This is part of a series by the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI) that presents selections of articles concerning the Middle East, Arab World, and current topics of interest. These articles were published in peer-reviewed academic journals of various disciplines. This series uses MESPI’s Peer-Reviewed Articles database to analyze and provide insight into trends in academia.
This is the second of three bouquets of articles on various aspects of the Arab uprisings in academic journal articles published during 2010–2020 in Middle East studies and related fields. This bouquet follows one on “Cultural Production during the Arab Uprisings”. In this installment, we highlight those directly related to gender and sexuality in the context of the Arab uprisings.
US Media Darlings: Arab and Muslim Women Activists, Exceptionalism and the “Rescue Narrative”
By: Ahlam Muhtaseb
Published in Arab Studies Quarterly Volume 42, Issue 1-2 (2020)
Abstract: Using critical textual analysis based on the postcolonial school of thought, this essay analyzed a ten-minute segment, called “Women of the Revolution,” on the ABC news program This Week, anchored at that time by Christiane Amanpour, for its portrayals of Arab and Muslim women. The analysis showed that Arab and Muslim women were portrayed positively only when they fit a “media-darling” trope of Western-educated Arab or Muslim women, or those who looked and acted similar to Western women, especially if they ascribed to a Western view of feminism. Those women also were seen as the exception to the “repressive” culture that characterizes the Arab and Muslim worlds, according to the Orientalist stereotype. The implications of this analysis indicate that, in spite of the visibility and progress of many Arab and Muslim women in their countries and indigenous cultures, they are still framed within old recycled molds in US mainstream media, even if these seem positive at face value.
“I Have Ambition”: Muhammad Ramadan’s Proletarian Masculinities in Postrevolution Egyptian Cinema
By: Frances S. Hasso
Published in International Journal of Middle East Studies Volume 52, Issue 2 (2020)
Abstract: This article provides a close reading of two popular Egyptian action films, al-Almani (The German, 2012), the first blockbuster since the 25 January 2011 revolution, and Qalb al-Asad (Lion heart, 2013), both starring Muhammad Ramadan as a socially produced proletarian “thug” figure. Made for Egyptian audiences, the films privilege entertainment over aesthetics or politics. However, they express distinct messages about violence, morality, and revolution that are shaped by their moments of postrevolutionary release. They present the police state in salutary yet ambivalent terms. They offer a rupture with prerevolutionary cinema by staging the failure of proletarian masculinities and femininities that rely on middle-class respectability in relation to sex, marriage, and work. Even as each film expresses traces of revolutionary upheaval and even nostalgia, cynicism rather than hopefulness dominates, especially in al-Almani, which conveys to the middle and upper classes the specter of an ever-present threat of masculine frustration. The form and content of Qalb al-Asad, by comparison, offer the option of reconciling opposing elements—an Egyptian story line with a less repressive conclusion if one chooses a path between revolutionary resistance and accepting defeat.
After the Massacre: Women’s Islamist Activism in Post-Coup Egypt
By: Sarah AlMasry, Neil Ketchley
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 12, Issue 1 (2020)
Abstract: This paper draws on event data and interviews to examine the effects of repression on the gendered dynamics of Islamist mobilization in Egypt following the 2013 military coup. Our analysis shows that women’s anti-coup groups were more likely to mobilize following the killing of up to 1,000 anti-coup protestors at Rabaa al-Adawiyya in August 2013. Women’s protests were also more likely in the home districts of those killed at Rabaa. Informant testimony indicates that the Rabaa massacre figured as a transformative event that female activists drew on to motivate their involvement in street protests. Taken together, our findings suggest that very harsh repression can enable women’s participation in Islamist street politics – but this activism can come at a considerable personal cost for participants. Women who joined anti-coup protests were subjected to calibrated sexual violence by Egyptian security forces as well as other social penalties.
Mobilization of Moroccan Women: The Dialectics of Conflict and Empowerment
By: Al Habib Estati Zeineldin, Saeed Chekak
Published in Contemporary Arab Affairs Volume 12, Issue 4 (2019)
Abstract: This article draws on the experience gained and the lessons learned during and after the Arab Spring protest movements that called for economic, social, and political change. It raises the issue of the role Moroccan women played in these movements. In attempting to address this issue, the article relies essentially on bibliographical information and data derived from studies and writings that dealt with the feminist struggle in Morocco as a whole. It suffers from the lack of openness to a sociological approach or a political viewpoint in Arab and foreign scientific productions concerned with the struggles of women in Arab or Maghreb countries. In parallel, the study uses ethnographic research discerningly, since accurate and sufficient information available on the local protest movements has not received the necessary follow-up and definition. The article first monitors the shift in the dynamics of women’s protests and focuses on the persistent manifestations within them; it also considers the motives that contribute to the growth of this dynamic while stressing the extent of women’s participation in the February 20 Movement and in rural areas. It then identifies the results and extensions of this participation in relation to the requirements of empowerment. Finally, it discusses the problem of development and democracy that prevent women from achieving the desired change in the short term.
