Abdulhadi, Rabab (1998) - The Palestinian Women's Autonomous Movement - Emergdence, Dynamics, and Challenges

The Palestinian Women's Autonomous Movement: Emergence, Dynamics, and Challenges
Author(s): Rabab Abdulhadi

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 12, No. 6, Special Issue: Gender and Social Movements, Part 1
(Dec., 1998), pp. 649-673
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/190511 .
Accessed: 21/10/2012 18:37
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Gender and
Society.
http://www.jstor.org
THE PALESTINIAN WOMEN'S
AUTONOMOUS MOVEMENT
Emergence, Dynamics,
and
Challenges
RABAB ABDULHADI
Yale
University
This article examines the Palestinian women's autonomous movement that
emerged
in the
early
1990s,
emphasizing changes
in the
sociopolitical
context to
accountfor
the movement's
emergence, dynamics,
and
challenges. Using
interviews obtained
duringfieldwork
in Palestine in
1992, 1993,
and
1994,
and
employing
historical and archival
records,
I
argue
that Palestinian
feminist
discourses were
shaped
and
influenced by
the
sociopolitical
context in which Palestinian women acted and with which
they
inter-
acted. The
multiplicity
of
views voiced
by
the women I interviewed attests to the
impossibility of homoge-
nizing andflattening
women's
experiences,
while the
range of
actions and
strategies employed by differ-
ent
groups
and
organizations
calls attention to contextual limitations on social action.
In the
early
1990s,
an autonomous Palestinian women's movement
emerged
in the
Israeli-occupied
West Bank and Gaza
Strip. Relatively independent
of the Palestine
Liberation
Organization (PLO) leadership,
Palestinian women articulated views
and
adopted strategies
that were
distinctly
different from the
previously
con-
structed
imagery
of their womanhood and the roles
assigned
to them
by
their na-
tional movement. While Palestinian women's activism can be traced back to at least
the
early
1920s,
direct concern with women's liberation as
opposed
to women's in-
volvement in the national movement
distinguished
the 1990s' Palestinian women's
stands and actions.
In
1991,
the United Nations
Development
Plan
(UNDP)
Women's Task
Force,
a
coalition of four women's
committees,
four research and
advocacy
centers,
two le-
gal
aid
concerns,
and tens of
grassroots organizations
and
voluntary
associations,
as
well as feminists
academics,
organized
three
workshops
in which hundreds of Pal-
estinian women discussed and
produced
the Women's
Agenda
as a
strategic
vision
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article is
part
of
a
larger project,
"The Limitations
of Nationalism: Gender
Dynamics
and the
Emergent
Palestinian Feminist
Discourses," researched
during my undergraduate
studies at Hunter
College. Different
versions were
presented
at
different places, including meetings of
the
Stratification
Committee
of
the International
Sociological
Association
(ISA),
the American Socio-
logical Association,
Ohio State
University,
the Graduate Center
of
the
City University of
New
York,
Bar-
nard
College,
and Yale
University.
lam
grateful
to
ReemAbdelhadi,
TerryArendell, Nancy Coffin, Cathy
Cohen, Michele
Dillon,
Kai
Erikson, Frances
Hasso,
Maha
Jarad,
Joanne
Nagel, Joseph Masaad,
Chandra
Talpade Mohanty,
Debra
Minkoff,
Rosalind
Petchesky,
Francesca
Polletta, Belinda
Robnett,
Beth
Schneider,
Ella
Shohat,
Carolyn
Somerville,
Nancy
Whittier,
Jaime
Veve, and two
anonymous
re-
viewers
for
comments on different
drafts.
GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 12 No. 6, December 1998 649-673
? 1998
Sociologists
for Women in
Society
649
650 GENDER & SOCIETY / December 1998
document for Palestinian women's
empowerment.
Also in
1991,
the Palestinian
feminist
organization,
El-Fanar,
founded to
protest
the
killing
of women to
protect
"family
honor,"
organized
street demonstrations in three Palestinian
major
towns
inside Israel.
