Abstract
It is always difficult to engage in pioneering work, as feminists have long since found out. For women, part of the problem has always been the absence of information and the invisibility of their activities. For women in the Middle East this problem has been intensified by the imaginative and misleading literature describing their lives and experiences that in the past century has been presented in the West in lieu of research.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, for example, amongst others Gita Sen and Caren Grown, Development Crises and Alternative Visions (London: Earthscan, 1988).
There is a large literature on this subject, including material written by women from ethnic minorities living in the West. These include Bell Hook’s Ain’t I a Woman (Boston: South End Press, 1981)
Angela Davis’s Women, Race and Class (London: Women’s Press, 1982)
Buchi Emecheta’s Second Class Citizen (London: Fontana/Collins, 1974)
For detailed discussion see M. Molyneux, ‘Mobilisation without Emancipation? Women’s Interests, the State and Revolution in Nicaragua’. Feminist Review, vol. 11, no. 2 (Summer 1985) pp. 227–54.
Clear examples are Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto. It is worth noting, however, that when offered the mantle of her husband Rajiv, Sonya Gandhi refused to step into his shoes. For a detailed analysis see, for example, Carol Wolkowitz, ‘Controlling Women’s Access to Political Power: A Case Study in Andrha Pradesh, India’ in H. Afshar, (ed.), Women, State and Ideology (London: Macmillan, 1987), pp. 204–24.
For a detailed analysis see Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’, Gender and Society, vol. 2, no. 3 (September 1988), pp. 274–90.
See, for example, Jennet S. Chafetz and Antnoy G. Dworkin, ‘In the Face of Threat: Organised Antifeminism in Comparative Perspective’, Gender and Society, vol. 1, no. 1 (1987), pp. 33–60.
For a detailed discussion see Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective’, in N. Keddi and Beth Baron (eds), Shifting Boundaries: The History of Women in the Middle East (forthcoming), and Haleh Afshar, ‘Fundamentalism and its Female Apologists’, in R. Prendergost and H.W. Sima (eds), Development Perspectives for the 1990s (London: Macmillan, 1991) pp. 303–18.
See, for example, Fatmagul Berktay, ‘Women and Religion, Discourse of Domination and Resistance’, MA dissertation, University of York, 1990; and Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias (eds), Women-Nation-State (London: Macmillan, 1989).
See, for example, Ingrid Palmer, ‘Gender Equity and Efficiency in Adjustment Programmes’, in H. Afshar and C. Dennis (eds), Women and Structural Adjustment (London: Macmilllan, 1992).
See, for example, Caroline Moser, ‘Adjustment from Below: Low-Income Women’, Time and the Triple Role in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Georgina Waylan. ‘Women, Authoritarianism and Market Forces Liberation in Chile, 1973–89), in Afshar and Dennis, Women’, and H. Afshar and B. Agarwal (eds), Women and Poverty in Asia (London: Macmillan, 1989).
See, for example, Sarah Graham-Brown, Images of Women in the Middle East (London: Quarter Books, 1988)
Juliette Minces, The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society (London: Zed, 1982), p. 13
See, for example, Veronica Doubleday, Three Women of Herat (London: Cofe, 1988)
Betty Mahmoudi, Not Without My Daughter (London: Bantam, 1988).
Judy Marbo, Veiled Half-Truths, Western Travellers’ Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1991), p. 2.
See, for example, amongst many more, H. Afshar ‘The Position of Women in an Iranian Village’, and L. Fruzetti, ‘Farm and Hearth: Rural Women in a Farming Community’, and S. Joekes, ‘Working for Lipstick? Male and Female Labour in the Clothing Industry in Morocco’, in H. Afshar (ed.) Women, Work and Ideology in the Third World (London: Tavistock, 1985)
C. McC. Pastner, ‘The Status of Women and Property on a Baluchestan Oasis in Pakistan’, in L. Beck and N. Keddie (eds), Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).
See, for example, H. Shaarawi, Harem Years, the Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, translated and introduced by M. Badran (London: Virago, 1986).
See, for example, Eliz Sanasarian, The Women’s Rights Movement in Iran, Mutiny Appeasement and Repression from 1900 to Khomeini (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp. 28–52
Badrel Malek Bamdad (ed. and trans. F. R. C. Bayley), From Darkness to Light (New York: Expection, 1977).
S. Haeri, Law of Desire, Temporary Marriage in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989), p. 29.
See, for example, F. Mernissi, Women and Islam (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 156
See, for example, F. Shaheed, ‘Purdah and Poverty in Pakistan’, in H. Afshar and B. Agarwal (eds), Women, Poverty and Ideology in Asia (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 17–42
M. Khawar and F. Shaheed, Women of Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? (London: Zed, 1987).
See, for example, among many more, A. F. Sabah, Women in the Muslim Unconscious (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1984)
J. J. Nasir, The Status of Women Under Islamic Law (London: Graham and Trotman, 1990)
H. Afshar, ‘Muslim Women and the Burden of Ideology’, Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 4, no. 4 (1984), pp. 247–50.
S. Al-Khayyat, Honour and Shame: Women in Modern Iraq (London: Saqi, 1990).
S. Altorki, Women in Saudi Arabia, Ideology and Behaviour Among the Elite (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).
M. A. Fakhro, Women at Work in the Gulf (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990).
For a detailed discussion see, for example, Soraya Altorki and Camillia Fawsi El-Solh, (eds), Arab Women in the Field, Studying Your Own Society (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1988).
There are, of course, a number of excellent studies already. In addition to those already mentioned it is useful to see, amongst others, Nayra Atiya], Khul-Khaal, Five Egyptian Women Tell their Stories (London: Virago, 19
F. Mernissi, Doing Daily Battle, Interviews with Moroccan Women, (London: The Women’s Press, 1988)
Bouthaina Shaaban, Both Right and Left Handed, Arab Women Talk About Their Lives (London: The Women’s Press, 1988).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1993 Haleh Afshar
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Afshar, H. (1993). Development Studies and Women in the Middle East: The Dilemmas of Research and Development. In: Afshar, H. (eds) Women in the Middle East. Women’s Studies at York Series . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22588-0_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22588-0_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-22590-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22588-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)