Current Analysis The Day After “Victory”: Kuwait’s 2009 Election and the Contentious Present The May 2009 parliamentary election in Kuwait produced a number of surprising results. Occurring on the fourth anniversary of the achievement of full political rights for Kuwaiti women, the outcome attracting the most commentary was the victory of four female candidates. But there were other happeni Mohammed Al-Ghanim, Mary Ann Tétreault • 18 min read
MER Article Activism Under the Radar Few would disagree that the 1979 Iranian revolution, despite the massive participation of women, rapidly became a catastrophe for women’s legal status and social position. Under the Shah, Iran had a mildly forward-looking family law limiting men’s rights to polygamy and unilateral divorce, and, at least theoretically, basing Homa Hoodfar • 14 min read
MER Article Cosmetic Surgery and the Beauty Regime in Lebanon In May 2007, the First National Bank of Lebanon embarked on a unique media campaign. Some 900 billboards in Arabic and English sprouted up offering loans, not to buy a home or to pay tuition, but to “get the makeover of your dreams.” The corresponding magazine advertisement featured a blond-haired, Sandra Beth Doherty • 11 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 Lawfare and Wearfare in Turkey With war on its eastern borders, and renewed turmoil inside them, Turkey is transfixed by something else entirely: the desire of university-age women to wear the Muslim headscarf on campus, a seemingly innocent sartorial choice that has been forbidden by the courts, off and on, since 1980. At public Hilal Elver • 18 min read
MER Article On Women’s Captivity in the Islamic World In the unprecedented flourishing of writings about Islam in the United States in recent years, one category of books—life stories of women—has been the most popular, attracting the attention of politicians, publishers, the media and the reading public alike. In an old narrative frame of captivity re Farzaneh Milani • 25 min read
Current Analysis Harbingers of Turkey’s Second Republic On July 23, the day after the ruling Justice and Development Party won Turkey’s early parliamentary elections in a landslide, Onur Öymen, deputy chairman of the rival Republican People’s Party (CHP), interpreted the results as follows: Kerem Öktem • 14 min read
MER Article The Battle Over Family Law in Bahrain On November 9, 2005, over 100,000 protesters—approximately one seventh of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s population—flooded the streets of the capital, Manama. Most of the protesters were Shi‘a demonstrating their resistance to the government’s campaign to implement a codified family law, announced a mont Sandy Russell Jones • 21 min read
MER Article Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire In evaluating women’s position in the contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran, it is important to look at the social, as opposed to the legal, aspects of citizenship. In the decades following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iranian society has become resolutely more modern, despite the public face of Norma Claire Moruzzi, Fatemeh Sadeghi • 12 min read
Current Analysis Kuwait’s Annus Mirabilis Kuwait has had an exceptional year, and it isn’t over yet—though one might not know from reading even the alternative press in the West. Fast on the heels of two remarkable developments in the slow democratization of the emirate, a convulsion gripped another part of the Middle East, Mary Ann Tétreault • 22 min read
MER Article Palestinian Women in the Israeli Knesset On March 28, 2006, Nadia Hilou from the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa became only the second Palestinian woman to be elected to the Knesset since 1949, the year of Israel’s first national elections. Hilou’s sole predecessor was Husniyya Jabara, who made history in 1999 when she won a seat in the I Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud • 17 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