By
1993,
the
Directory of
Palestinian Women's
Organizations
listed
174 women's
organizations operating
in
eight
areas of the
occupied
West
Bank,
Gaza
Strip,
and East Jerusalem. In the same
year,
Palestinian women
organized
conferences, seminars,
and
meetings
in which violence
against
women,
women's
reproductive
health and
rights,
the
drop-out
rates
among
school
girls,
the Islamist
imposition
of a dress code on women in
Gaza,
and women's
legal
status and
per-
sonal status code were
publicly
discussed for the first time. A shift was evident in
the discourse of Islamist women who deviated from the official line of the Islamic
Resistance
Movement, Hamas,
by advocating
a new view on women's roles and
freedoms. A similar
development
was also witnessed
among
women cadres of the
four
major
PLO
groups
who
began
to
publicly question
and criticize their
organiza-
tions'
positions
and
practices
on women's liberation. Publications such as the Ish-
tar, Woman,
Women's
Voice,
and Women's
Affairs began
to
publish
studies on di-
vorce,
early marriages,
women's
professions,
and women's roles in the informal
economy.
The content of women's
writing
in
major
Palestinian
newspapers
shifted
from a focus on
cooking, proper housekeeping,
and
caring
for children to include
discussions of
political
affairs and women's
rights.
Different networks of women
were formed
according
to different
geographic, programmatic, organizational,
and
ideological
concerns. In
1994,
Palestinian women's activism
impacted
the acad-
emy
as feminist academics/activists founded the Women's Studies
Program
at Bir
Zeit
University
with the
purpose
of
promoting
feminist education that is linked to
community
service.
The
emergence
of the Palestinian women's autonomous movement as well as
the
multiplicity
of its
expressions presents
a
puzzle: Why
did the movement
emerge
at this
particular
time,
considering
that the
early
1990s marked
perhaps
the lowest
ebb for the Palestinian national movement? How do we account for the diverse dis-
courses and actions
deployed by
different
"categories"
of Palestinian women?
Third,
how did the
challenges facing
Palestinian women
change
as the context in
which
they
act and with which
they
interact
changed, especially
after the Israel-
PLO Accord of 1993? This article seeks answers to these
questions.
In so
doing,
I
construct a
paradigm
that
grounds
the Palestinian women's movement
historically
and
firmly
situates it in the
sociopolitical
context of Middle Eastern and
global poli-
tics. I
begin by analyzing
the conditions under which the movement
emerged.
I then
turn to a discussion of Palestinian women's discourses and actions.
Finally,
I exam-
ine the
challenges facing
Palestinian women.
My
work in this article is informed
by
two theoretical notions: First is the femi-
nist
"paradigm
of difference" that
recognizes diversity
in women's
experiences
and
acknowledges
that these
experiences
are
shaped by
the intersection of
multiple sys-
tems of
oppression (Flax 1990;
Hill Collins
1990;
hooks
1981;
Jayawardena
1986;
Abdulhadi / PALESTINIAN WOMEN'S MOVEMENT 651
Minh-ha
1989;
Mohanty,
Russo,
and Torres
1991).
Second and
equally important,
I
see
changes
in the
sociopolitical
context as
influencing
and
shaping
the
emergence,
dynamics,
and the future course of the movement
(Staggenborg
1991;
Taylor
and
Rupp
1993;
Whittier
1995). Here,
I draw on
analysis
that lies at the intersection of
political
and
sociological
concerns,
especially
the
general
framework of
political
process/political opportunity
structure offered
by
social movement theorists
(Buechler 1990;
Katzenstein and Mueller
1987;
McAdam
1982, 1996; McAdam,
McCarthy,
and Zald
1996;
Meyer
1993;
Tarrow
1994, 1996).
The definition of the
political
context, however,
must be
expanded
to allow for the
particularities
of the
Palestinian women's case.
McAdam,
McCarthy,
and
Zald,
for
example, suggest
four dimensions in a definition of
political opportunity
structure: "the relative
openness
or closure of the institutional
political system;
the
stability
of that broad
set of elite
alignments
that
typically undergird
a
polity;
the
presence
of elite
allies;
[and]
the state's
capacity
and
propensity
for
repression" (1996, 10).
A closer look at
these dimensions reveals that the discussion is limited to conventional
politics
within the borders of a
single
state,
although
McAdam,
McCarthy,
and Zald
empha-
size that
political
constraints and
opportunities
are
"unique
to the national context
in which
they
are embedded"
(1996, 2-3).
The conventional definition is
inadequate
for
explaining
the
emergence
and
dy-
namics of the Palestinian women's movement. Palestinians have been
dispersed
throughout
the Middle East and the world since the establishment of the state of Is-
rael in 1948.
