Women’s movements in predominantly-Muslim countries have been instrumental in promoting family law and penal code reform. Policy prescriptions differ, however, between groups regarding the best path to women’s rights. Not all women’s associations share the same vision for what constitutes women’s rights, therefore factionalizing support for women-friendly changes in family law and penal codes, even within the women’s movement. This project includes interviews with the main women’s associations in Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Egypt to identify interstate trends and intrastate variations in policy prescriptions, the complications these polarizing effects have on women’s integration in the public sphere, the advancement of democratization, and good governance practice more generally. Another variable affecting the future of these countries is the rising proportion of youth in each society. While the youth are savvy to social media, highly globalized, and increasingly educated, they are plagued by high unemployment rates, conflicting identities, politically marginalized, and surrounded by the pull of violent brands of Islamic fundamentalism. This project takes a mixed methods approach to exploring the intersection and interaction of women’s and youth’s perspectives to determine their impact on women-friendly legislation, democratization and the quality of governance in these countries. The project includes in-depth interviews with women’s associations within the four countries and across the political spectrum of secular, socialist, progressive Muslim feminists, and more conservative Islamic feminist associations. In addition, surveys will be conducted among university students to determine youth attitudes regarding family law and penal code reforms as well as the quality of governance and prescriptive policy alternatives. Finally, quantitative analysis of value change by gender and by age will be conducted using World Values Survey and the Arab Barometer to assess change over time.
