“Doing Good, Like Sayyida Zaynab”: Lebanese Shi‘I Women’s Participation in the Public Sphere

2005 ◽  
pp. 85-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Deeb
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Public Sphere

Soft Force

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Anne McLarney
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
World Economic Forum ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Work ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Global Leader ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter focuses on the work of Heba Raouf Ezzat. Ranked the thirty-ninth most influential Arab on Twitter, with over 100,000 followers, voted one of the hundred most powerful Arab women by ArabianBusiness.com, and elected a Youth Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Raouf Ezzat has articulated and disseminated her Islamic politics in a global public sphere. Her writings and lectures develop an Islamic theory of women's political participation but simultaneously address other contested questions about women's leadership, women's work, and women's participation in the public sphere. Heba Raouf Ezzat is one of the most visible public figures in the Arab and Islamic world today, a visibility that began with her book on the question of women's political work in Islam, Woman and Political Work.

Constructing Freedom: Institutional Pathways to Changing the Gender Division of Labor

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth K. Markovits ◽  
Susan Bickford
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gender Division Of Labor ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Paid Labor ◽  
Democratic Freedom ◽  
The Public Sphere

In recent years, there has been renewed public discussion regarding the relationship between women’s equality and their traditional responsibility for carework. In this essay, we analyze the structures of choice and constraint that continue to produce the gender division of family labor and thus women's unequal participation in the public sphere. We conceptualize this as a problem of democratic freedom, one that requires building institutional pathways to sustain women's participation. Drawing on Nancy Hirschmann's arguments about processes of social construction and their relation to freedom, we argue that gender inequality in the public sphere means that women are unfree, in the sense that they are not participating as peers in the material and discursive processes of social construction that then help to shape their own desires and decisions. We use that framework to analyze the current landscape in which different subgroups of women make decisions about paid labor and care work. Our goal is to bring into view the way the social construction of desire interacts with the material context to underwrite inequality between women and men and across different groups of women. Gender equality and the project of democracy require participatory parity between women and men in the public sphere. We therefore turn in our last section to an effort to imagine how public policies could construct pathways that can help interrupt and undo the gender division of labor, and thus better support democratic freedom.

Women, Law and Employment in Pakistan: from ‘Protection’ to ‘Equal Treatment’?

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siobhan Mullally
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legislative Reform ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Labour Legislation ◽  
International Labour Standards ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines the legal regulation of women's employment in the public sphere in Pakistan. A large part of the legislation relating specifically to the employment of women is highly protective in nature. The 1973 Constitution of Pakistan assumes that women are in need of protection. This assumption is reflected in the labour legislation and in the international labour standards that have been adopted by Pakistan. Much of the existing Labour Code is a legacy of the colonial period and reflects the concerns of the early British factory movement to preserve female modesty and ‘protect’ women's roles within the domestic sphere. This paper attempts to identify those areas of the law most in need of reform if the protective approach to women's participation in the public sphere is to be transcended. Although legislative reform does not necessarily lead to a change in workplace practices, the existence of discriminatory legislation, gaps in existing legislation and a lack of adequate enforcement machinery constitute significant institutional barriers to women's participation in the public sphere. For these reasons, it is argued, calls for law reform and a focus on legislative reform as a strategy for change may be justified.

The Creation of the Femme Fatale in Egyptian Cinema

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-329
Author(s):  
Carolina Bracco
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Good Woman ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Egyptian Cinema

Abstract The appearance of the character of a femme fatale in Egyptian cinema in the mid-1950s is deeply intertwined with the new social and moral imprint made by the Nasserist regime. At a time when women’s participation in the public sphere was regulated, the portrayal of the evil woman was intended to define how the good woman should behave as well as the terrible fate in store for those who dared to flout the limits. This evil woman was embodied in the character of the Oriental dancer who was to be seen, from that time on, as a fallen woman. This article aims to discuss the mutation of the character of the dancer from a bint al balad (lit. “girl of the country”) to a femme fatale by analyzing three films starring two icons of the time, Hind Rustum and Tahia Carioca.

The role of social movements leading to the emergence of women public intellectuals

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Ann Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Print Industry

This chapter addresses the significance of social movements in accelerating women into the public sphere as public intellectuals. Indeed, the role of social movements was important in defining women public intellectuals politically. The growth of social movements has to be set alongside the expansion of higher education for women, as well as the expansion of the print industry. This led to an expansion and broadening of the base of women's participation in political activity, particularly around specific campaigns and causes. Women were actively involved, individually and collectively, in a number of campaigns prior to the emergence of the suffrage movement. Ultimately, the intersection of gender and class was an important factor leading to the growth of both political activism and, more specifically, the emergence of the suffragettes and later women's liberation movement (WLM). Analysis shows that the motivation of most women was pragmatic and issue based as opposed to ideological. Issue-based politics covered all social classes and thus brought women together in social activism and within social movements.

Gendered Citizenship: Discourses on Domesticity in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Hawwa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoda Elsadda
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Women Activists ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Women Judges ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Public Sphere

AbstractThe first years of the 21st century in Egypt saw a marked movement by women activists and groups in Egypt to lobby for appointing women judges. The debate around the issue included arguments about women's "natural" roles, about their lesser abilities, and about the necessity of maintaining their place in the home to safeguard Arab cultural identity. In general, these debates posited domesticity as a marker of Arab identity and cultural specificity. I argue that domesticity is a modernist ideology that was transfigured into a representation of an essential Arab cultural identity which needed to be guarded and preserved. I also emphasize that discourses on domesticity were not the only existing discourses propagated in the nineteenth century. Zeinab Fawwaz's journey through history in search for women's participation in the public sphere can be interpreted as a clear challenge to the modernist binary opposition between a backward past and a modern, enlightened present. At the same time, it constituted a subversive narrative to the dominant narrative on domesticity. Similarly, Aisha Taymur's project did not dismiss tradition but sought to engage with it on its own premises in an attempt to argue for women's right.

scholarly journals “That Was What I Had to Use”: Social and Cultural Capital in the Careers of Women Broadcasters

2018 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Lucht ◽  
Kelsey Batschelet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social And Cultural Capital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
The Public Sphere

This study uses in-depth, biographical interviews to understand a range of historical experiences in the careers of individual women broadcasters in the Midwest, a region of the United States that has received relatively little attention from media scholars. The findings demonstrate the barriers these women faced as well as the social and cultural capital available to them as they pursued diverse roles in an industry that did not welcome their full participation. The study contributes to scholars’ understanding of women’s participation in the public sphere during the 1950s to 1970s.

“Airing Our Dirty Linen in Public”: Lidiia Chukovskaia, Nadezhda Mandeľshtam, and Competing Visions for a Liberal Soviet Counterpublic

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 778-799
Author(s):  
Lusia Zaitseva
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Conservative Attitude ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Dirty Linen ◽  
At Home

This article contributes to the study of gender and dissidence in the Soviet Union by examining the feud between two significant authors of cultural samizdat and tamizdat—Nadezhda Mandeľshtam and Lidiia Chukovskaia—through an updated feminist lens. It draws on prose unpublished in their lifetimes and presents previously undiscovered writing by Mandeľshtam in order to examine the origins and substance of their feud. I argue that their distinctive modes of authorship date to their relationship with Anna Akhmatova and subsequent differing approaches to her legacy. These approaches reveal their shared conservative attitude regarding gender and moral authority in the nascent liberal Soviet counterpublic as well as their diverging understandings of how the transnational public sphere could help bring about much-needed changes at home. These attitudes shaped how they regarded each other and continue to have salience for our understanding of women's participation in the public sphere in Russia today.

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