Gender in the Middle East - Origins, Anthropology, Literature, And History, Gender Politics: The Veil And The Koran
female male definitions study
The term gender has no exact correlate in Middle Eastern sources, but instead is identified by scholars as a major analytical tool in the definition of differences between men and women. Many researchers in every discipline argue that gender has always been embedded in all societies, past and present. Scholars who study gender seek to question dominant, normative definitions of every society's assigned male and female roles. The gendered implications of religious and legal definitions, scripted as timeless injunctions, may be interrogated to reveal previously ignored multiple symbolic meanings. Thus, the interactive cultural categories of male and female, masculine and feminine, analyzed through the lens of gender, may be read as human interpretations and constructions rather than divine and eternal definitions. The study of the Middle East contextualizes the accepted readings assigned to both genders in all disciplines and documents them not as a process of consistent conformity, but rather as an outcome of internal contests over power and constructed meaning. The results of this research aims to historicize accepted truths and undermine those who seek to define them as forever divided into simple oppositional, binomial categories of male and female, right and wrong, sacred and profane.
Additional Topics
Feminist and women's studies in the 1960s and 1970s paved the foundation for the emergence of gender analysis in the
1980s. Women's studies and gender studies arose to combat the absence of documentation about women in all Western disciplines. Yet the focus on gender emphasizes the inextricable interaction between both sexes, while women's studies' singular focus does …
Anthropological studies of gender contributed pioneering fieldwork that recorded definitions of masculine and feminine honor, sexuality, and self-representation through poetic expression in rural areas from Morocco to Iran. The documentation of unequal, gendered hierarchies of power demonstrated that women negotiated these structures in distinctly inventive ways. Erika Friedl's revealing ob…
The issue of the veil, or modest Muslim attire for women, has, since the early twentieth century, been a vexed issue. This symbol also provoked debates about the gendered roles of women in a male-dominated society. Issues of power and female agency masked long-standing assumptions about the distinctions between men and women, which this clothing revealed. Human rationales for the veil were presume…
The study of Islamic law has always possessed a revered status in the Middle East. The law retained an exclusively masculine mystique because its educational and juristic institutions traditionally denied women access. Male legal interpretations of gender difference confined women to separate spheres because they were defined as intellectually deficient and dangerous to all men. Studies of gender …
New centers founded by women in the Middle East incorporate gender in their research publications. In Egypt, scholars of the Women and Memory Forum publish a range of works dedicated to women and the recovery of their place in Islamic society. Every spectrum of ideological affiliation, from feminist to Islamist and positions in between, enriches the scholarship of this collective enterprise. Contr…
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in God's Name: Women, Authority, and Law. Oxford: Oneworld Press, 2001. Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Badran, Margot. "Gender." In Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Vol. 2, 288–292. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2…
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