanistan, 147–148, 152, 154(table); Eastern European women’s losses, 221; gender quotas, 219–220, 250; gender-based democracy deficit, 223–226; Iranian women’s political participation and power, 192–193, 192(table), 202; Iraq, 157, 158–159; Latin America, 220–221; linking women’s rights and democratization, 223–228; Nordic welfare states, 38; Palestinian women, 143–144; role of conflict in increasing, 173(n53); Tunisia, 44–45, 230; weak democratic processes threatening women’s rights, 224–225; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 154(table); women’s role in democratic transition, 217–218. See also Political participation Parsons, Talcott, 110 Pashtuns, 118, 147, 149, 151 Pashtunwali, 151

Index Patriarchal gender contract, 80, 87, 96, 98, 99, 128, 129, 133, 193, 197–198, 206–207 Patriarchal structures: Abrahamic religions, 6; Afghanistan, 148–149, 151; Algerian Revolution, 56–57; in crisis, 133; demographic transition and fertility, 120; division of labor, 24; domestic abuse, 134(n3); family and, 109, 115–120; fertility rate, 120; gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); private and public, 118; Saudi education for women, 49; state and development, 21; violence against women during conflict, 140; weakening, 29–30 Patriarchal-conservative regimes, 16 Peace processes, 139(table), 141, 144, 145; Afghanistan, 147; Algeria’s civil harmony law, 268; gender justice, 164–165; women’s role in, 165–166, 166–17 Peacekeeping missions, women’s role in, 169 Pedram, Abdul Latif, 150 People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), 63, 64, 65 Periphery, 2; internationalization of productive and financial capital, 80 Petro Islam, 4 Philippines: gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); women’s participation in democratic transition, 217, 221 Pink tide (Latin America), 215 Pleasure marriage, 129–130 Political economy: economic citizenship, 79–80; and human development, 2012, 16(table); women’s employment, 94–100 Political movements, women’s equality and, 25–34 Political opportunity structure, 243 Political pacts, 214 Political participation: Afghanistan, 147–148, 151, 154(table); economic independence as prerequisite for, 191; Iranian women’s political participation and power, 192–193; Palestinian women, 143–144; political systems and women’s representation, 18(table); Tunisia under Bourguiba, 44–45;

325

women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 154(table); women’s role in democratic transition, 217–218, 218–219. See also Parliamentary share Political parties: Algeria’s ban on the FIS, 56–57, 69–70, 262; dissolution of Turkey’s Refah Party, 75(n74) Political revolutions, 50 Political rights, 101(table), 102 Political structures, 1, 2 Political systems: influencing the gender system, 24–25; regional diversity, 16–17; women’s representation and, 18(table) Political-legal structures: revolutionary programs, 50; social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.). See also State Politics of presence, 214 Polygamy/polygyny, 39, 40, 58, 71, 99, 109, 118, 164, 197, 269 Pontecorvo, Gillo, 56 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), 143 Population growth, 20; demographic transition, 120; Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table); urbanization of the unemployed, 83. See also Demographics Poverty: divorced women’s rights, 71; feminization of, 81; Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table); Islamic Iran, 177–178 Power: education and empowerment of women, 123–129; Iranian women’s political participation and power, 192–193; patriarchal structures, 116 Precapitalist society: family structure, 115–116 Private patriarchy, 118 Private sector jobs, 86–87 Privatization: Iran, 194 Professional work: Iranian women, 185 Proletarianization of women, 1, 81, 96–97 Property rights, 8; elements of social change, 29; Muslim family law, 71; patriarchal society and family, 115 Protection des Droits des Femmes report, 254 Public protest: Iran’s women’s rights movement, 202–205. See also Arab Spring protests Public spending: military spending, 138

