Abstract
This chapter focuses on societal, communal and cultural factors. It shows that female participation during the Lebanese civil war was facilitated by pre-war changes in communal attitudes towards the inclusion of women in public and political roles. This shift in traditional gender norms and expectations was amplified by the war. The author further argues that this change provided the militias with a societal context not entirely opposed to the inclusion of female fighters. However, despite the slow loosening of traditional gender norms, and despite the fact that considerable differences existed between and within the different communities in various parts of the country, Lebanon remained a relatively gender-conservative society. The militias which employed female fighters therefore adopted a variety of strategies to manage societal gender expectations.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For a history of women, gender and politics in (what is now) Lebanon, see Khairallah (1996), Khater (1996), Thompson (1999), Zachs and Halevi (2014). Useful discussions of the history of gender, politics and women’s movements in the wider region can be found in Al-Ali (2000, 2007), Al-Ali and Taṣ (2018), Arenfeldt (2012), Fleischmann (2003), Hasso (2005), Joseph (2000), Joseph and Slyomovics (2001), Meriwether and Tucker (1999), Pratt and Al-Ali (2011), Seikaly (2015).
- 3.
In 1958, fighting broke out in parts of the country for about three months, until an intervention by the US Army ended the immediate crisis (Salibi 1976).
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Eggert, J.P. (2022). Societal Factors. In: Women and the Lebanese Civil War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83788-4_6
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