Women and Politics

Ritratto di una cortigiana del Cinquecento: Caterina de Medici da Verona e le sue vicende (1518-1582). In: Ritratti. La dimensione individuale nella storia (secc. XV- XIX), Hg. Seidel Menchi, S., Pierce, R. (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008), 147-176.

by Cecilia Cristellon

"We Couldn't Just Throw Her in the Street": Gendered Violence and Women's Shelters in Turkey

by Kim Shively

Published as a chapter in Anthropology at the Front Lines of Gendered-Based Violence, Jennifer R. Wies and Hillary J. Haldane, eds. pp. 71-90.  Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

This chapter discusses the success and limitations of the Turkish state shelter system for victims of domestic... more This chapter discusses the success and limitations of the Turkish state shelter system for victims of domestic violence.  The chapter aims to demonstrate how these shelters are explicitly and implicitly based on a notion of domestic/gendered violence that is broader than in Western conceptions.  In Turkey, the new laws and institutions established to deal with domestic violence have largely been borrowed from European precedents in a process of “transplantation” – a strategy Sally Engel Merry has outlined in her book Human Rights and Gender Violence.  Due to pressure from the European Union accession process that has required Turkey to match its legal system to European standards, the importation of domestic violence/gender violence laws into Turkish Civil and Penal Codes has been relatively successful – that is, follows the European models closely.  The chapter traces the rewriting of the Civil and Penal codes in recent Turkish history to show how the legal standards have changed in favor of women who are victims of domestic violence.  Unlike the legal code amendment process, though, the chapter argues that the transplantation of the institutional models, in particular the state women’s shelters, has been a much more complicated procedure.  Based on research conducted in state women’s shelters in Izmir Province, Turkey, in 2004, 2006 and 2007, I discuss the fact that most residents of the state shelters have not fled forms of intimate partner violence.  Thus, the shelters do not function primarily as “battered women’s” shelters, as are the European institutions they are modeled on.  Rather, the shelters most often deal with women who are suffering from more generalized, structural forms of gendered violence, such as exclusion from education and the means of economic independence,  and from a shortage of institutions that serve the needs of poor women.  In sum, while the Turkish shelters may fall short of Western expectations in that only 10% of the residents are victims of intimate partner violence, they serve the needs of women who suffer from gendered violence in its broadest sense. 

'Handbagging' the feminization thesis? Reflections on women in the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.

by Antje Bednarek

forthcoming 2012 in David Torrance (Ed.), The Scottish Conservative Party – From Unionist Scotland to Political Wilderness. Edinburgh: EUP.

In contradistinction to some of the recent work in political science which considers policy changes in relation to... more In contradistinction to some of the recent work in political science which considers policy changes in relation to female participation in politics, this paper focuses on the 'ordinary', average female member of the Scottish Conservative Party. The Conservative Party still has a larger female membership than any of the other parties. Yet the relative absence of 'average' women from party politics and the dearth of knowledge that we have on them as members of the Scottish Conservatives together perpetuate some of the common stereotypes at large about Conservative women. One is of Conservative women incessantly making tea and buns; other stereotypes of Conservative women as 'glamour girls' or the so-called 'blue-rinse brigade' also abound. The mainly insubstantial and undesirable meanings of these stereotypes remain largely unchallenged in the political public which perhaps is also due to the comparative insignificance of the Scottish Conservative Party in the eyes of the Scottish voters and (evidently) scholars alike. Feminist and other researchers, in short, may consider Conservative women anathema to their research foci and disciplinary dispositions and therefore simply neglect them as a research subject.
The way I penetrate the silence about Scottish Conservative women in this paper is by focussing on the figures of speech in use about them. These figures of speech, whilst widely used in public, refer to women's roles and activities in the Party outside the eye of the public. I refer to this sphere as the private sphere and to the sum of what can be found out about women participating in it as a 'private' account, i.e. one that can only be gained from the perspective of an insider to the Party. This private account is off-set by the public account, which is the comparatively well-covered sphere of parliamentary politics and representative functions that political scientists focus on.

Egyptian feminists challenge militant soccer fan chauvinism

by James M. Dorsey

By James M. Dorsey

An Egyptian feminist group has challenged militant soccer fans that played a key role in... more By James M. Dorsey

An Egyptian feminist group has challenged militant soccer fans that played a key role in toppling president Hosni Mubarak to recognise women's rights to unrestricted protest.

The challenge exposes conservatism that is deeply rooted in Egyptian society and cuts across ideological, cultural and religious fault lines. It lays bare differing interpretations of concepts such as diversity, freedom and faith and highlights a battle by women who were prominent in the campaign to overthrow Mr. Mubarak to have their rights recognised in post-revolt Egypt.

The women confront a conservatism that pervades the Middle East and North Africa as illustrated by the recent creation of a soccer league in the United Arab Emirates that allows women to play behind closed doors in the absence of men as well as Saudi Arabia's struggle with the International Olympic Committee's demand that it include women among its athletes at this year's London Olympics.

UAE and Kuwaiti royals joined prominent foreign representatives this week at a two day conference to encourage women’s participants in sports and the launch of the Fatima Bint Mubarak Women's Sports Awards, named after the third wife of the founder of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who heads the Family Development Foundation.

Egyptian women are battling to have their rights acknowledged on two fronts: recognition by their often socially conservative revolutionary male counterparts as well as Egypt's post-Mubarak military rulers who have systematically humiliated detained women protesters by subjecting them to virginity tests. A court this week acquitted a military doctor who conducted the tests.

More secular Egyptian women fear that the rise of Islamists further threatens achievement of their rights. Islamists have dissolved the Women's Council, charging that it was a creation of Suzanne Mubarak, the ousted president's widely despised wife. Islamist members of parliament have also proposed the establishment of a family ministry that would operate in accordance with Islamic law and roll back legal advances introduced by the Mubarak regime.

The feminists issued their challenge in response to a decision by the ultras -- militant, highly politicised, soccer fans -- to allow women to participate in their 16-day old sit-in in front of parliament only during daytime and to ban them at night starting from 22:00.

The ultras are demanding justice for 74 of their comrades who died in a soccer brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port Said that they believe was instigated by the government in retaliation for their role in the ousting of Mr. Mubarak and their militant opposition to his military successors.

In a statement quoted on the Egyptian news website Bikya Masr, the Independent Egyptian Women's Union said that those "who carry the flame of liberty against the oppressive powers should respect it first." They said that their understanding of diversity and faith ruled out restricting women's right to protest.

The battle for women's rights is one that is being waged by different women's groups -- secular and religious -- whose definition of women’s rights varies both among Middle Eastern and North African groups as well as Western ones.

Western groups objected last month to a decision by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to allow observant Muslim women to wear a headdress that meets their religious and cultural requirements as well as safety and security standards.

The decision by the IFAB, which governs the rules of professional soccer, was intended to open opportunity to a large number of observant Muslim women who had been excluded from a professional career because of what they saw as a conflict between the rules of their faith and the rules of the game.

The conservatism is most deep-seated in Saudi Arabia, home to Wahhabism, one of the world's most puritan and restrictive interpretations of Islam that allows women to travel abroad only with the permission of a male guardian and bans them from driving. The kingdom, under threat of exclusion from the London Olympics if it fails to field women athletes and pressured by human rights groups has responded publicly with a series of test balloons on how to respond.

Saudi officials first leaked a story earlier this year about a plan to build the kingdom’s first stadium especially designed to accommodate women who are currently barred from attending soccer matches because of the kingdom’s strict public gender segregation. The planned stadium was supposed to open in 2014. Saudi media subsequently reported that the plan had been shelved.

Deputy education minister for female student affairs  Noura al-Fayez said in two letters addressed to Human Rights Watch that the government was working to set up a “comprehensive physical education programme”, including sports facilities and a health and nutrition awareness scheme “as part of its national strategy for physical education for boys and girls”, according to the daily al-Watan newspaper. Ms. Al-Fayez said physical education for girls was under consideration “as one of the priorities of the ministry's leadership”.

The letters didn’t stop Human Rights Watch from accusing Saudi Arabia in a report of kowtowing to assertions by the country's powerful conservative Muslim clerics that female sports constitute "steps of the devil" that will encourage immorality and reduce women's chances of meeting the requirements for marriage.

The kingdom’s toothless Shura or Advisory Council moreover issued regulations for women's sports clubs, but conservative religious forces often have the final say in whether they are implemented or not. Saudi Arabia’s official sports body, the General Presidency of Youth Welfare, presided by a member of the royal family, Prince Nawaf Bin Faisal, only caters to men. As a result, the kingdom last year hired a consultant to develop its first national sports plan - for men only.

Al Hayat newspaper, owned by a Saudi royal, reported last month that Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud had approved plans to send female athletes to the London Olympics. That report was quickly squashed with the media quoting Prince Nayef as reversing his statement.

Prince Nawaf subsequently went a step further by telling a news conference: “Female sports activity has not existed (in the kingdom) and there is no move thereto in this regard. At present, we are not embracing any female Saudi participation in the Olympics or other international championships.”

Despite Saudi women in the kingdom pushing the envelope by forming private clubs of their own, Prince Nawaf asserted that the demand for women’s participation came from Saudi women living abroad. He said the kingdom would work to ensure that expatriate Saudi women seeking to compete in the Olympics on their own account rather than as official delegates would do so “in the appropriate framework and comported with Islamic law.” He said he was working with the Saudi mufti and religious scholars to guarantee that nothing “infringed upon the Muslim woman.”
Saudi Arabia adopted a similar approach at the Youth Olympics in 2010 where Saudi equestrian participated without official endorsement and won a bronze medal in show jumping. It was not immediately clear whether the approach would this time be sufficient to remove the IOC’s threat of excluding the kingdom from the Olympics.

The evident debate about women’s rights to sports is part of a far broader discussion about the position of women in Saudi society. In an unusually frank interview with the BBC, Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz lambasted the kingdom’s discriminatory policies and called for the drafting of a constitution that would treat men and women equally as well as sweeping reforms, including “abusive” divorce laws, an education system that teaches “that a woman's position in society is inferior” and "that the angels will curse her if she is not submissive to her husband's needs," and a social affairs ministry that “is tolerating cruelty towards women rather than protecting them.”

To be sure the conservatism that inhibits women’s rights has support among conservative segments of the Middle East and North Africa’s female population. Three Emirate women, have launched, according to a report in The National, a behind closed doors soccer league in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the far more liberal UAE alongside the country’s national women’s team because they had no opportunity to play in an environment that banned men.

"There are some girls that don't mind playing in front of men. But there is a huge percentage of Emirati women who can't play in front of men because of cultural reasons. Those in the community who want to play the sport after university don't have a place to go. It's all open and there isn't really a place for the sport to be developed," said government employee Mariam Al Omaira, a founding partner of Irada (Determination) Sports Development Company.

The league has 84 players spread over six teams.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

In Pursuit of Aristocratic Women: A Key to Success in Norman England

by R. C. DeAragon

Published in the journal Albion

Discussion of marital strategies of the aristocracy in England, 1066-1154, including recruitment through marriage,... more Discussion of marital strategies of the aristocracy in England, 1066-1154, including recruitment through marriage, marital alliances, and political advantage.

Sainte Brigitte de Suède et Alfonso de Jaén : une "amitié spirituelle" / saint Bridget of Sweden and Alfonso de Jaén : a Female-Male friendship in Late Medieval Italy (Language : French)

by Giulia Puma

published in Arzanà. Cahiers de littérature italienne médiévale, n. 13, juin 2010, p. 329-364.

Ecritures et pratiques de l'amitié dans l'Italie médiévale
Describing and experiencing Friendship in Medieval Italy

Publications de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III.

Par « amitié spirituelle », on entend au Moyen Âge l’unisson des amis dans l’amour du Christ, qu’en est-il d’une... more Par « amitié spirituelle », on entend au Moyen Âge l’unisson des amis dans l’amour du Christ, qu’en est-il d’une amitié mixte, entre une femme et un homme ? Les mots employés par sainte Brigitte de Suède (1303-1373) dans ses Révélations pour décrire son rapport à son dernier confesseur, Alfonso de Jaén (1329-1389), constituent des documents précieux pour la connaissance de l’amitié mixte. Ils se rencontrent à Rome en 1368, puis séjournent ensemble auprès du pape. Alfonso sert à la fois à Brigitte de confesseur et d’interprète lors de son entrevue avec Urbain V, visant à le persuader de rentrer d’Avignon à Rome. Alfonso a une très bonne connaissance du latin, ce qui conduit Brigitte à rendre encore plus étroite leur collaboration. Elle reçoit plusieurs révélations où Marie et le Christ lui ordonnent explicitement de confier à l’ermite espagnol le travail de révision et de publication des Révélations. Brigitte est ainsi la dépositaire de la parole divine et Alfonso le récipiendaire de ce précieux trésor. Si l’ami est traditionnellement un alter ego, la relation de Brigitte et d’Alfonso, qui présuppose une profonde similitude morale, aboutit à l’altérité pragmatique de leurs rôles, complémentaires mais hiérarchisés : leur amitié mixte est légitimée, formalisée, codifiée par les interventions divines, qui président en même temps à sa mise en pratique, pour que le message oral des Révélations accède au statut de livre.

After her husband's death in 1344, Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373), a mother of eight, starts having divine revelations and decides to dedicate her life to God, promoting the return of the pope in Rome, city where she lives from 1349 until her death. The paper focuses on the nature of her relationship to her last confessor, the spanish ermit, former bishop, Alfonso de Jaén (1329-1389), also known as Alfonso Pecha da Vadaterra. The documents of her canonization process as well as some of her revelations, edited in Latin by Alfonso, point out their different but complementary role as "amici Dei", God's friends but also friends through God. Bridget and Alfonso seem to be good candidates for what recent research (Sahlin 2001, Coakley 2006) has identified as "amicitia spiritualis". Spiritual friendship, a particular form of Female-Male relationship, would typically tie a charismatic/mystical woman to her confessor, acting both as a spiritual guide to her and as a promoter to the external world of the divine messages she would receive.

Un análisis del efecto de la Ley de igualdad en la representación electoral, parlamentaria y en el comportamiento electoral de las mujeres en las elecciones generales de 2008

by Álvaro Martínez Pérez

Co-authored with Kerman Calvo
Piblished in Estudios de Progreso series, Fundación Alternativas, 2010

Data, Methods, and Theoretical Implications

by Rebecca J. Hannagan

Co-authored with Monica Schneider and Jill Greenlee, published in PS: Political Science and Politics, 2012 as part of a symposium on NSF Conference "New Research on Gender and Political Psychology."

Evgenia Ivanova interviews Olga Karatch // Women in Politics: New Approaches to the Political, #1 (2012)

by Evgenia Ivanova

Olga Karatch is a Belarusian politician. She is the Vitebsk Region Chair of the United Civic Party of Belarus and a Board Member of the named Party. Olga is a Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the International Centre for Gender Initiatives "Adliga: Women for Full Citizenship". She is Chair of the International Centre of Civic Initiatives "Nash Dom". In 2008, Olga was awarded the title of "The Human Rights Activist of the Year" from the Belarusian Chapter of Amnesty International. She also received the International Award for Civil Courage in Germany in 2010.

On the 7th of October, 2011, during a press conference with Russian mass media, Mr. Lukashenko, the President of... more On the 7th of October, 2011, during a press conference with Russian mass media, Mr. Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, expressed his attitude towards the possibility of a woman becoming the President of Belarus. In particular, he said:

… I would not let a woman to take others' position, just for one reason. This is unsuitable for a woman, this is too hard, that is first of all. I, just like the President of Russia, is also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. I just cannot imagine how a woman will be walking before the ranks, or will be at maneuvers… Of course now women can wear trousers, but it is still not the same. It is not women's business. In the European Union it is different, probably a woman can be a President there, but still it would look strange and unnatural. And they have different functions there, but they are a more representative kind, or like that. We are the opposite. Here we have to work hard, we have to run around, we have to stroll wide in order not to rip our pants in the seams, like that, and not other way. That is why it is not for women. Besides, we, Slavs, would not accept a woman as the President. It is a position for men, for men only, you truly would not want to be the President, it's a lot of troubles, a misfortune even, God save you from that. 

We asked a Belarusian politician, Olga Karatch, what does she think of this kind of care Mr. Lukashenko was expressing for female politicians.

Miedo, nostalgia y poder. Las mujeres en la cultura mediática americana tras el 11-S

by Marta Fernández Morales

Political participation: exploring the gender gap in Spain

by Laura Morales

South European Society & Politics Special Issue on “Understanding Gender Inequalities in Southern Europe”. (1999) 4 (2)

«Women in the Spanish Parliament»

by Laura Morales

Celia Valiente, Luis Ramiro & L. Morales, in Yvonne Galligan & Manon Tremblay (eds.), Sharing Power. Women, Parliament and Democracy, Ashgate, 2005

Aile ve Sosyal Politikalar Bakanlığı’nın Teşkilat ve Görevleri Hakkında KHK ve Kadınlar

by Özlem Avcı

published on KadınAKLI on Nov 21th, 2011

Moral De-values

by Mohamed Eno

A poem, excerpt from my forthcoming poetry volume Corpses on the Menu

The verse depicts how women are victims of senseless acts of violence and social immorality in war-torn nations. The... more The verse depicts how women are victims of senseless acts of violence and social immorality in war-torn nations. The poem is dedicated to all women in the world who have undergone such a mayhem; and those who advocate for the rights and well-being of women.

Taking It To The Masses: teaching women and politics as a large enrollment general education class

by Mirya Holman

Women and politics or gender and politics courses are often boutique or upper-division courses in Political Science or... more Women and politics or gender and politics courses are often boutique or upper-division courses in Political Science or Women’s Studies departments. How might the teaching strategies change if the course was taught as a large-enrollment, general education course? Using a survey of women and politics syllabi, this article examines some of the standard or common approaches used when teaching women and politics at the upper division level. Challenges to expanding the enrollment of the course are identified, and alternatives are offered for creating a women and politics course that would be available to students with a wide range of backgrounds and majors. Additional strategies are suggested for adopting the course to a higher enrollment. A framework is provided for integrating women and politics into the general curriculum, including encouraging enrollment.

'Representations of Queen Elizabeth in the Private Poetry of Mildmay Fane, Second Earl of Westmorland (1601-1666)', in Queen and Country, ed. A. Petrina and L. Tosi (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 239-5

by Sara Trevisan

'Lady of the Lake or Queen of the Ocean? The Role of Female Power in Prince Henry’s Barriers and Tethys’ Festival', in Representations of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Culture, ed. A. Petrina and L. Tosi, intr. S. Orgel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 158-71

by Sara Trevisan

Women, Power, and Leadership in American Politics: A Case Study of US Secretary of State Madeleine Korbel Albright

by Sharon Abramowitz

Missing the Female Voice: Why The Federal and State Governments Should Do More to Promote Gender Equality in the United States

by Brian Frederick

Whiteboard, Docs & a Boa: Edith Cowan and the Making of Political Women

by Tara Brabazon

AQ, Vol. 75, No. 4, July-August 2003, pp. 28-34