Current Analysis On Memes and Missing Girls Michelle Obama tweeted a photo of herself on her official account last week using the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, joining the Twitter campaign on behalf of the hundreds of schoolgirls [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/14/nigeria-talks-boko-haram-kidnapped-schoolgirls], most of them Christia Jillian Schwedler • 5 min read
MER Article Syrian Drama and the Politics of Dignity Undeterred by pleas for mercy, the high-ranking intelligence officer Ra’uf pushes the junior ‘Azzam to his knees. Ra’uf forcibly shaves the young man’s head as other officers look on. He commands ‘Azzam to remove his shirt and pants, do pushups, jump up and down, and slide across the ground on his e Rebecca Joubin • 14 min read
MER Article "This Is Our Square" In June 2013 popular anger, excitement and apprehension rippled through Cairo. Lines at gas stations snaked into major roadways, paralyzing traffic. Artists occupied the Ministry of Culture to oppose a new minister from the Muslim Brothers’ Freedom and Justice Party who had fired respected cultural Vickie Langohr • 21 min read
MER Article Gender and Counterrevolution in Egypt The 18 days of revolution beginning on January 25, 2011 united Egypt. A wide range of citizens, men and women, veiled and unveiled, young and old, middle-class and working-class, stood behind the goals of ending the 30-year rule of Husni Mubarak and stopping the planned succession of his son to the Mervat Hatem • 16 min read
MER Article Glossary Gender is commonly understood to be the analysis of the social construction of categories of identity (feminine and masculine), as opposed to the biological determinism of physiological sex (female and male). “Gender” is nonetheless often uncritically conflated with “women,” and physiological or bio Norma Claire Moruzzi • 1 min read
MER Article Gender and the Revolutions How is gender related to revolutions? What is the connection between “gender” and women or, for that matter, between gender and women and men? If gender is generally understood to be the social construction of sexual difference, what explains the differences in gendered identities across cultures or Norma Claire Moruzzi • 16 min read
Current Analysis Another Struggle: Sexual Identity Politics in Unsettled Turkey What happens when almost 3,000 men, women and transgender people march down the main street of a major Muslim metropolis, chanting against patriarchy, the military and restrictive public morals, waving the rainbow flag and hoisting banners decrying homophobia and demanding an end to discrimination? Alyssa Bivins • 14 min read
MER Article Morocco's Imperfect Remedy for Gender Inequality "And now no one wants to get married,” says Muhammad, describing the reaction among men at his mosque to Morocco’s 2004 reform of personal status law. “Everyone is afraid to.” Camilo Gomez-Rivas • 11 min read
Current Analysis Is Time on Iranian Women Protesters’ Side? In early June, Zanestan—an Iran-based online journal—announced a rally in Haft Tir Square, one of Tehran’s busiest, to protest legal discrimination suffered by Iranian women. The demonstration was also called to commemorate two landmark events in women’s struggle for equality in Iran. The first was the Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 16 min read
MER Article Gender and Islamism in the 1990s In response to the patriarchal tendencies of the Islamist cultural revolution, a small group of Islamist and other Muslim women have reclaimed Qur’anic and other textual interpretation for their own purposes. The result is a new space for women within the Islamic tradition. Mervat Hatem • 13 min read
MER Article On Gender and Citizenship in Turkey In the summer of 1993, True Path Party delegates -- 99.8 percent of them males -- selected Tansu Çiller as chairperson of their party and thus their candidate for prime minister. For the first time since 1934, when women gained the right to vote and to be elected to Parliament, a woman became prime Yesim Arat • 9 min read
MER Article Three Intifada Books F. Robert Hunter, The Palestinian Uprising: A War by Other Means (I. B. Tauris, 1991). Joost Hiltermann, Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991). Julie Peteet, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Columbia, 1991). Lucine Taminian • 4 min read