326

Index

Qatar: Arab Spring protests, 216; female labor force participation, 92, 93; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s labor force participation, 85 Qawasmi, Maysoun, 144 Quality of life, 22 Quartet-Backed Roadmap, 144 Quotas, gender, 219–220, 223 Qurat-ul-ayn, Tahereh, 39 Qutb, Seyid, 112–113 Radical Islamist states, 16 Rahnavard, Zahra, 178 Rape: Afghanistan, 147, 155(table); Algeria, 75(n74); criminalization of, 129; forced marriage to rapists, 236; gender justice and, 164; Iraq after US intervention, 158, 161; marital, 71; US soldiers’ violence against Iraqi citizens, 160; as war crime, 166–167 Rassemblement Algérien des Femmes Démocrates (RAFD), 265, 267 Rattah, Israa Abdel, 232 Reagan administration, 146 Recession, economic: Egypt, 83–84 Reconstruction, 159–160, 169–170 Refah Party (Turkey), 75(n74) Refugees: Afghanis in Pakistan, 65; Afghanistan’s Pashtun ethnic group, 147; changes in women’s conditions, 29; Iraqis, 160; Palestine, 142; social gains of Iranian migrants, 32 Regime change: defining revolution, 50; democratic transition, 214. See also Arab Spring protests; Democratic transition; Democratization; Revolutions Regime types. See Political systems Regional context, 2; civil conflict spillover, 138; collective action, 253; plasticity of Islam, 9; social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.); socioeconomic and cultural

diversity within and across regions, 14–19; women mobilizing for reform, 247–248 Religion-based law: Abrahamic norms, 6; Afghanistan, 148–149, 151–152; Algerian revolution, 56–57; CEDAW controversy, 12; economic citizenship, 79–80; Iraqi Governing Council, 156; Islamism and family law, 66–70; marriage and family, 113–114; Ottoman Law of Family Rights, 42–43; patriarchal family structure, 117; revolutionary Yemen, 59; temporary marriage, 129–130; Turkey’s Kemalist revolution, 53; women’s rights and, 17. See also Family law Religious institutions, 1; exiles, refugees, and immigrants, 32; socioeconomic and cultural diversity within and across regions, 14 Religious-political status, regional diversity in, 17 Remittances, 28 Rentier state, 95–96 Reproductive rights, 110–111, 129. See also Abortion; Family law; Muslim family law; Religion-based law Resource shares: family and, 111 Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), 151–152, 174(n60) Revolutions, 1; Algeria’s national liberation and revolution, 55–57; defining, 50; effect on women’s rights, 49–51, 72–83; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); gendering, 51; Iran, 60–63; Turkey’s Kemalist revolution, 51–55; women’s activist role, 166; Yemen, 58–60. See also Arab Spring protests; Iranian Revolution Rezai-Rashti, Goli, 198–199 Rice, Condoleezza, 145 Right to work, 99 Roman laws influencing family practices and laws, 117 Rousseff, Dilma, 221 Rural areas: Afghani women’s progress, 152; education and training for entrepreneurial women, 91; Iranian women in the labor force, 185; patriarchy and the family, 118–119 Russia: gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table);

Index gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table) Rwanda, 167, 219 Sadat, Anwar, 44 Sadat, Jihan, 44 Sadiki, Larbi, 230 Sadou, Zazi, 263, 265 Said, Khaled, 233 Salaries. See Wages and working conditions Salhi, Soumia, 270 Samar, Sima, 150 Sanctions, economic, 138, 156 Sati (self-immolating widow), 6 Saudi Arabia: Arab Spring protests, 216; changing gender policies, 249; family law, 71; female labor force participation, 86(table), 92, 93; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); hijab, 70; international labor migration, 28; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); military spending, 137; nursing jobs, 49, 87; oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); progress and modernity, 48–49; ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; right to work, 99–100; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); veiling of women, 27–28; women and the family, 119; women in higher education, 126; women in the judicial system, 9 Saur Revolution (1978, Afghanistan), 51, 63–66, 139(table), 146 Secular republics, 16 Segregation, gender: Algerian women’s support of, 68; Saudi Arabia, 49; wartime needs, 30–31 Self-employment, 88–92, 147, 190–191 Semiperiphery, 2, 21–22 Sen, Amartya, 111 Senegal: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) September 11, 2001, 3, 4–5, 147 Serbian youth organizations, 215