Women, information ecology, and political protest in the Middle East
By: Nadya Hajj, Patrick J. McEwan, Rebecca Turkington
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 24, Issue 1 (2019)
Abstract: Does internet usage increase the likelihood of political protest, and is the effect larger among women than men? Using data from three waves of the Arab Barometer Survey, historical research and interviews with women activists, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on information ecology and contentious politics in the Middle East. We hypothesized that the internet increases public protest for all individuals but differentially enhances women’s involvement in public protest in the Middle East. We find that there are substantial gender gaps in internet usage and political protest, and that internet usage increases political protest of adults, on average, regardless of gender. However, internet usage does not differentially increase public protest among women (including during the Arab Spring). Our paper problematizes the notion that the internet is a low-cost and safe space for women’s political activism.
Activism Amid Disappointment: Women’s Groups and the Politics of Hope in Egypt
By: Nermin Allam
Published in Middle East Law and Governance Volume 10, Issue 3 (2018)
Abstract: In this paper, I provide preliminary answers to two main questions, namely: How did the politics of disappointment unfold among female activists after the 2011 Egyptian uprising and specifically under the current regime? And what were the effects of the strong sense of emotional disappointment on women’s activism and collective action? The study is situated within the literature on emotions and contentious politics. Utilizing the rich theoretical tools found in the literature, I argue that disappointment did not mark the end of politics and activism among women’s groups in Egypt. The data for this paper was gathered from semi-structured interviews with female activists, protestors, and leaders of women’s rights groups. The data gathered was analyzed within the prism of critical discourse analysis in an attempt to empirically investigate how activists move both forward and backward as they navigate their own emotions in addition to a crippling political system. It is true that the situation is complicated and activism is restricted in Egypt, however, the essence of this research is ignited by participants’ affirmation that their experience in the uprising has changed them, and that “things cannot go back to the old days,” notwithstanding their disappointment over the turn of events. A focus on hope and disappointment places the experiences of activists squarely in our analysis. It allows researchers to reclaim the voices of female activists in explaining the challenges and opportunities that developed post the uprising and how these developments influenced and shaped their experience, movement, and mobilization.
Yemen’s Women Confront War’s Marginalization
By: Afrah Nasser
Published in Middle East Report Volume 48, Issue 289 (2018)
Abstract: Despite advances gained from women’s strong participation in the 2011 uprisings against the dictatorship of Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Salih, and despite the fact that they continue to play an essential role in the day-to-day survival of their communities, three years of war and militarization have resulted in a significant setback for Yemeni women and increased their marginalization from formal political and conflict-resolution channels. Yet they continue to struggle for their rights and representation.
Between feminism and unionism: the struggle for socio-economic dignity of working-class women in pre- and post-uprising Tunisia
By: Loes Debuysere
Published in Review of African Political Economy Volume 45, Issue 155 (2018)
Abstract: Generally seen as a pawn in the identity struggle between so-called secular and Islamist political actors, the women’s question in Tunisia has received little attention from a class perspective since the 2010–11 uprising. Yet, over recent years, working-class women have been highly visible during protests, strikes and sit-ins of a socio-economic nature, implicitly illustrating how class and gender grievances intersect. Against the background of the global feminisation of poverty and a changing political economy of the North African region over recent decades, this article builds on Nancy Fraser’s theory of (gender) justice to understand if and how women’s informal and revolutionary demands have been included in more formal politics and civil society activism in Tunisia. The article finds that disassociated struggles against patriarchy (feminism) and neoliberal capitalism (unionism) fail to efficiently represent women workers’ own aspirations in Tunisia’s nascent democracy.
