In person icon Women’s Mobilization in Turkey, Egypt and Libya: Changing Relations with the States and Discursive Positioning in the Last Decade

Abstract

Women’s studies in the Middle East have emphasized the importance of contextual approaches (Kandiyoti 1991). While some studies focus more on the role of states, interest group coalitions and socio-economic structures in evaluating women’s status and mobilizations in the region (Kandiyoti 1991; Arat 2005); others highlight more the discursive and constitutive parts of the women’s movements (Mahmood 2005; Hafez 2011; Gole 1996). Meanwhile, the feminist scholarship in the West reconceptualizes women’s movement and state relationship. As the Western states have becoming more neo-liberal and allocating more power to different levels of state and non-state bodies, women’s movements’ expectations from the states are changing (Banaszak et al. 2003). Keeping in mind the different but also shared political trajectories in the two regions, it is yet to be observed how changes in the last two decades in the Middle East, sometimes theorized as the post-Islamist era (Bayat 2013) – referring to the emergence of liberal Islamist movements and governments - and more recently state reconfigurations after the Arab revolutions, have implications on women’s movements. In the light of this context, the panel aims to highlight similar and divergent patterns in Muslim women’s mobilization in the Middle East. Papers on Egypt, Libya and Turkey examine both the internal dynamics of women’s movements and the state-movement relations - with a strong focus on the movements’ discursive positioning in society. The panel also hopes to raise questions on conceptualizations of women’s movements in the West and the Middle East.