Women
A Modern-Day “Slave Trade”
In what can be termed a modern-day slave trade, Sri Lankan women arrive in Lebanon only to find themselves abused, imprisoned, raped, hungry, defenseless and alone. Siriani P., 27, came to Beirut in a desperate attempt to save her family from a life of poverty. Just ten months later, however, she grabbed the first opportunity to run away from her employers.
How the Sex Trade Becomes a Slave Trade
“Trafficking into Israel is not simply a story of economic migration; it is a modern slave trade.” [1]
— Martina Vandenberg
Recent Trends in Middle Eastern Migration
Although the history of Middle Eastern labor migration to North America is not as well known as that of Irish and Southern European immigrants, Yemenis were working in Detroit by the 1920s and Palestinian and Lebanese diasporas existed around the globe before the end of the nineteenth century. North Africans were migrating to France by the thousands during World War I, and by the tens of thousands after World War II. Yet it was not until the 1970s, with the advent of the Middle East oil boom, that rates of inter-Arab and Asian-Gulf migration took off. The new requirements for labor as well as the vast differences in wealth between sending and receiving countries fueled the process. Male workers from Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia headed to Libya.
Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran
Parvenu Paidar, Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
This book argues that in neither the Pahlavi nor the Islamic eras have Iranian women enjoyed direct and independent control over the establishment of gender policies. “By destroying the independence of the women’s movement through cooption and coercion, both secular and Islamic states aimed to protect the nation…from the negative side effects of women’s social emancipation” (p. 358).
Economic Restructuring in the Middle East
The effect of economic restructuring on women was the focus of a two-day workshop at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies in 1998, entitled “Women and Economic Restructuring in the Middle East: Gender, Jobs and Activist Organizations.” Participants [1] agreed that restructuring both helps and hurts women, depending on specific economic, social and political conditions in individual countries, as well as prevalent ideologies regarding gender and class. Women of the Middle East-North Africa region constitute only a small part of the salaried labor force, attend school for fewer years than males and have a far higher rate of illiteracy.
Understanding Ghada: The Multiple Meanings of an Attempted Stabbing
I came to know Ghada, a young Palestinian village woman, during my 14 months of fieldwork in her village in the West Bank. Ghada’s village, located south of Bethlehem, is home to approximately 3,000 residents, all of whom are Muslims. Ghada gained notoriety in the village and the surrounding communities after she attempted to stab an Israeli soldier at the Israeli army-controlled checkpoint on the road that links Bethlehem to Jerusalem. This checkpoint marks the dividing line between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Although the whole area was still under Israeli military occupation when Ghada attempted her attack, the Bethlehem area has, since 1996, been under partial control of the Palestinian Authority.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
There is a bill pending in the Israeli Knesset that would allow women the option to use the country’s civil courts for personal status matters. Liberal Israeli feminists see this as promoting “women’s rights” by loosening the grip of religious authorities over women’s personal lives. But Israel is not a liberal state, so there is something fundamentally problematic in assuming common gender interests, since women in Israel have no common status or rights as citizens. In fact, as long as Israel is a Jewish state, the Muslim, Christian and Druze religious institutions will remain important sources of communal identity for Israel’s Arabs (women and men), since the civil state is not really “theirs.”
The Myth of Gender Equality and the Limits of Women’s Political Dissent in Israel
The profuse media coverage showered upon Israel on its fiftieth anniversary largely failed to consider more critical perspectives that might have cast a different light on the celebrations. While some commented on the familiar divisions between secular and religious Jews, left and right, or immigrants and “native” Israelis, their analyses remained superficial. There was little or no attempt, including in the pages of such progressive magazines as The Nation and Tikkun, to examine how the Zionist project and the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict is based upon and, at the same time, masks not only ethnic and racial power relations but also gendered divisions of labor and power. [1]
Unlocking the Arab Celluloid Closet
Images of same-sex love and sexual dissidence from the heterosexual norm have long been portrayed in literature, theater and cinema in the Arab world. While the explicit depiction of homosexual acts in film has been the subject of strict censorship, cinematic references to gays and lesbians abound, if often in heavily coded forms.
