Gender, Islam, and the State Kuwaiti Women in Struggle, Pre-Invasion to Postliberation

Abstract

Abstract The ideology and politics of citizenship, democracy, and gender in Kuwait are the central themes of this chapter. Only a fraction of the Kuwaiti population-first-class citizens of the male gender-enjoy the practice of full political rights. Second-class or naturalized citizens have not been granted political rights, nor have those known as bidun, people of nomadic origin who cannot prove settlement requirements and are thus classified as stateless. As first-class citizens, women have been granted full political rights by the Constitution, but an electoral law has prevented them from exercising these rights.2 If rights guaranteed by the Constitution are curtailed in practice, the duties spelled out in the highest law of the land are expected to be fulfilled. Moreover, Kuwaiti citizenship passes down through the male line; a Kuwaiti woman married to a non-Kuwaiti cannot pass her citizenship to her children, while a Kuwaiti man with a foreign wife may do so. While the indigenous population is divided into three unequal categories, and made more unequal by repressive gendering practices, national loyalty is expected by all segments of the population.