Organizing Women

Formal and Informal Women's Groups in the Middle East

Dawn Chatty, Annika Rabo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781859739105
• eBook ISBN: 9781000324167
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

With the creation of the modern nation-state in the Middle East and North Africa, women have been and continue to be manipulated to represent a cultural ideal of perfect womanhood. This is often greatly at odds with the realities of women's lives and aspirations. However, individual women, through careful manipulation of gender relations, often succeed in casting aside the culturally accepted bonds which diminish their lives.Even so, women in groups are deemed unacceptable unless they conform to state mandates. In many countries in the Middle East, women are only legally permitted to form groups which are charitable organizations concerned with the welfare of the disabled or the handicapped. Clearly women in groups are perceived as a threat by the state.This challenging book examines the nature of the relationship between both women and the state and men and the state. It presents a balanced mix of theoretical and empirical research which analyzes both the formal and informal ways in which women have organized themselves, and been organized, in Arab society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Formal and Informal Women’s Groups in the Middle East
• 2 Women’s NGOs in the Middle East and North Africa: Constraints, Opportunities, and Priorities
• 3 The Reproduction of Political Process among Women Activists in Lebanon: ‘Shopkeepers’ and Feminists
• 4 Domesticity Reconfigured: Women in Squatter Areas of Amman
• 5 Women in Groups in Africa: Female Associational Patterns in Senegal and Morocco
• 6 Bahraini Women in Formal and Informal Groups: The Politics of Identification
• 7 The Impact of Social and Economic Factors on Women’s Group Formation in Egypt
• 8 Feminism and Contemporary Debates in Egypt
• 9 From Gender Equality to Female Subjugation: The Changing Agendas of Women’s Groups in Kuwait
• 10 Women Organized in Groups: Expanding the Terms of the Debate
• Index