Gender equality and women’s empowerment are broadly addressed as core democratic and development concerns. Research on how democracy intersects with gender equality has centered around three theories. The first prominent position is that democratic states tend to strengthen gender equality through increasing civic space for women’s activism and expanding women’s engagement in the political process through voting (Paxton 1997; Beer 2009). The second view, however, reverses the link, regarding gender equality as a driver of democratization through increased economic and political empowerment (Balaev 2014). The third explanation posits that the most important explanatory factor of the relationship is modernization, which in turn drives cultural change toward progressive liberal values, including democracy and gender equality (Inglehart et al. 2002).
The path-breaking events in the MENA region often named the Arab Spring or, less expectant, the Arab Uprisings created openings for women’s agency and raised great expectations, which, however, in many cases were not followed by substantive changes. The post-spring period has been a time of empowering and, at the same time, sidelining of women. Many patriarchal structures have remained intact or reemerged in new forms; yet, many traditional norms have changed. The Middle East and North Africa is still the least free region of the world, and instability continues to threaten possibilities for democratization in many of its countries and uncertainty looms especially on the future of women’s rights. However, seeing so many women in protests and demonstrations, raised in Marwa Shalaby’s words “the hopes that Arab women were finally breaking their silence, defying the status quo and fighting for their own rights” (Shalaby and Moghadam 2016: 1). Yet, the question remains how women in this predominantly Muslim region can gain greater control, through their mobilization and contestation, over the circumstances that influence their lives and contribute to processes of democratization
The Aim of the Book
The purpose of this book is to analyze changes in women’s position in public life, including the changing discourses on gender in the periods just before, during and after the uprisings. It presents new research, theoretically framed and based on empirical investigations, including analyses of development of women’s activism, women’s political representation and position in political life in the MENA countries. The analyses of the discursive development focus especially on secular and Islamic feminism, and changes in popular opinions on women’s position in society. The book includes chapters on individual countries, and chapters, which compare several MENA countries. The focus is North Africa and the Middle East (the MENA region), but some chapters widen the perspective to encompass all Arab countries.
The book considers frequently less studied issues, including how the recent mobilizations and regime changes in MENA countries have altered the opportunity structures and allowed for an increase in women’s political representation and activism, partly through the adoption of gender quotas , but at the same time remained resistant to change with respect to several pernicious forms of discrimination against women in public and private life. Addressing the lacuna in the literature on this issue, this book opens new avenues of thought and research on the status of women’s rights in the MENA region with a special focus on the mobilization and contestation aspects around the political arena that followed the Arab Spring Uprisings. This edited volume does not present one unified position on these historical changes. Optimistic as well as more pessimistic views for the future are represented; however, all gathered under the position that this is a period of uncertainty for women in the MENA region, and that the support by part of the ruling elites toward women’s rights and empowerment of women is ambiguous and double-edged.
This introduction will present and discuss some of the key issues of this book around recent development in the MENA region. It offers an overview over women’s position in the public sphere in the MENA region seen in a global perspective as well as over recent law reforms and national machineries for women/gender equality. The significant issue of the relation between feminism and Islam, a subject of several chapters of the book, will be introduced. At the end of this introduction, the reader will find a summary of the individual chapters of the book.
Democratization in the MENA Region
The link between the inclusion of women and processes of democratization is of special importance to the MENA region. Caldwell (1982) has identified the region as part of the “patriarchal belt” and Kandiyoti (1988) named it as the world of “classic patriarchy”. Sharabi (1988) rather talked about MENA “neopatriarchy” which referred to the entrenched traditional hierarchical relations in a modernizing context. In 2002, the Arab Human Development Report drew a gloomy picture of a region lagging behind the rest of the world because of major deficits in freedom, women’s empowerment and education, and called for the inclusions of women in all spheres of life.
When the UN Arab Human Development Report from 2002 stated, that the three deficits of “freedom, empowerment of women, and knowledge” represent the key challenge to the development in the Arab region, it was the first time that women’s widespread illiteracy, lack of bodily freedom and exclusion from public life were described so distinctively in a UN report as one of the main disabling factors to the development process: “Society as a whole suffers when half of its productive potential is stifled. These deficits must be addressed in every field: economic, political, and social” (UNDP 2002: 4–5). Ironically, this knowledge of the crucial importance of including women as active partners in all spheres of society has only to a limited extent reached the textbooks of economic history and is still not part of the general understanding in most parts of the world. In Chapter 4, Ginger Feather suggests, “turning the causal arrow around”, by studying the co-constitution of women’s empowerment and democrac...