Consequently,
the context
shaping
Palestinian national and
gender dy-
namics is not limited to the boundaries of a
single
state; rather,
it includes
local,
re-
gional,
and international
politics.
In
addition,
their
emphasis
on the
immediacy
of
structure
may preclude
reference to the
specific
historical
conditions in which a social movement arises and which
uniquely gives
it its
par-
ticular flavor.
Furthermore,
missing
from
McAdam,
McCarthy,
and Zald's
analysis
is an account of the interactive
relationship
between
gender dynamics
and the struc-
ture of
political opportunities.
My
interviews with Palestinian women and
men, however,
suggest
that the Pal-
estinian women's autonomous movement
emerged
as a result of
historically pro-
duced
political
and cultural contexts that created
gendered political opportunities.
The movement came about as a culmination of a rich
history
of
struggles
in which
certain conditions
prior
to the
changes
in the structure of
were
met. This
long
tradition of activism included different forms of collective
action,
generated
various
organizational
models,
developed
networks with other women's
groups,
and
produced
a
particular
culture of
struggle
and combativeness. The emer-
gence
of the Palestinian women's autonomous movement at the lowest ebb of the
national movement
points
to the salience of
gender
in
structuring political opportu-
nities. In
addition,
the
multiplicity
of discursive and action-oriented
expressions
of
the Palestinian women's movement were
directly
linked to the
gendered sociopoli-
tical context in which
they
acted and with which
they
interacted.
RESEARCH METHOD AND DATA SOURCES
My
data include 74
open-ended, in-depth
interviews with 68 Palestinian women
activists
(and
6
men), gathered during
fieldwork in the West
Bank,
Gaza
Strip,
and
Arab East Jerusalem and in the United States in
1992, 1993,
and 1994. While some
interviews were 30 minutes
long,
the
majority
lasted from two to four hours. The
topics
for discussion were diverse and the interviews can best be described as dis-
cussions and
conversations,
consistent with
qualitative
feminist
methods,
rather
than
strictly
structured interviews. I
personally
transcribed the interviews in Ara-
bic,
translated them into
English,
and
thematically
coded them to ensure maximum
accuracy, following
a modified
grounded theory approach (Strauss
and Corbin
1990).
Snowball
sampling
was used. I asked women I met at different
political
and
feminist functions while
they
were
touring
the United States or
participating
at
United Nations'
nongovernmental organization (NGO)
and other conferences or
whom I knew
through political
and feminist activist networks to
participate
in the
research and to nominate other women for interview. I
tapped multiple
networks so
that I included
nonprofessionals
as well as
professionals,
women with diverse
po-
litical affiliations and the
independently
inclined,
members of charitable associa-
tions and women's
committees,
Christians and
Muslims,
secular women and Isla-
mists. I used networks based in
Gaza,
West
Bank,
and East Jerusalem as well as
women from
towns,
villages,
and
refugee camps.
The
group,
then,
is
representative
of the different
political,
social,
and cultural trends
among
Palestinian women in-
volved in the autonomous movement. The
age range
was between 19 and 72 with
the
majority being
in their middle 30s to
early
50s.
Fifty
women were
married,
13
single,
and 3 divorced. Seven were
homemakers;
the rest of the
sample
included
health care
professionals,
social
workers,
and
representatives
of the
media,
literary,
legal,
academic,
and NGO communities. The
sample
was
evenly
divided between
college graduates,
holders of
graduate degrees,
and those with
high
school
diplo-
mas. The academic
disciplines
of those with
degrees
included
engineering,
litera-
ture
(Arabic
and
English),
economics, law,
community
health,
sociology,
and
po-
litical science.
Professions,
disciplines,
and areas of interests of the
sample
overlapped.
For
example,
a
specialist
in
community
health was also a
sociologist,
an economist was a director of a research
center,
and a chair of a women's commit-
tee was a school teacher. If
anything,
this
overlap points
to the blurred lines between
activism,
professionalism,
and interest-a
widespread phenomenon
in the Pales-
tinian
society.
