Gendering the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict: Literary Representations of Kuwaiti Women's Resilience and Resistance

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the 1990-1991 Iraq-Kuwait war as a gendered conflict, and Kuwaiti women's varied reactions to the events of the war, as represented in Kuwaiti fiction. In a category of Kuwaiti war narratives—by both male and female writers—there are the stereotypical images and roles of women: they are portrayed as ‘weak’, ‘passive’ and ‘submissive’ mothers/wives/young girls, and as victims of sexual abuse and humiliations during the conflict. In another category, women's images and roles in the conflict are re-constructed. Relying on the information and insights derived from the fictional texts belonging to the second category, this article demonstrates that the Kuwaiti resistance movement was not solely male-dominated, but rather that Kuwaiti women also served as resistant activists.