This rich anthology offers twenty studies on instances of emerging social justice and women’s empowerment in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. These areas are home to huge populations where women’s rights have withered under patriarchal rule, and many are beset by civic unrest. The book shows how changes are occurring as flood tides of capital, people, and information erode entrenched gender regimes, giving birth to energetic and forward-thinking women’s movements. Highly original, conceptually sophisticated, and imminently readable, this book illustrates how local women are transforming their collective fates by questioning their status, forming alliances, demanding full participation in economic development and the political process, and mining opportunities afforded by globalization.

Focusing on the term empowerment this book examines the various meanings given to the concept of empowerment and the many ways power can be expressed - in personal relationships and in wider social interactions.

The essays in this collection examine issues of gender, family, and law in the Middle East and South Asia. In particular, the authors address the impact of colonialism on law, family, and gender relations; the role of religious politics in writing family law and the implications for gender relations; and the tension between international standards emerging from UN conferences and conventions and various nationalist projects. Employing the frame of globalization, the authors highlight how local and global forces interact and influence the experience and actions of people who engage with the law. By virtue of a "south-south" comparison of two quite similar and culturally linked regions, contributors avoid positing "the West" as a modern telos. Drawing upon the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, and law, this volume offers a wide-ranging exploration of the complicated history of jurisprudence with regard to family and gender.

This text sets out to throw light on empowerment by showing how women can and do take power into and over their own lives. It demonstrates that it is often poor women in poor countries who are celebrating new powers and changing their own lives.

Winner of the Victoria Schuck award given by the American Political Science Association and an Honorable Mention in the Distinguished Book Award given by the Political Economy of World Systems section of the American Sociological Association Globalization may offer modern feminism its greatest opportunity and greatest challenge. Allowing communication and information exchange while also exacerbating economic and social inequalities, globalization has fostered the growth of transnational feminist networks (TFNs). These groups have used the Internet to build coalitions, lobby governments, and advance the goals of feminism. Globalizing Women explains how the negative and positive aspects of globalization have helped to create transnational networks of activists and organizations with common agendas. Sociologist Valentine M. Moghadam discusses six such feminist networks to analyze the organization, objectives, programs, and outcomes of these groups in their effort to improve conditions for women throughout the world. Moghadam also examines how "globalizing women" are responding to and resisting growing inequalities, the exploitation of female labor, and patriarchal fundamentalisms. This book is an important addition to literature exploring feminism as well as to the broader discussion of the impact of transnational social movements and organizations in the globalized world.

Gender, Power and Relationships is a follow-up volume to Gender and Power in Families (Routledge 1989) which marked a milestone in the application of feminist thinking to therapeutic work with families, bringing new ideas to students, trainers and professionals. Contributions from leading practitioners demonstrate how feminist ideas have been taken up by therapists in a variety of different settings. The chapters explore and extend previous debates on sexual and physical abuse and ethnicity, addressing the many contradictions and dilemmas inherent in this work for feminist systemic approaches. They also consider changing family structures and the role of men within them, gendered aspects of HIV prevention, and work with women drug addicts, and a variety of other approaches each set in the context of an overview of feminist theories of the family.

Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond offers a methodologically, theoretically, and empirically rich analysis of women’s empowerment in male-dominated societies, juxtaposing the Turkish case in comparative perspective. The volume explores institutional and societal obstacles against women’s empowerment in patriarchal communities, how women cope and bargain with patriarchy in such societies, and how they try to achieve better living standards for themselves and their families. It also pinpoints areas for improvement in women’s empowerment via institutional and societal change in the areas of education, economics, politics, and social life. Interdisciplinary contributors offer in-depth fieldwork analyses as well as rigorous statistical techniques. The multi-disciplinary and multi-method nature of the book provides both breadth and depth to the study of women’s empowerment and offers fertile ground for further research on gender politics. Interdisciplinary in nature, Women’s Empowerment in Turkey and Beyond will be of great interest to scholars of Gender Politics, Turkish Studies and Women’s Empowerment. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of Turkish Studies.

For over a century and in scores of countries, patriarchal presumptions and practices have been challenged by women and their male allies. “Sexual harassment” has entered common parlance; police departments are equipped with rape kits; more than half of the national legislators in Bolivia and Rwanda are women; and a woman candidate won the plurality of the popular votes in the 2016 United States presidential election. But have we really reached equality and overthrown a patriarchal point of view? The Big Push exposes how patriarchal ideas and relationships continue to be modernized to this day. Through contemporary cases and reports, renowned political scientist Cynthia Enloe exposes the workings of everyday patriarchy—in how Syrian women civil society activists have been excluded from international peace negotiations; how sexual harassment became institutionally accepted within major news organizations; or in how the UN Secretary General’s post has remained a masculine domain. Enloe then lays out strategies and skills for challenging patriarchal attitudes and operations. Encouraging self-reflection, she guides us in the discomforting curiosity of reviewing our own personal complicity in sustaining patriarchy in order to withdraw our own support for it. Timely and globally conscious, The Big Push is a call for feminist self-reflection and strategic action with a belief that exposure complements resistance.

Focusing on the region of the Arab world--comprising some two hundred million people and twenty-one sovereign states extending from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf--this book develops a theory of social change that demystifies the setbacks this region has experienced on the road to transformation. Professor Sharabi pinpoints economic, political, social, and cultural changes in the last century that led the Arab world, as well as other developing countries, not to modernity but to neopatriarchy--a modernized form of patriarchy. He shows how authentic change was blocked and distorted forms and practices subsequently came to dominate all aspects of social existence and activity--among them militant religious fundamentalism, an ideology symptomatic of neopatriarchal culture. Presenting itself as the only valid option, Muslim fundamentalism now confronts the elements calling for secularism and democracy in a bitter battle whose outcome is likely to determine the future of the Arab world as well as that of other Muslim societies in Africa and Asia.

Sure to become a classic on female empowerment, a groundbreaking exploration of the personal, cultural, and global implications of intergenerational trauma created by patriarchy, how it is passed down from mothers to daughters, and how we can break this destructive cycle. Why do women keep themselves small and quiet? Why do they hold back professionally and personally? What fuels the uncertainty and lack of confidence so many women often feel? In this paradigm-shifting book, leading feminist thinker Bethany Webster identifies the source of women’s trauma. She calls it the Mother Wound—the systemic disenfranchisement of women by the patriarchy—and reveals how this cycle is perpetuated by wounded mothers who unconsciously pass on damaging beliefs and behaviors to their daughters. In her workshops, online courses, and talks, Webster has helped countless women re-examine their lives and their relationships with their mothers, giving them the vocabulary to voice their pain, and encouraging them to share their experiences. In this manifesto and self-help guide, she offers practical tools for identifying the manifestations of the Mother Wound in our daily life and strategies we can use to heal ourselves and prevent our daughters from enduring the same pain. In addition, she offers step-by-step advice on how to reconnect with our inner child, grieve the mother we didn’t have, stop people-pleasing, and, ultimately, transform our heartache and anger into healing and self-love. Revealing how women are affected by the Mother Wound, even if they don’t personally identify as survivors, Discovering the Inner Mother revolutionizes how we view mother-daughter relationships and gives us the inspiration and guidance we need to improve our lives and ultimately create a more equitable society for all.