Dr. Ziba Mir-Hosseini is a legal anthropologist specializing in Islamic law, gender, and development. She is currently Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, University of London. In this lecture, Dr. Mir-Hosseini explores the Islamic feminist movement’s potential for changing the terms of debates over Islam and gender, arguing that the […]
Through the quality their work and the passion of their artistic achievements, women filmmakers like Neshat and Abdollahyan have placed themselves at the forefront of the revolutionary changes rocking Iranian society.
It’s 2012 and close to four years after the Lilly ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law. Surely, the gender wage gap has been closed, right? Wrong. Even with moves toward equalizing pay between men and women, men still make almost 20% more than women in nearly all industries. This is despite the fact […]
These variations on the theme of delayed defiance hinge on the idea that the revolutions are simultaneously a rejection not just of the colonial oppression they have inherited but, a fortiori, of the postcolonial ideologies that had presented and exhausted themselves as its antithesis in Islamist, nationalist or socialist grand narratives.
From public and social groups, specifically the Mourning Mothers that have lost their children in the 2009 Movement (I had the honor of representing few of them), to the Mothers for Peace and the women’s rights activists, from the political prisoners that I have the honor of having endured imprisonment with them, to my dear cellmates that endured the hardships associated with my hunger strike, and of course, my husband and my young daughter who endured great sufferings.
Grave Risk to Women’s Rights Without Heightened Commitment and Clear Plans
“My world is more meaningful now thanks to my work, giving me different perspectives about life as a whole. Earlier, I was unaware of the miseries that Afghan women had to endure for so long. We have been through several heart-wrenching blows in the last three decades. Now is the time to do what was never thought of.”
[I}f you insist upon fighting to protect me, or 'our' country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share..... [I]n fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.
by Sima Shakhsari The recent issue of Foreign Policy on sex has instigated critical feedback from many who have rightly challenged racist and Orientalist representations of gender and sexuality in the Muslim and Arab worlds. Several critics have rightly pointed out that essentialist approaches to culture that rely on facile binaries of men/women, freedom/oppression, and West/East lack any meaningful analyses […]
For each woman that is imprisoned, another will take her place and swell the ranks of the women’s movement. -Shrine Ebadi, Iranian Noble Peace Prize winner, 2004. The stories of sweeping reform across the Middle East has captured the attention of many of us. In this week’s Weekly Rights Podcast, Minky Worden, Director of Global […]