327

Service sector, 80; entrepreneurial women, 91–92; occupational distribution, 86–87 Settlers, Israeli, 142–143 Severely indebted middle-income countries, 82–83 Sex ratio, 8 Sexual rights, 129 Sexuality and sexual behavior: cultural change, 129–132; cultural control, 109–110; Islamic attitudes as obstacle to democratization, 5; oppression of Afghani women and girls, 149; sexual harassment, 102–103, 245, 270; US soldiers’ violence against Iraqi citizens, 160 Shahid, Leila, 47, 143 Shamas, Maha Abu-Dayyeh, 146 Sharawi, Huda, 39, 42 Sharia law. See Family law; Muslim family law; Religion-based law Sherif, Sawsan, 157 Sikkink, Kathryn, 168 Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, 251 Skalli, Nouzha, 235–236 Social capital, networks as, 89 Social contract, 82, 101–102 Social democratic states, 24–25 Social indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Social movements, 1; early women’s noninstitutional political participation, 40; impact on women’s legal status and social position, 25–34; political opportunity structure, 243 Social networking media, 203, 229, 232–233 Social protests. See Arab Spring protests Social revolutions, 50 Social rights, citizenship and, 101(table) Social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.) Socialism: Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution, 63–66; influencing the gender system, 24–25; woman question, 38; Yemen, 58–59 Sociodemographics, neofundamentalist Iran, 182–183 Socioeconomic status: democratic consolidation, 215; socioeconomic and cultural diversity within and across regions, 14–19; women’s position during conflict, 32 Sociological perspective: gender system as cultural construct, 24–25

328

Index

Sociopolitical processes: gender and, 9 Son preference, 8, 119 Sotoudeh, Nasrin, 205, 253 South Africa, 167, 221, 222(table) South Asia, 79(table), 85 South Korea, industrialization in, 95 South Yemen, 51, 60, 81 Southeast Asia: industrialization, 94–95; industrialization and female labor force share, 97; MNC relocation, 81; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Southern African Development Community (SADC), 219 Southern Baptists Convention, 6 Soviet republics, former, 6 Soviet Union: female employment as threat to the family, 111–112; intervention in Afghanistan, 65; weakening of the family unit, 110 Spain: sexual purity and family honor, 116 State: Algerian women activists’ criticism of, 266; armed conflict and state weakness, 138, 140; family-state relationship, 114–115; mass education empowering girls and women, 124–125; patriarchy and the family, 118; social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.); state and development within the capitalist worldsystem, 19–22; women in the Palestinian government, 143–144; women’s criticism of Afghanistan’s government, 151; world-system theory, 10 Stereotypes: Islam, 4 Stratification of gender, 25 Structural adjustment policies, 83 Suffrage, 6, 40, 218–219, 223–224; Saudi Arabia, 249 Sunni Islam, 15 Superstructures: Marxist framework, 1 Supreme Court (Afghanistan), 150 Susskind, Yifat, 158 Syria: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; age and marital status of the labor force, 87; Arab Spring protests, 211, 216; armed conflict, 137; average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); early women’s gains, 39–40; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 83; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); labor migration affecting

women’s employment, 81; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); military spending, 137; mixed oil economy, 15; plasticity of Islam, 9; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; religion and politics, 17; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s emancipation as objective of liberation movements, 41 Tahrir Square, Egypt, 232–233 Tajikistan: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Taleghani, Azam, 202–203 Taliban, 147, 148 Tanzimat (Turkish reorganization), 39 Taraki, Noor Mohammad, 63–64 Tarzi, Mahmud, 38 Temporary marriage, 129–130, 131, 209(n35); Iran, 197, 198 Terrorism, 3, 4–5; Algeria’s cancellation of elections, 69–70, 75(n74); Algeria’s war on terror, 267; US presence in Iraq, 158 Textile industries, 87; global relocation, 80–81 Theocratic monarchies, 16 Third wave democratic transition, 201, 220–223, 222(table) Tickner, Ann, 165 Tillion, Germaine, 117 Trade: Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table) Trade unions: Arab Spring, 230–231 Training: entrepreneurial women, 91 Transitional government: Afghanistan, 149–151 Transnational capitalist class, 23 Transnational feminist networks, 34 Trauma, postconflict, 268 Travel, women’s restrictions on, 71, 99–100 Tribal structures, 58, 118, 149–150 Tribal-feudalism, 63 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa), 167