I also relied on records I collected
during my
field research
(1992, 1993,
and
1994)
from diverse sources. I examined material on the Palestinian national move-
ment from
documents,
magazines,
leaflets,
and
publications
of the
PLO,
its various
political
factions,
their
leaders,
and their
support groups;
leaflets issued
by
the Uni-
fied National
Leadership
of the
Uprising (UNLU)
in the
occupied
territories from
its
inception
in 1987 to
1993;
leaflets of the Islamic Resistance
Movement, Hamas;
clippings
from the two
major
Palestinian
newspapers
in the West Bank and Gaza
(Al-Quds
and
Al-Nahar)
on issues relevant to
gender relations;
and
publications
of
Palestinian academic institutions and
universities,
such as the Women's Studies
Program
and the
Community
Health
Project
at Bir Zeit
University.
With
respect
to
women's
activism,
I used
publications
of various Palestinian women's
groups,
in-
cluding
research
centers,
grassroots
and activist
groups, committees,
voluntary (or
charitable) associations;
and
social, cultural, folkloric, economic,
and
political spe-
cialized
organizations.
I drew on
writings by
Palestinian women on Palestinian
women,
in both Arabic and
English,
and on
demographic
and
sociological
data
pro-
duced in
English.'
In
short,
no document or historical record that seemed
remotely
relevant to
my study
was left unexamined.
THE PALESTINIAN WOMEN'S AUTONOMOUS MOVEMENT
The Palestinian women's autonomous movement did not
emerge
in a vacuum.
Palestinian women's collective actions were influenced
by (1)
a
preexisting
cul-
tural context of
gender hierarchy, (2)
local
conditions,
and
(3)
international and re-
gional developments.
Women's actions and interactions were
immediately
situated
in a local context of the Palestinian national movement's
dismissal-despite lip
service-of women's
aspirations
and
expectations, especially during
the
Intifada,
or
popular uprising,
and Israeli
policies
that
exploited
societal norms of honor and
the
expected
code of
morality.
The
evolving
localized context within which Pales-
tinian women
experienced mounting grievances
saw the
weakening
of the
Intifada,
the
political prominence
of Islamist
groups,
and the
emergence
of
pseudomilita-
rized
youth
bands with the
self-assigned
role of
imposing
a certain code of moral
behavior. International and
regional developments
in the late 1980s and
early
1990s,
such as the New World
Order,
perestroika, glasnost,
and the Gulf
War,
repre-
sented a new set of
intervening
conditions in which windows of
opportunities
were
opened
for Palestinian women to
challenge
the nationalist-constructed
imagery
of
their womanhood. The international
context,
specifically
Palestinian women's net-
working
with other women's
groups
at international
gatherings, sharpened
their
sense of the
injustice wrought upon
them and
provided
them with other models
by
which to
interpret
and
protest
their
experiences.
More recent
developments-in-
cluding
the Israel-PLO Accord of
September
13, 1993,
and the
subsequent political
conflict between the Arafat
leadership
on one side and the secular Left and the Isla-
mist
groups
on the
other-radically changed
the
sociopolitical
context. This com-
plex,
multidimensional,
and fluid
sociopolitical map represents
the context in
which Palestinian women activists embarked on a collective
process
of
revising
their historical
narrative,
negotiating
their social and
political roles,
challenging
their
subordination,
and
articulating
new terms for their
participation
in the social
and
political
life of their
people.
Historical Roots
Palestinian women's activism can be traced back to at least 1921 with the foun-
dation of the Palestinian Women's
Union,
which led demonstrations
against
the
Balfour Declaration and
organized
the General Palestinian Women's
Congress
in
Jerusalem in 1929
(Al-Khalili 1977, 77).
Palestinian women
played
active
roles,
as
well, during every stage
of their
people's struggle. During
the 1936-39 Revolt
(Ha-
dawi
1989;
Kanafani
1974;
see also Guardian Collective
1977),
Palestinian women
cared for the
injured,
demonstrated,
signed petitions,
hid
rebels,
and took
up
arms to
defend their land
(Abu
Ali
1974, 30-32).
In the 1947-48
war,
which resulted in the
establishment of the state of
Israel,
Palestinian women
immediately
had to assume
the
responsibility
of their families and their nation
(Kazi 1987, 28-29),
thus radi-
cally altering
their social roles. Between 1948 and
1967,
Palestinian women
joined
various
political
movements such as
Al-Fatah,
founded in 1965
by
Yasser Arafat
and his
colleagues (Hart 1984, 116);
the Arab National
Movement,
founded
by
Dr.
George
Habash and Dr. Wadi Haddad in 1952
(Khaled 1973); Al-Baath;
and the
Jordanian Communist
Party (Al-Khalili 1977, 96).
