3 - Patronizing Women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
Summary
Western democracy brokers looking at the Middle East pay special attention to women. Many projects in the legal sector, dealing with elections, and encouraging civic involvement specifically addressed Arab women’s rights and participation, and some women’s empowerment projects cut across those categories. Like all political aid programs, activities for women consist mainly of research and instruction, on the one hand, and institution-building, on the other, or more generally with the production of specialized kinds of information. By the same token, women’s empowerment is a sub-sector of socio-economic as well as political development assistance, noted for specialized thematic and institutional agendas grouped under two prevalent acronyms: WID (women in development) and GID (gender in development). WID and GID studies constituted a specialized field of academic and policy research beyond the recognizable transitology literature. Whereas until now our attention was mostly on national and international-level processes, the literature on gender empowerment leads us through anthropology, cultural studies, and political sociology to the participants’-eye view of interpersonal interactions, individual life experiences, and cross-cultural exchange.
From this perspective, we can consider how people interpret and instrumentalize the ideals of gender empowerment. Drawing on scholarship in women’s studies, this chapter tackles the dual connotations of ‘representing’ Arab women by looking closely at the semantics and mechanisms of political aid. It asks: how did individuals and bureaucratic actors react to and act on aspirational and material enticements – how did they interpret discursive and institutional practices? This question is addressed in two parts. The first dissects the ways ‘foreign’ experts and ‘local’ interlocutors respectively adduce the significance of matters such as voting, Islamic law, media performances, and ‘culture.’ The second part, about the political sociology of international aid for various women’s institutions, places recent initiatives in the historical context of feminine activism in national, pan-Arab, and international circles.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Political Aid and Arab ActivismDemocracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation, pp. 112 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013
References
, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar
and give a nuanced argument: “Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (June 2001) 391–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,” International Organization 52 (1998) 855–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “(Mis)constructing the Third World? Constructivist Analysis of Norm Diffusion,” Third World Quarterly 25:3 (2004) 579–591CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Human Rights of Middle Eastern and Muslim Women: A Project for the 21st Century,” Human Rights Quarterly, 26:1 (2004) 106–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Arab States: Enhancing Women’s Political Participation,” Women in Parliament: Beyond the Numbers, International IDEA, Stockholm, 2004: 52–71.Google Scholar
and , “Transnational Networks and Policy Diffusion: The Case of Gender Mainstreaming,” International Studies Quarterly 45:1 (2001) 27–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Analyzing Women in the Politics of the Third World,” in , ed. Women and Politics in the Third World (London and New York: Routledge, 1996) 7–24.Google Scholar
, “In the Wake of Eurocentrism: An Introduction,” Cultural Critique 47 (2001) 3–15: 10–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “‘Failed Development’ and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking SubalternConsciousness and Women’s Empowerment,” Anthropological Quarterly 80:1 (2007)127–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Empowerment Money: The World Bank, Non-Governmental Organizations, and the Value of Culture in Egypt,” Public Culture 14:3 (2002) 493–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Empowering Governmentalities Rather than Women: The Arab Human Development Report 2005 and Western Development Logics,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009) 63–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “What Is That and between Arab Women and Video? The Case of Beirut,” Camera Obscura 18:2 (2003) 40–69: 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Area Studies, Gender Studies, and the Cartographies of Knowledge,” Social Text 20:3 (2002) 67–78: 77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The ‘Missionary Position’ and the Postcolonial Polity, Or, Sexual Difference in the Field of Kenyan Colonial Knowledge,” Callaloo 24:1 (2001) 310–324CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Law, the State, and Socialist Policies with Regard to Women: the Case of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen 1967–1990,” in ed. , Women, Islam, and the State (London: Temple University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
, “Economic and Political Liberation in Egypt and the Demise of State Feminism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992) 231–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , Final Report: Evaluation of the MEDA Democracy Programme 1996–98 (Brussels, April 1999) 119.Google Scholar
The “knowledge-based society” was the main theme of the second Arab Human Development Report in 2003
, “Reclaiming the initiative,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 661, 23–29 October 2003.
, “It Takes Two Wings to Fly,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 836, 15–21 March 2007.
, “Questions of Identity,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 830, 1–7 February 2007
, “Righteous Ideology,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 866, 11–17 October 2007.
, “Empowerment: A Battle for Both Men and Women,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 780, 2–8 February 2006.
, “A Feminist Pickle,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 733, 10–16 March 2005.
, Windows of Opportunity: The Pursuit of Gender Equality in Post-War Iraq, Working Paper, Washington, January 2006.
, “Iraqi Women Shocked at Violent Shooting of American Female Crusader,” Agence France Presse, March 12, 2004.