Subversive Writing: Mona Prince’s ‘Laughing Revolution’ from pre- to post-2011 Egypt
By: Patrizia Zanelli
Published in Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies Volume 17, Issue 3 (2017)
Abstract: Although it may seem absurd, it is no exaggeration to say that humour is a very serious matter in Egypt, where dozens of intellectuals have analysed this phenomenon, often linking it to their national identity. This article presents various opinions on Egyptian satire to introduce a 2015 novel by Mona Prince, one of the Egyptian writers of the 1990s generation. In 2012, the author published a memoir of the January 25 Revolution. This study tries to explain the relationship between her political activism and her literary career; the role of humour in her oeuvre; and how she deals with gender and religious issues in her 2015 work, which is also autobiographic. Moreover, since the novelist wrote the text between 2008 and 2014, this article offers some notes on satiric literature in pre- and post-2011 Egypt.
The Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood between Violence, Activism and Leadership
By: Erika Biagini
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 22, Issue 1 (2017)
Abstract: On 25 January 2015, the fourth anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosny Mubarak and brought the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) into power, Egyptian security forces arrested Aya Alaa Hosny in front of the Journalists Union in central Cairo. Aya is one of the spokeswomen and leader of the Women against the Coup, one of the most active women-only movements established by the Muslim Sisterhood following the Egyptian coup d’état in 2013. Since then, thousands of Islamist women and sympathisers have joined the Sisters in street demonstrations, human rights advocacy and anti-regime protests, notwithstanding the high risk associated with political activism in a context of retrenched authoritarianism. This article offers a gendered analysis of the Egyptian MB by examining the activism of the Muslim Sisterhood, its female wing, post July 2013. Contrary to mainstream academic literature on Islamist women’s activism, which considers Islamist movements’ conservative gender ideology and sexual division of labour as an impediment to female political leadership, this study argues that Islamist informal networks can be conducive to female leadership under ‘negative’ political circumstances. As the case of the Muslim Sisterhood demonstrates, the repression of Islamists following the coup favoured the emergence of women’s leadership, firstly within women-only movements and subsequently, as the very survival of the MB became increasingly compromised, in the MB movement as a whole.
Post-Islamism and fields of contention after the Arab Spring: feminism, Salafism and the revolutionary youth
By: Markus Holdo
Published in Third World Quarterly Volume 38, Issue 8 (2017)
Abstract: In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, conflicts in Egypt and Tunisia over the authority to rule and the role of religion in society raised questions about these societies’ capacity for reconciling differences. In retrospect, the conflicts also raise questions about the theoretical tools used to analyse regional developments. In particular, the ‘post-Islamism’ thesis has significantly changed the debates on ‘Islam and democracy’ by bringing to light the changing opportunity structures, and changed goals, of Islamist movements. However, this paper argues that the theory underestimates differences within post-Islamist societies. Drawing on field theory, the paper shows how the actual content of post-Islamism is contingent on political struggle. It focuses on three fields whose political roles have been underestimated or misrepresented by post-Islamist theorists: Islamic feminism, Salafist-jihadism and the revolutionary youth. Their respective forms of capital – sources of legitimacy and social recognition – give important clues for understanding the stakes of the conflicts after the Arab Spring.
Tunisian Women at the Crossroads: Antagonism and Agonism between Secular and Islamist Women’s Rights Movements in Tunisia
By: Loes Debuysere
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 21, Issue 2 (2016)
Abstract: The recent rise in Islamist-inspired women’s activism is posing challenges to the longstanding secular women’s movements in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. Starting from the conviction that cohesive, cross-class women’s coalitions are better suited to achieve gender justice for women of all walks of life, this article draws on the concept of ‘agonistic pluralism’ (Chantal Mouffe) to understand how Tunisia’s women’s movements can deal with the new, multifaceted conflict in their ranks. Through a discussion of the ‘Dialogue of Tunisian Women’, the grounds for strategic coalition-building and ‘agonistic’ engagement between secular and Islamist women’s rights actors are illustrated.