Index Truth and reconciliation process (Algeria), 268 Tunisia, 5; administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; Arab Spring protests, 211, 212, 215, 229–230, 237(table); average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); centres d’écoute, 254; education and fertility rate, 122; education empowering girls and women, 124–125; factory labor, 87; family law, 71; female parliamentary share, 223–224; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 83; global support from feminist groups, 253; higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); increasing women’s employment, 81; industrialization, 97; infant mortality rate, 121–122; international labor migration, 28; Internet and Facebook usage, 184(table); labor force participation, 85; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); liberalized autocracy, 218; low fertility rate and political representation, 6; male women’s rights advocates, 38, 39; mixed oil economy, 15; modernization and emancipation of women, 44–45; plasticity of Islam, 9; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table), 250, 251; polygyny, 109; postindependence period, 10; ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); regime type, 16; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); veiling of women, 28, 70; women in higher education, 126; women in universitysector jobs, 184; women’s movements challenging policy, 245–246; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 256(table); women’s organizations for democratization, 228–231; women’s prospects in the Arab Spring transitions, 237(table); women’s sexual rights, 129; women’s unemployment during recession, 84 Turkey: administrative and managerial sector jobs, 87; Arab Spring protests, 216; average female unemployment

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rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); colonialism, 10, 15; criminalization of sexuality, 131; democracy paradox, 225; dissolution of the Islamist Refah Party, 75(n74); education and fertility rate, 122; entrepreneurial women, 90–91; family law, 17, 19, 71; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); foreign debt, 82–83; gender outcome of third wave democratic transitions, 222(table); gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); importsubstitution, 20, 81; industrialization, 97; Kemalist revolution, 51–55; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 258(table); male women’s rights advocates, 38; mass education empowering girls and women, 124–125; non-oil economy, 15; occupational choice for women, 82; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); polygyny, 109; ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); refugees in Germany, 29; regime type, 16; religion and politics, 17; revolutionary programs, 51; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); veiling of women, 28; women activists, 39; women challenging abortion ban, 245–246; women in higher education, 126; women in university-sector jobs, 184; women political rights, 224; women’s emancipation as objective of liberation movements, 41–42; women’s labor force participation, 85; women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 256(table) 20 Years Is Enough (20 Ans Barakat), 268, 269 Ujrat-ol-mesl (wages for housework and childcare), 98 UN Commission on Human Rights, 142 UN Commission on the Status of Women, 142 UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 142, 152

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Index

UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 114–115 UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), 142 UN Security Council: criminalization of rape, 166–167; intervention in Afghanistan, 149; protection of woman and girls during conflict, 140; resolutions on women, war, peace, and security, 169; sanctions against Iraq, 138 UN World Decade for Women (1976–1985), 243–244, 247 Unemployment: average female rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); domestic violence in Palestine, 141–142; economic crisis of the 1990s, 83–84; female labor force, 87–88; Iran, 190; Iran’s economic indicators, 196(table); Iran’s unemployment by gender, age, and education, 191(table); postindependence Algeria, 57 UNESCO Convention: Discrimination in Education (1960), 13(table) UNICEF, 11, 148 Union Nationale des Femmes Algériennes (UNFA), 56 United Arab Emirates (UAE): average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); demographic change, 122; educated women’s labor force representation, 86; female labor force participation, 92; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); oil economy, 15; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table) United Kingdom: occupation of Iraq, 156; timeline of war and conflict: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 139(table) United National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU, Palestine), 48 United Nations: family law, 71–72; global women’s rights agenda, 243–244; international conventions signed by

selected MENA countries, 13(table); peace process failure, 164–165; universal declarations and conventions, 11. See also Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; Entries beginning with UN United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 11, 13(table) United States: Afghanistan’s insurgency, 146; feminine mystique, 30; gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); industrialization in South Korea, 95; intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, 65, 138, 147, 156; Iraqi women’s conferences, 157; Iraqi women’s declining circumstances, 158; Iraqis’ antipathy to soldiers, 160; IsraeliPalestinian conflict, 26–27; misappropriation of Iraqi reconstruction funds, 159–160; social rights for working mothers and women, 9; timeline of war and conflict: Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, 139(table) Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948), 11 Universal declarations and conventions, 11 Urbanization: economic stagnation and indebtedness, 83; education and training for entrepreneurial women, 91; patriarchy and the family, 109, 118–119; states and development in the capitalist world system, 20; unemployment, 83; women’s political freedom, 17 Uzbekistan: social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table) Values: factors in social change, 1; family as haven, 114–115; setting the Muslim world apart, 4; sexual purity and family honor, 116 Veiling of women: Algeria, 55, 69; Egypt’s economic recession, 83–84; gender roles and sexual identity, 128; Iran, 60–61, 176, 177; Iraq, 158, 161; polemics, 70; revolutionary programs, 51; symbolism of, 27, 34; women activists, 39 Vietnam: gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table) Violence against women: Algerian women mobilizing against, 262, 265; Brazil’s