Women also
played key
roles
among
the Palestinian
community
in
Israel,
which was
placed
under Israeli martial
law from 1948 to
1966,
especially
in
Al-Ard,
an
underground
movement,
and the
Israeli Communist
Party.
In
1965,
shortly
before the Israeli
occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza
(and
other Arab
territories),
139
delegates,
chosen
through
informal social networks and
representing
Palestinian communities around the
world,
convened and formed the
General Union of Palestinian Women
(GUPW)
as a mass-based institution of the
PLO.
Reflecting gender
consciousness while
upholding
its claim to Palestinian na-
tionhood,
the GUPW's charter
departed
from that of the PLO. The Palestine Na-
tional Charter
(1968)
confined Palestinian
identity
to that which is "transmitted
fromfather
to son" and limited Palestinianness to
"anyone
born to a Palestinian
fa-
ther
[emphasis
added]" (as
reprinted
in Hadawi
1989, 310).
The
GUPW,
on the
other
hand,
surpassed
this masculinist construct to
recognize
both mother and fa-
ther as
defining
the national
identity
of their children.
The 1967 Israeli
occupation
was a
turning point
for the Palestinian
movement,
as well as for Palestinian women. The
overwhelming
defeat of the Arab official re-
gime
led to the 1968-69 takeover of the PLO
by
Palestinian
guerrilla groups.
The
newly adopted
PLO Charter defined armed
struggle
as the
"only strategy
for the
liberation of Palestine"
effectively making martyrdom
the ultimate act of sacrifice
and
courage.
Meanwhile,
an environment of
occupation
and resistance relaxed social
control,
thus
enabling
Palestinian women to
join guerilla groups,
which resulted in
their increased involvement in the resistance movement. In its
attempt
to mobilize
the
largest possible
numbers of the
population,
however,
the Palestinian national
movement was faced with a
paradox:
how to define and
conceptualize
women's
roles without
disturbing
the delicate
gendered
balance in Palestinian
society.
Not unlike other national
movements,
the Palestinian
leadership
drew on exist-
ing
societal norms of
patriarchy
and at times mirrored the discourses of their colo-
nizers
(see, e.g.,
Fanon's
analysis [1963, 1965]
of the
Algerian revolution). Thus,
the Palestinian
leadership
defined women's roles
by constructing
three
distinct,
yet
interconnected,
images
of Palestinian womanhood.2 The first
image,
the
"superwo-
man,"
glorified martyrdom
and nurturance. A leader of the GUPW and of the Fatah
movement,
for
example,
contrasted the
ways
in which the PLO
leadership expected
women and men to behave:
No
image
was constructed for the man who is
accepted
as an
activist,
even if he di-
vorces his wife and marries
another;
he
may
even
marry
another while still married to
the first. His
political image
remains unshaken.
But,
for
us,
women? We are
expected
to be
perfect
in
everything;
a woman has to be a
good
mother,
a
good
wife,
and at the
same time a
good
activist,
a hard
worker,
and a
militant;
her home must be well-
tended,
her social
standing good;
and her
appearance presentable.
This is inhuman.
Do
they
want us to be
goddesses?
The second
image,
the "fertile mother" or
reproducer
of the
nation,
drew on cul-
tural
heritage
and
encouraged having
a
large
number of
children,
preferably boys.
Constructing
this
image
showed that the Palestinian national
leadership
did not
contest-but
actually acquiesced
to-Israel's definition of the conflict as a "demo-
graphic
war,"
in which
victory
is achieved
by
the side with the
largest population.
Thus,
"bearing
more children for the revolution" was
repeatedly
heard from PLO
Chairman Yasser Arafat as he exhorted women to have no less than 12 children each
(Najjar
1992, 258).
This call mirrored the task
assigned
to Jewish women
by
Ben
Gurion
(Freedman 1990)
and
attempted
to
respond
to infamous statements made
by
Golda Meir-the
only
woman to ever become Israel's
prime
minister-who
pub-
licly spoke
of her
"nightmares"
caused
by
the realization that
upon waking up,
"an-
other Palestinian child will be born"
(Meir 1975,
as cited in Abdo
1991,
24).