New National Discourses: Tunisian Women Write the Revolution
By: Douja Mamelouk
Published in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics Volume 35 (2015)
Abstract: Not available
Women’s Rights Movements during Political Transitions: Activism against Public Sexual Violence in Egypt
By: Vickie Langohr
Published in International Journal of Middle East Studies Volume 47, Issue 1 (2015)
Abstract: The most famous demand raised by protesters in the “Arab Spring” was “al-shaʿb/yurīd/isqāṭ al-niẓām” (the people/want /the fall of the regime). Three years later, little progress has been made—outside of Tunisia—in permanently replacing authoritarian regimes with the formal institutions of democracy. However, new forms of activism have emerged that increase citizens’ ability to directly combat pervasive social problems and to successfully pressure official institutions to alter policies. The evolution of activism against public sexual violence in post-Mubarak Egypt is a concrete example. Sexual harassment of women on the streets and in public transportation, widespread before the 25 January uprising, has likely since increased.1 Many women have been subjected to vicious sexual assault at political protests over the last three years. But activism against these threats has also expanded in ways unimaginable during the Mubarak era. Groups of male and female activists in their twenties and early thirties exhort bystanders on the streets to intervene when they witness harassment, and intervene themselves. Satellite TV programs have extensively covered public sexual violence, directly challenging officials for their failure to combat it while featuring the work of antiharassment and antiassault groups in a positive light. These new practices facilitated two concrete changes in the summer of 2014: amendments to the penal code on sexual harassment, and Cairo University’s adoption of an antiharassment policy which was developed by feminist activists.
Cartooning and the Democratic Transition in Tunisia: Lilia Halloul
By: Lilia Labidi
Published in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Volume 11, Issue 3 (2015)
Abstract: The Arab Spring in Tunisia brought with it new rights for women, such as allowing them to wear the hijab for a photo ID, establishing gender parity in political elections, and lifting Tunisia’s reservations on the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which was signed by the government in August 2011. This has produced a proliferation of groups and viewpoints that are often in conflict with one another and sometimes attack women and women’s rights promoted under previous postcolonial authoritarian regimes. The free and democratic elections of October 2011 led to a coalition of Ennahdha, the Islam-oriented majority party, and two secular parties. This opened the way for preachers from the Mashreq and Arab Gulf countries to present their support for practices that had not previously been part of public discussion…
Arab Spring: The Role of the Peripheries
By: Daniela Hubera, Lorenzo Kamel
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 20, Issue 2 (2015)
Abstract: The emerging literature on the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ has largely focused on the evolution of the uprisings in cities and power centres. In order to reach a more diversified and in-depth understanding of the ‘Arab Spring’, this article examines how peripheries have reacted and contributed to the historical dynamics at work in the Middle East and North Africa. It rejects the idea that the ‘Arab Spring’ is a unitary process and shows that it consists of diverse ‘springs’ which differed in terms of opportunity structure, the strategies of a variety of actors and the outcomes. Looking at geographical, religious, gender and ethnic peripheries, it shows that the seeds for changing the face of politics and polities are within the peripheries themselves.
The Peripheries of Gender and Sexuality in the ‘Arab Spring’
By: Maryam Khalid
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 20, Issue 2 (2015)
Abstract: In much of the world, those who do not perform ‘mainstream’ understandings of gender and sexuality find themselves on the ‘peripheries’: these individuals and groups are often located outside of institutionalized power, beyond state power structures and often lack the power of representation vis-à-vis those who wield discursive authority (actors such as the state and mainstream media). The power relations that underscore the production of knowledge and identities in this way are discursive, functioning to normalize and naturalize them. This article examines how some representations of gender and sexuality are privileged over others in both western and MENA mainstream discourses relating to the ‘Arab Spring’; how those whose voices have been underrepresented in the mainstream attempt to represent themselves; and how this impacts on the political activities of women and LGBT groups in the MENA.
Transition and Marginalization: Locating Spaces for Discursive Contestation in Post-Revolution Tunisia
By: Edwige A. Fortier
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 20, Issue 2 (2015)
Abstract: Transitions to democracy nourish expectations for an expansion of space for political liberalization, redistribution and recognition. From 2011 to 2013, the landscape for civil society in Tunisia widened with the establishment of several thousand associations. However, during this period vulnerable groups, including sexual minorities, perceived and experienced increased degrees of marginalization. This article analyses the potentialities and boundaries for members of homosexual communities in Tunisia as they manoeuvre through a post-revolution transition characterized by rapid expansions and contractions of the public sphere. It highlights the competing priorities within the public sphere, in particular those voices left on the periphery as a multiplicity of issues are presented for discursive contestation and argues that some groups effectively stand to become more marginalized during the transition to democracy than previously under authoritarian rule.