Index legislation, 221; Egypt during Arab Spring, 232–234; gender justice, 166–167; hypermasculinity during conflict, 163; Moroccan women’s coalitions to combat, 228; Tahrir Square, 233–234; women’s lives in Afghanistan, 155(table); women’s rights organizations and key demands, 213(table) Virginity, 110, 116, 129 Wages and working conditions, 11, 13(table), 96, 98 War. See Conflict and war Warlords, 149 Wassila network (Algeria), 268, 270 Weak states, 26, 156 West Bank and Gaza: average female unemployment rates, 2000–2010, 88(table); educated women’s labor force representation, 86; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher education, 126(table); timeline of war and conflict, 139(table); women in higher education, 126. See also Palestine Western family values, 114–115 Western Sahara: refugee camps, 29 Widowhood: women’s lives in Afghanistan, 2003–2011, 153(table) Williams, Betty, 221 Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), 248, 267 Women-in-development (WID) field, 78 Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC, Palestine), 144 Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC), 119, 144, 145–146 Women’s Coalition (Ireland), 221 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 165 Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace, 236, 248 Women’s movement: Algeria’s gender justice, 267–272; challenging Tunisian policy, 245–246; feminist activism, 252; Iran, 176, 201–205; Morocco, 234–235; political gains, 244–249; protesting Turkey’s abortion ban, 245–246; Revolutionary Iran, 61

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Women’s rights organizations: Algeria’s family law reform, 259–262; Algeria’s intégrisme, 262–267; legal and policy changes, 2005-2012, 257–258(table); literary efforts, 251–252; modernizing family law, 119–120; organizational and priority campaigns, 2010, 255–256(table); organizations and key demands, 213(table); political selfempowerment, 250–259; seven types of organizing and mobilizing, 248–249; tactics and strategies for reform, 252–253 Worker actions, 212 Workers, exploitation of, 1 World Bank, 23, 82–83, 194 World Economy Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 23 World Social Forum, 253 World society, 11 World Trade Organization (WTO), 23 World Values Survey, 5, 225 World War I, 53 World War II, 30, 162–163 World-polity theory, 10 World-system theory: factors in social change, 2; origins and tenets of, 9–10; social structures and principal institutions in contemporary societies, 3(fig.); states and development, 19–22 Wye River Memorandum (IsraelPalestine), 144 Yemen: Arab Spring protests, 211; armed conflict, 137; education and fertility rate, 122; female share of total labor force in MENA countries, 1990, 2010, 86(table); gendered revolutions: typology and historical examples, 52(table); higher education and related sociodemographic features, 2011, 127(table); international labor migration, 28, 81; labor migration affecting women’s employment, 81; maternal mortality, 122; military spending, 137; non-oil economy, 15; parliamentary share, 251; political economy and human development, 16(table); political system and women’s representation, 18(table); ratio of female to male enrollments for higher

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Index

education, 126(table); revolutionary movement, 58–60; social and gender indicators, Muslim-majority countries by region, 7(table); total fertility rate and age at first marriage, 1970–2010, 123(table); women’s organizations and priority campaigns, 256(table) Young people, 122–123, 216(table)

Young Turks movement, 51 Yousefi, Abdelrahman, 228, 234 Youth bulge, 216(table) YouTube, 232–233 Zanan newspaper, 178, 179, 201 Zan-e Rouz publication, 62–63–63 Zulfacar, Maliha, 149

About the Book

Valentine Moghadam’s seminal study of the gendered nature of political and social processes in the Middle East and North Africa has been fully updated to reflect more than a decade of major changes. This new edition reflects an emphasis on the impacts of both globalization and democratization. It also includes entirely new chapters on the gender dynamics of conflicts in the region, on women and the Arab Spring, and on the achievements of women’s rights movements. The result is an indispensable contribution to our understanding of current popular struggles for modernity, democratization, and meaningful citizenship. Valentine M. Moghadam is professor of sociology and director of the International Affairs Program at Northeastern University. Her numerous publications include Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement and Globalizing Women: Gender, Globalization, and Transnational Feminist Movements (winner of the APSA Victoria Schuck Award).

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