Commodifying Honor in Female Sexuality
Every year, hundreds of women and girls are murdered in the Middle East by male family members. The honor killing — the execution of a female family member for perceived misuse of her sexuality — is a thorny social and political issue. Palestinian activists campaigning for equality find it difficult to stop the killings altogether. Legitimacy for such murders stems from a complex code of honor ingrained in the consciousness of some sectors of Palestinian society.
Letter
We are writing to inform you of a Women’s Action Alert for Nuban Women and Children. As MERIP readers know, an unabated civil war has been in progress in Sudan for decades. However, since the National Islamic Front and its military wing took power in 1989, the viciousness of the war has intensified. The relentless attacks by government forces and Islamist militias on the Nuba mountains area of southwestern Sudan have produced some of the worst atrocities of the war. The situation in the area has reaches crisis proportions in which large portions of the civilian population are trapped and starving. Aid corridors have been blocked, as have various relief agencies.
Modernization and Family Planning in Egypt
In the last decade, the Egyptian state in collaboration with international donor agencies has embarked on an ambitious population control program. According to this program, Egypt’s rapid population growth is the prime obstacle to the development goals set by Egyptian authorities. Between 1980 and 1992, the program increased current contraceptive use among couples, primarily in the form of IUDs and birth control pills, from 24 percent to 47 percent. At the same time, it reduced the total fertility rate from above 5 to 3.9 percent. [1]
Women and Gender in Middle East Studies
In the past two decades, there has been growing interest in the study of women and gender issues in the Middle East, reflected in the greater number of books, journal articles, dissertations and conference panels devoted to such topics. [1] As a result, many scholars in Middle East studies have come to view the study of women and gender in the Middle East as a field in and of itself. [2] Elizabeth Fernea’s 1986 presidential address to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is considered a milestone in the evolution of Middle East women’s studies as a distinct field of inquiry.
“This Is the Bride”
With only approximately 6 percent of married women in Yemen living in polygamous marriages, such relationships are neither popular nor widespread. Nevertheless, polygamy in Yemen remains a complicated issue.
Men, Women and God(s)
Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Men, Women and God(s): Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics (California, 1995).
Secularism and Personal Status Codes in Lebanon
Marie Rose Zalzal is secretary general for Tayyar al-‘Ilmani (Movement for Secularism) and a practicing lawyer in Abu Rumana, Matn, Lebanon. Part of a research project on the impact of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990) on women, the interview was conducted by Suad Joseph on September 29, October 6 and December 19, 1994 and updated on February 11, 1997.
What is the Tayyar al-‘Ilmani?
Making It on the Middle Eastern Margins of the Global Capitalist Economy
Victoria Bernal, Cultivating Workers: Peasants and Capitalism in a Sudanese Village (Columbia, 1991).
Jenny White, Money Makes Us Relatives: Women’s Labor in Urban Turkey (Texas, 1994).
Sheikha in al-Warraq
Clouds of smoke fill the room. Young women sit talking about the events of the day, while Sana’ inhales smoke from the strongest water pipe tobacco available on the market. “Everything else is for innocent children,” she scoffs. Her smoking habit symbolizes her social status. Sana’ is the sheikhat al-hara, the wheeler-dealer of her neighborhood, a position normally reserved to well-liked and respected men. Sana’, however, is considered by the people in her neighborhood as sitt bi-mi’at ragil, a woman worth hundreds of men.
Relocation and the Use of Urban Space in Cairo
Sahar was only ten years old when her family, along with almost 5,000 Egyptian working-class families, was relocated from her neighborhood in the center of Cairo to a public housing project in al-Zawiya al-Hamra, in northern Cairo. The relocation project was part of Sadat’s open-door policy (infitah), which strived to “modernize” the country by accelerating economic growth, promoting private investment, attracting foreign and Arab capital, and enhancing social development. [1] Sadat’s new policy brought about many changes in the urban environment aimed at creating a “modern” city to meet the emerging demands of investors and tourists.