The third
image
conceived of Palestinian womanhood as a
signifier
of national
honor. The
nation, Palestine,
was
imagined (see
Anderson
1991)
as a vulnerable be-
loved
woman,
whose victimization
by
Zionist settlers was to be vindicated
by
Sha-
bab
Al-Tha'r,
or
young
men of
revenge,
the name of a resistance
group
that
emerged
in the 1950s. Israeli
policies
were
implicated
in the consolidation of these
images.
For
example, shortly
after the
beginning
of the 1967
occupation,
Israeli
interroga-
tors
exploited concepts
of honor and shame to
bring
Palestinian women
prisoners
to
submission and confession
(Warnock 1990).
As Warnock and others
(e.g.,
Thorn-
hill
1992)
have
shown,
Israeli
interrogation
methods included
threatening
Palestin-
ian women with
rape
and
attempting
in some cases to tear
up
their clothes and to ex-
pose
their nakedness to their fathers or brothers. In most
cases,
Palestinian women
prisoners opted
to confess rather than soil their honor and
disgrace
their families.
As a
result,
the national
slogan,
al-ard wala al-
'ard,
or "land before
honor,"
was de-
ployed
to
suggest
that
liberating
the homeland took
precedent
over
preserving
women's "honor." Rather than
signifying
a radical discursive shift in Palestinian
national
lingo,
this
slogan simply suggested
a different order of
priorities.
Nonethe-
less,
the
complexity
of
gendered
nationalist
politics
becomes
apparent:
While in-
voking
this
slogan
enabled a few victims of sexual violence to
speak up
without
bringing
"shame" to themselves and their
families,
it did not convince a
majority
of
sexually
tortured women to
report
such
abuses,
lest their
reputations
be tarnished.
For
example,
Fatma Abu
Bakra,
interrogated
for 50 continuous
days
in 1986 in
Ashkelon
prison
and
eventually
forced to
confess,
revealed 11 months later and
only
when allowed to
speak
to her female
lawyer,
Lea
Tsemel,
that she was
sexually
tortured
(Thorhill
1992, 24, 31-32).
Others doubted that "land before honor" radi-
cally changed things,
as an activist at the Women's Affairs Center in Gaza ex-
plained:
The
concept
of "honor" still
persists
and the Israelis know it. Zionism and Israel have
exploited
the
concept
of honor and its connection to Palestinian tradition and customs.
And this has
played
a
great
role in
shaping
the
history
of the Palestinian cause.
Palestinian
women, then,
were
always
involved in the
political
life of their
peo-
ple.
Women's active
participation,
however,
was not sufficient to
radically
alter the
status
quo
in
gender
relations. This was due to the Palestinian movement's view that
national liberation was its first and
only priority,
Israeli
policies
that
produced gen-
dered
occupation practices,
and Palestinian women's
participation
in the
reproduc-
tion and maintenance of national
gendered
discourses.
Intifada:
Hopes
for
Freedom,
Broken Promises
The Palestinian Intifada
began
on December
9, 1987,
as a
democratic,
grassroots
movement.
Bringing together
all sectors of Palestinian
society
with the
professed
aim of
rolling
back 20
years
of Israeli
occupation,
the Intifada called for an inde-
pendent
Palestinian state with a new set of
political,
cultural,
and socioeconomic
values. The Intifada
shaped gender dynamics by providing
Palestinian women with
the
necessary
skills for their future feminist
struggles,
enabled them to network and
interact with each
other,
and raised their
expectations, especially during
its first
year.
Palestinian women's
participation
en masse in the
social, economic,
and
po-
litical affairs
gave
them a sense of
power
and
accomplishment.
A
preexisting
net-
work of women's committees and associations
(see Rupp
and
Taylor
1987;
Taylor
1989) provided literacy
classes and
organized
vocational
training
in
sewing,
weav-
ing,
and secretarial skills. Child care centers were
opened
to
provide
a safe environ-
ment for children while their mothers were at work.
According
to Eileen
Kuttab,
founder of "Our Production is Our Pride"
cooperative,
women's committees also
formed economic
cooperatives
to sustain their
livelihood,
to
boycott
Israeli
goods,
and to
provide
a Palestinian national alternative-a main theme of the Intifada. It
seemed as if a new dawn were
breaking: According
to Manar
Hassan,
cofounder of
El-Fanar,
the Palestinian Feminist
Organization,
In its
beginning,
the Intifada was not
only
a
political
issue;
a social revolution was tak-
ing place.
Women
began
to
get
out of the
house,
from their
cocoon,
from the kitchen
and
washing
dishes,
and
go
out and
participate
with men. As if she has
forgotten
the
whole
history
of
patriarchal oppression.