Hybrid Hegemonic Masculinity of the EU before and after the Arab Spring: A Gender Analysis of Euro-Mediterranean Security Relations
By: Ali Bilgic
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 20, Issue 3 (2015)
Abstract: In the academic literature on EU–southern Mediterranean relations, a focal point of neglect has been the gendered dimension of Euro-Mediterranean relations. This article argues that the Euro-Mediterranean space has been formed within the gendered global West/non-West relations with the purpose of promoting the West’s security interests. Euro-Mediterranean security relations, thus, embody a gendered power hierarchy between the hybrid hegemonic masculinity of the EU (bourgeois-rational and citizen-warrior) and the subordinate (both feminized and hypermasculinized) southern neighbourhood. In addition, it shows that following the Arab Spring the EU has been determined to maintain the status quo by reconstructing these gendered power relations. This gender analysis contributes to the literature on Euro-Mediterranean relations through its specific focus on the (re)construction processes of gendered identities within the West/non-West context in tandem with the EU’s competing notions of security.
Gender and Citizenship Center Stage: Sondra Hale’s Legacy and Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution
By: Sherine Hafez
Published in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Volume 10, Issue 1 (2014)
Abstract: Sondra Hale’s deep and long-term relationship with Sudan has produced a substantial body of scholarship that has transformed the anthropology of gender in the Middle East. She argues in her work that a version of Islamic citizenship was articulated by Hassan al-Turabi’s Islamist government in Sudan in the 1990s to shape society’s notion of the ideal Muslim woman. This essay looks at Hale’s work on women’s citizenship in Sudan to examine the constitution of this notion and how it shapes women’s citizenship in post-Arab Spring Egypt. My aims are to explore the various conflicting powers through which ideals of women’s citizenship in Egypt after the revolution are produced and to problematize Hale’s notion of citizenship to better understand the role that Islamism plays in shaping these gendered political subjectivities.
Youth, Gender, and Dignity in the Egyptian Uprising
By: Diane Singerman
Published in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Volume 9, Issue 3 (2013)
Abstract: Uprisings are complex, rare phenomenon, and this article suggests that the shared regional diffusion of protest in the Arab Spring was lubricated by the economic inequalities of neoliberalism. Young people in Egypt and the larger Middle East have been disproportionately disadvantaged by neoliberalism and a demographic youth bulge. They were economically excluded by high unemployment and insecure jobs in the informal sector; they were politically excluded by authoritarianism and state repression; and they were socially excluded by the limbo of “waithood,” or prolonged adolescence as marriage and entry into adulthood was delayed, in part due to the high cost of marriage. Yet, at the same time, these commonly shared grievances facilitated weak ties linking diverse constituencies together, as creative leaders built a “movement of movements.” The April 6 movement, and Kefaya before it, creatively adopted a non-hierarchical model of collective action that was organically suited to the vast informal and subterranean networks already dominant within Egyptian life. Young women and men risked their lives pursuing regime change, and one of the master frames of the uprisings that demanded “dignity” may provide particular opportunities for the women’s movement. A gendered concept, dignity suggests that the state must respect the integrity, safety, and autonomy of the body. Despite massive challenges to the women’s movement and its allies in Egypt as conservative forces are also emboldened by the Arab Spring, the master frame of dignity may resonate across the Egyptian public since it is a revolutionary frame, as well, yet lays bare longstanding grievances of the diverse Egyptian women’s movement.
Gender and the Revolutions: Critique Interrupted
By: Norma Claire Moruzzi
Published in Middle East Report Volume 43, Issue 268 (2013)
Abstract: Not available
Gender and Counterrevolution in Egypt
By: Mervat Hatem
Published in Middle East Report Volume 43, Issue 268 (2013)
Abstract: Not available
This Is Our Square: Fighting Sexual Assault at Cairo Protests
By: Vickie Langohr
Published in Middle East Report Volume 43, Issue 268 (2013)
Abstract: Not available
Sectarian conflict and family law in contemporary Egypt
By: SABA MAHMOOD
Published in American Ethnologist Volume 39, Issue 1 (2012)
Abstract: Egypt continues to experience interreligious sectarian conflict between Muslims and Copts since the overthrow of the Mubarak regime. The same factors that had contributed to escalating violence between the two communities continue to be at play in postrevolutionary Egypt. One of the key sites of sectarian conflict is interreligious marriage and conversion, an issue that ignites the passion and ire of both communities. While issues of sexuality and gender are at the center of these conflicts, religion‐based family law plays a particularly pernicious role. In this essay, I rethink the nexus between family law, gender, and sectarian conflict through an examination of both the history of the emergence of Egyptian family law and the simultaneous relegation of religion and sexuality to the private sphere in the modern period.
