Pervasive and diverse, instances of violence against women can only be fully comprehended in the political contexts that give them purpose and meaning.
The UN Human Rights Council has appointed Karima Bennoune as Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights. Bennoune is the author of the book, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism.
The pent up fury and grief released by Özgecan Aslan’s attempted rape and gruesome murder reveal deep fault lines and simmering sources of disaffection in Turkish society.
Caught in the cross-fire of political opportunism, neo-liberal triumphalism and geopolitical adventurism, feminist platforms are in retreat. Only a politics of coalition building can avert their eclipse.
Stirring up moral anxieties over women's conduct and propriety is key to a populist discourse that pits a virtuous “us”- the people- against an immoral “them”. But despite its potential for authoritarian control of gender relations, this new populism holds many attractions for women.
Youth-led mobilisation has mocked and exposed patriarchal power by unmasking its politics of social control. Are we on the threshold of a new politics of gender creating cross-gender alliances around struggles against autocracy?
إن وضع حلقات العنف ضد المرأة الذي تلا الربيع العربي لإظهارها كمثال روتيني للمجتمع الذكوري وحلفائه ممن لا يثقون بالمرأة في مجتمعات بعينها قد يقي أصحاب السلطة من مزيد من التقصي والتدقيق بشكل غير متعمد. لم يعد الرهان على المرأة وجسمها بل على الجسم السياسي بحد ذاته. هكذا تجادل دينيز كانديوتي
Putting episodes of post-Arab spring violence against women down to a routine manifestation of patriarchy and its allied misogyny in the societies concerned may unwittingly shield power-holders from more searching scrutiny. What is at stake is no longer just women and their bodies but the body pol
The extreme precariousness of women’s rights in post- Arab spring successor regimes can neither be fully accounted for with reference to the rise of politically empowered Islamist parties nor attributed to some unqualified notion of misogyny, but is determined by a complex combination of internal
"There is a struggle to be had. It is time to challenge the hegemony of the formal human rights movement and its uncritical embrace of identity politics". Gita Sahgal in conversation with Deniz Kandiyoti. Part two.
A conversation exploring the challenges posed by the international conjuncture following the “war on terror” for gender justice and women’s rights. Part one