She could now lead
popular
committees,
build other
committees, decide,
and
participate
in
decision-making.
This is not
only
nationalism. Here the
linkage
was
being
made
unconsciously.
New forms of street activities in which women took
part
included international
women's
day
marches
organized by
the
Higher
Women's Council
(HWC)
in differ-
ent
parts
of the West Bank and Gaza. A member of the Union of
Working
Women's
Committees,
affiliated with the
People's Party,
cited the Nablus event on March
8,
1988,
in which over
1,000
women
participated,
as indicative of social
change:
Although
we do not have a barometer to measure how much of a social
improvement
we
accomplished,
I can at least
say
that when I
participate
in a
march,
my
mother-in-
law,
or the store owner
stopped giving
me the look we all knew
implied
criticism.
The HWC was a concrete
organizational
mechanism
developed
as a network of the
four women's committees that came
together
to build a coalition with
politically
unaffiliated women.3 The creation of the UNLU and the
emphasis
the Intifada
placed
on
"unity
in
struggle" provided
the
leadership
of women's committees with
the incentive to coordinate their activities and to minimize factional
competition.
The second
year
of the Intifada saw a shift in the local
context,
which
directly
al-
tered
gender dynamics,
thus
crushing
Palestinian women's
hopes
for liberation.
This
change
resulted from a combination of the successful
attempt by
the Islamic
Resistance
Movement, Hamas,
to
impose wearing
the
Hijab,
or
headcover,
on
women in
Gaza,
harsher measures
adopted by
the Israeli
occupation
authorities,
and the
replacement
of the
grassroots
resistance
by
small
semimilitary
bands of
young
men. For
example, using
intimidation and
threats,
Hamas activists threw
acid, stones, tomatoes,
and
eggs
on unscarved women to force women to
comply
with their will
(Hammami 1990).
As former Palestinian
spokeswoman,
Hanan
Ashrawi,
put
it:
The most visible
aspect
of this victimization is the
Hijab.
To
me,
this sums
up
the
way
you
view a woman: as a sex
object,
as
shameful,
so
you
cover her
up;
as a
commodity,
the
possession
of the
man;
as a
secondary
member of
society-she
is
supposed
to
stay
at home to
support
the master ... The dress code reinforces the
invisibility
of women.
(Hadi 1992, 15)
Palestinian women were also
subjected
to other forms of abuse. Hamas' coercive
act did not elicit a
single
word from the UNLU until
September
1989. After a
year
had
lapsed,
UNLU's leaflet no. 43 was followed
by
an
appendix upholding
the
rights
of women not to adorn the
Hijab (Hammami 1990, 40). By
then it was too
late: Almost all Palestinian women
traveling
to Gaza had to wear the
Hijab
or risk
being
attacked
by
Hamas. The initial refusal of national
groups
to lend
support
to
their own
members,
let alone the rest of
women,
added insults to
injury.
A few
months
earlier,
on November
15, 1988,
the Declaration
of
Palestinian
Independ-
ence
proclaimed opposition
to discrimination on "the basis on
sex, race,
religion,
or
political
affiliation."
The deterioration of the Intifada was also reflected in the
importance
Palestini-
ans
gave
to
Isqat,
or the
process by
which Israel
exploited
the
concept
of honor to
recruit Palestinian
collaborators,
primarily
women.
Literally meaning
"to make
one
fall,"
Isqat
became a household
expression
after
greater
numbers of Palestini-
ans were
arrested, assassinated,
or
expelled by
Israel based on data
supplied by
in-
formants. The
practice
served to
marginalize
and make
suspect
all women activists.
A leader of the Union of Women's
Struggle
Committees in Gaza described the
pro-
cess of
Isqat:
Women can be turned into collaborators
using
a
cup
of coffee. Mukhabarat
[Israeli
in-
telligence]
finds out who the woman's best friend is and recruit her to
get
to their
origi-
nal
target. They
used to use a
cup
of coffee
spiked
with
drugs
but now after
they
made
"technological
advances,"
they
started to make women sniff
[drugs].
Sometimes a
hairdresser is used. A woman
going
for a haircut is
given
a
cup
of coffee with
drugs.