The Privilege of Revolution: Gender, class, space, and affect in Egypt
By: JESSICA WINEGAR
Published in American Ethnologist Volume 39, Issue 1 (2012)
Abstract: In this commentary, I challenge assumptions about political transformation by contrasting women’s experiences at home during the Egyptian revolution with the image of the iconic male revolutionary in Tahrir Square. I call attention to the way that revolution is experienced and undertaken in domestic spaces, through different forms of affect, in ways deeply inflected by gender and class. [Egypt, revolution, gender, class, space, affect, generation]
No Longer a Bargain: Women, masculinity, and the Egyptian uprising
By: SHERINE HAFEZ
Published in American Ethnologist Volume 39, Issue 1 (2012)
Abstract: Although, according to eyewitness accounts, women made up 20 to 50 percent of the protesters in Tahrir Square, the events immediately following the Egyptian uprising revealed that women would not be part of the political deliberations between various contending parties and the Supreme Military Council in charge of the country. In this essay, I take a close look at the sociocultural dynamics behind the inclusion–dis-inclusion of women in the political sphere to question how this contradiction has, in recent years, characterized the nature of gender relations in Arab countries like Egypt. Multilayered, rapidly changing, and challenged patriarchal power lies at the very core of the uprising in Egypt. What the events of this uprising have revealed is that notions of masculinity undermined by a repressive regime have observably shifted the terms of the patriarchal bargain. [Egypt’s uprising, gender relations in the Middle East, masculinity, patriarchy, patriarchal bargain, state patriarchy, women and revolution]
Tunisia after the Uprising: Islamist and Secular Quests for Women’s Rights
By: Doris H. Gray
Published in Mediterranean Politics Volume 17, Issue 3 (2012)
Abstract: In the wake of the popular uprising in Tunisia, secular women’s rights activists and Islamists have to come to terms with past privileges and injustices. Despite individual persecution, secular groups generally benefited from state support for women’s rights, while most Islamists were jailed, went underground or were in exile abroad for decades. This paper is based on personal interviews conducted in the summer of 2011 with representatives of various women’s and human rights organizations and Islamists from the An-Nahda party. As post-revolution events are still unfolding, the paper offers insights into the current state of gender discourse.
Engendering Democracy
By: Valentine Moghadam
Published in International Journal of Middle East Studies Volume 43, Issue 3 (2011)
Abstract: The year 2011 will forever be known as the year of mass protests for regime change and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Opinions on causes and outcomes have focused on the role of young people, the demands of “the Arab street,” and the possible transition to a liberal, Islamist, or coalition type of governance. Middle East specialists have long been aware of the problems of authoritarian regimes, widening inequalities, high rates of youth unemployment, deteriorating infrastructure and public services, and rising prices attenuated only by subsidies. But something has been missing from recent discussions and analyses. Let us pose it in the form of a number of (socialist-feminist) questions. We have seen that “the Arab street” is not exclusively masculine, but what kind of democratic governance can women’s rights groups expect? To what extent will Tunisian women shape the democratic transition and the building of new institutions? In Egypt, will an outcome be—to use a phrase coined by East European feminists in the early 1990s—a “male democracy”? How can a democratic transition benefit working women and the poor?
Middle East Masculinity Studies: Discourses of “Men in Crisis,” Industries of Gender in Revolution
By: Paul Amar
Published in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies Volume 7, Issue 3 (2011)
Abstract: This article examines how everyday theories of masculinity and vernacular discourses of “masculinities in crisis” play crucial roles in misrecognizing, racializing, moralistically-depoliticizing, and class-displacing emergent social forces in the Middle East. Public discourses and hegemonic theories of male trouble render illegible the social realities of twenty-first-century multipolar geopolitics and the changing shapes of racialism, humanitarianism, nationalism, security governance, and social movement. In order to help generate new kinds of critical research on Middle East masculinities, this article creates a larger map of discourses and methods, drawing upon studies of coloniality and gender in and from the global South. This mapping puts masculinity studies into dialogue with critiques of liberalism and security governance and with work in postcolonial queer theory, public health studies, and feminist international relations theory.
Gender and Revolution in Egypt
By: Mervat Hatem
Published in Middle East Report Volume 41, Issue 261 (2011)
Abstract: Not available
Women and The Egyptian Revolution: A Dream Deferred
By: Althea Middleton-Detzner, Jillian Slutzker
Published in Palestine-Israel The Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture Volume 17, Issue 3 (2011)
Abstract: Not available
