Dr Aitemad Muhanna-Matar
LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series / 05
Abstract
This paper is based on empirical field-based research conducted in five Arab countries (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territory) in 2013. Given the complex context of division in women’s political participation in post-uprising countries, the research focuses on how emerging young female leaders – ordinary educated women with no specific feminist consciousness or previous political involvement – succeeded in shaping a new form of women’s activism. The main argument of this research is that the newly emerged non-feminist women’s leaders, especially those who represent Islamist parties and their conservative gender agenda, have the potential to re-signify their gender norms within the moral framework of Islamic tradition, as well as to transform their political leadership into a feminist leadership. This happens through women’s discursive habituation of non-stereotypical gender roles and relations, regardless of ideological framework or references.
About the Author
Aitemad Muhanna-Matar is a Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is currently conducting a research project on salafist youth in Tunisia and the process of subjectification. In 2013, she managed a regional research project funded by Oxfam-GB and run by the LSE MEC in five Arab countries entitled Women’s political participation across the Arab region: Mapping of existing and new emerging forces in the region. Prior to that, her research concentrated on the historical trajectory of Gazan women’s religiosity, agency and subjectivity, drawing on different discourses of religion and secularism. Dr Muhanna-Matar’s PhD thesis in 2010 examined the effects of the second Palestinian Intifada on women’s agency and contributed to challenging mainstream liberal conceptions of women’s empowerment. It was published in a book Agency and Gender in Gaza: Masculinity, Femininity and Family during the Second Intifada, by Ashgate in 2013. Since the mid-nineties, she has garnered substantive academic and development research experience with UNDP, UNIFEM, the World Bank, SIDA and the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University.