Organizing Women: Formal and Informal Women's Groups in the Middle East

by Dawn Chatty (Editor), Annika Rabo (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859739105
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/05/1997
Series:	Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women , #17
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dawn Chatty Senior Research Officer,Refugee Studies Programme, University of Oxford Annika Rabo Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology, Linköping University, Sweden

Table of Contents

Contents: Dawn Chatty, Preface — Dawn Chatty & Annika Rabo, Formal and Informal Women's Groups in the Middle East: Introduction and Overview — Valentine Moghadam, Women's NGOs in the Middle East and North Africa: Constraints, Opportunities, and Priorities — Suad Joseph, Shopkeepers and Feminists: The Reproduction of Political Process (Lebanon) — Seteney Shami, Domesticity Reconfigured: Women in Squatter Areas of Amman (Jordan) — Eva Evers Rosander, Women in Groups in Africa: Female Associational Patterns in Senegal and Morocco (Morocco and Senegal) — May Seikaly, Bahraini Women in Formal and Informal Groups and the Politics of Identification — Shahida El-Baz, The Impact of Social and Economic Factors on Women's Group Formation in Egypt — Nadje Al-Ali, Feminism and Contemporary Debates in Egypt — Haya al-Mughni, From Gender Equality to Female Subjugation: The Changing Agendas of Women's Groups in Kuwait — Nancy Lindisfarne, Women Organized in Groups: Expanding the Terms of the Debate

Editorial Reviews

As an anthropologist and development consultant working with women, I find this book very useful. It succeeded in describing constraints to women's groups and in presenting much information on their operation; both topics had excellent documentation . . . Academics and practitioners working on Middle Eastern women should have this book, and upper-level classes on women and/or development could use it.” —Jourbanal of Anthropological Research

“Organizing Women sparks again the debate on women in the Middle East through a plurality of voices - Middle Eastern and non - searching for one Middle Eastern identity, or one womanhood identity, but trying to give voice to the variety of women's experiences across culture, class and religion.” —Cambridge Anthropology

“Organizing Women offers the reader a rich collection of articles not only because it focuses on a "cutting edge" topic in gender studies and development but also because it brings together under one cover a diverse group of women social scientists "thinking about" a central theoretical and methodological question: what happens when women in the Middle East try to organize themselves.” —Association for Middle East Women's Studies

From the Publisher

Organizing Women offers the reader a rich collection of articles not only because it focuses on a "cutting edge" topic in gender studies and development but also because it brings together under one cover a diverse group of women social scientists "thinking about" a central theoretical and methodological question: what happens when women in the Middle East try to organize themselves.

Association for Middle East Women's Studies

Organizing Women sparks again the debate on women in the Middle East through a plurality of voices - Middle Eastern and non - searching for one Middle Eastern identity, or one womanhood identity, but trying to give voice to the variety of women's experiences across culture, class and religion.

Cambridge Anthropology

As an anthropologist and development consultant working with women, I find this book very useful. It succeeded in describing constraints to women's groups and in presenting much information on their operation; both topics had excellent documentation . . . Academics and practitioners working on Middle Eastern women should have this book, and upper-level classes on women and/or development could use it.

Journal of Anthropological Research