, “Fern Holland’s War,” The New York Times Magazine, September 19, 2004.
, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), especially 64–65 and 91–92.Google Scholar
, “Myths, Lies, and Impotence: Structural Adjustment and Male Voice in Egypt,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 23:1–2 (2003) 321–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Word is Not Enough,” al-Ahram Weekly Online No. 506, 2–8 November 2000
, “Women, Nation, TV,” al-Ahram Weekly Online No. 612, 14–20 November 2002.
, “Dinosaurs or Dolls?” al-Ahram Weekly Online No. 527, 29 March–4 April 2001.
and , What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).Google Scholar
and . “Women in Post-Saddam Iraq: One Step Forward or Two Steps Back?” NWSA Journal 18:3 (2006) 51–70.Google Scholar
and , “Gender Quotas – A Key to Equality? A Case Study of Iraq and Afghanistan,” European Political Science (summer 2004) 91–98.Google Scholar
, “Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Islam and Women’s Rights,” Third World Quarterly 28:3 (2007) 503–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror.” NWSA Journal 18:3 (Fall 2006) 33–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Rights of the Body and Perversions of War: Sexual Rights and Wrongs Ten Years Past Beijing,” International Social Science Journal 57 (2005) 301–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
& , “Women in Iraq: Beyond the Rhetoric,” Middle East Report 239 (2006) 18–23, quote from a range of interviews.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Reconstructing Gender: Iraqi women between Dictatorship, War, Sanctions, and Occupation,” Third World Quarterly 26:4–5 (2005) 739–758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “In Iraq, Security Trumps Women’s Rights,” The Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2005.Google Scholar
, “Women of the New Iraq,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 755, 11–17 August 2005.
, “Overview of Women’s Political Representation in the Arab Region: Opportunities and Challenges,” The Arab Quota Report: Selected Case Studies, Quota Report Series, compiled from workshop held on 5–6 December 2004 in Cairo, Egypt, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm, 2007.Google Scholar
elicited strong but varied opinions reported in “Women in the Shadows of Democracy” Middle East Report 239 (2006) 24–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Engendering World Conferences: The International Women’s Movement and the UN,” in and , eds, NGOs, the UN, and Global Governance (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996)Google Scholar
, “International Organizations, National Machinery, Islam, and Foreign Policy,” in ed. and , Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation: Implementing the Beijing Platform (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997) 128–140: 29.Google Scholar
, “In the Eye of the Storm: Islamic Societies and Muslim Women in Globalization Discourses,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 26:1 (2006) 22–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Imperialism, the State, and NGOs: Middle Eastern Contexts and Contestations,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 30: 2(2010) 238–249: 240CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Between the Elusive and the Illusionary: Donors’ Empowerment Agendas in the Middle East in Perspective.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 30:2 (2010) 224–237: 231–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Bridging the Gender Gap?” al-Ahram Weekly No. 669, December 2003
, “The Woman Beyond the Machinery,” interview with Farkhonda Hassan, secretary-general of the NCW on the occasion of its 7th Annual Conference, al-Ahram Weekly Online No. 835, 8–14 March 2007.
, “Women in Action,” interview with Wadouda Badran, head of the Arab Women Organization, al-Ahram Weekly No. 693, 3–9 June 2004
, “Democratize or Disintegrate,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 862, 13–19 September 2007.
and , “Gender and State in Iraq,” in ed. , Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000) 194.Google Scholar
, “Elite Strategies for State-Building: Women, Family, Religion, and State in Iraq and Lebanon,” in ed. , Women, Islam, and the State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991) 186.Google Scholar
, “The Seventh International AWSA Conference Rationale and the Way Forward,” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 6:2 (2006) 22–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Framing Nawal El Saadawi: Arab Feminism in a Transnational World,” Signs 26:1 (2000) 215–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Towards Gender Equality,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 693, 3–9 June 2004
“A Movement for All Seasons,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 419, 4–10 March 1999
“Sixty Years on,” al-Ahram Weekly No. 734, 17–23 March 2005
, “Want Funding? Don’t Mention Islam: EU Democracy Promotion in the Mediterranean,” CFSP Forum 4: 3 (2006) 10–12.Google Scholar
, After the Peace Process: Foreign Donor Assistance and the Political Economy of Marginalization in Palestine and El Salvador (PhD diss., McGill University, Montreal, 2006)
, “The NGO-ization of Arab Women’s Movements,” IDS Bulletin 35:4 (2004) 24–42: 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Pitfalls of a ‘Democracy Promotion’ Project for Women of Iraq,” International Journal of Lifelong Education 27:2 (2008) 129–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar