A Systematization of Gender Studies in and on the Middle East: Challenges and New Perspectives of Social Theory

Abstract

AbstractThe International Women’s Year of 1975 promoted by United Nations represents a moment of realization on the urgency to address gender equality globally and to include in the discussions all those countries of Global South that for decades had been marginalized and declassified to a “third world” position with respect to the alleged advanced West. Taking this moment as focal point of discussion, the present article aims at pinpointing mark roundings and crucial events for the history and development of gender studies in and on the Middle East, in particular by taking into account the scientific and fictional literature production of feminists and women studies in the Middle Eastern and North African region. Starting from a deep insight on the issues connecting the Western born suffragist movement to the instances promoted by first feminists in theMENA, the systematization here proposed traces a line from late 19th century until today, with the aim of individuating common grounds, transnational challenges and shifts in civil society requests as well as of understanding how all these elements affected and steered the following production both in and out the academic background. Finally, starting from recent disciplines of men, queer andLGBTQ+ studies and their presence as engaging objects of investigation within the region, contemporary pathways undertaken by scholars, activists and artists, both locally and globally, will be employed as theoretical background to grasp and dissect modern transformations occurring to private and public gender relationships in the Arab-Muslim context.