Once
unconscious,
the Palestinian
Effendi [an
Ottoman
expression meaning gentle-
man,
used
sarcastically here]
who "volunteered" his services to the
Israelis,
undresses
her,
sometimes
rapes
her,
and takes
pictures
of her either naked or in other
compro-
mising positions,
which
he, then,
hands over to the Mukhabarat. Two weeks
later,
they
send for her and threaten to make these
photos public.
This is how one becomes
saqita
[fallen].
The coincidence of the deterioration of the Intifada with the
rising popularity
of
Hamas,
and increased Israeli
attempts
to recruit
collaborators,
was detrimental to
Palestinian women. An
emerging
"culture of
modesty" (Hammami 1991, 78)
mar-
ginalized
Palestinian women. With the
exception
of those
residing
and
working
in
relatively
less restricted environments
(urban, middle-class,
highly
educated,
and
secular)
and who
rejected
these demarcation lines
outright,
the
majority
of Palestin-
ian women were unable to
seriously challenge
threats to their honor.
Instead,
they
devised
culturally grounded
measures to ensure that their
reputations
remained un-
blemished while
guaranteeing
their freedom of movement and activism. For exam-
ple, according
to an activist from a Gaza
refugee camp,
women survived
Isqat:
Through
the word of
mouth,
we
spread
the news that no one should have a drink while
making
social visits. No
coffee,
no RC
[a
local
soda], nothing.
"Even while
visiting
your
own
brother,
do not drink
anything, except
if the can is sealed!" At one
point,
we
started
saying
that we were
fasting;
we were either
making up
for the
days
lost
[while
menstruating]
in Ramadan or because it was a
Monday
or a
Thursday [days during
which
fasting
is
favored].
SHIFTING CONTEXT: WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY
As evident thus
far,
grievances concerning gender
subordination were shared
by
a
growing
number of Palestinian women as
early
as the late 1960s. As
well,
women's
expectations
of
improved
status arose
during
the first
year
of the
Intifada,
only
to be crushed in its later
phases. Clearly,
Palestinian women were not new to
experiencing
activism,
building organization,
or
engaging
in different
aspects
and
forms of
struggle (see Tilly 1978). Why
did an autonomous Palestinian women's
movement, then,
fail to
emerge
until the 1990s? The constellation of
international,
regional,
and local events in the
early
1990s
marked,
perhaps,
the lowest ebb for the
Palestinian movement.
Ironically,
these same
developments opened
windows of
opportunities (Meyer 1993)
for Palestinian women to
collectively
mount their
challenges.
The
early
1990s witnessed the
emergence
of the New World Order-a
political
development
that reverberated at an
international,
regional,
and local level. Interna-
tionally,
the New World
Order,
a doctrine
conceptualized by
then U.S. President
George
Bush,
aimed at
reaping
the fruits of a situation in which the United States
became the
only superpower
in a
unipolar
world. The Gulf War was the most visible
manifestation of this
policy.
The
shifting
international balance of
power
affected
Palestinian women in different
ways.
At a
regional
level,
the
collapse
of the Social-
ist bloc undermined the influence of Marxist
thought among
Arab communists and
cost Arab nationalists and
communists,
including
the
Palestinians,
their most for-
midable
ally.
In
addition,
Iraq's
defeat,
a bastion of
officially organized
Arab na-
tionalism,
and the division of the Arab states
during
the war dealt a
paralyzing
blow
to that
ideology.
The combination of a lessened influence of Marxist
thought
and a weakened
standing
of the nationalist
project adversely
affected secular
thought
and increased
the
credibility
of Islamist forces.
Furthermore,
a
professor
of
sociology
and
women's studies at Bir Zeit
University
attributed the
rising popularity
of Islamism
to
conflicting
class
cleavages
as Palestinians at the
grass
roots
rejected
the "bour-
geoisie's
efforts to
bring
about Western-oriented modernization." Because "these
new sectors were alienated from the
West,
they
wanted
something
authentic-an
indigenous response.
Islamic tendencies
provided
the answer." Palestinian
women,
like Palestinian
men,
were not isolated from the
ideological
effects of the
shifting
balance of forces. First of
all,
because communist and nationalist
groups
had cham-
pioned
the cause of women's
liberation,
their
gender programs, grounded
as
they
were in "Western" and "modernist"
notions,
could not be
salvaged
from the blow
dealt to their
political platforms. Second,
the Marxist and nationalist
groups
of
which women were members lost a base of their
support
to Islamist tendencies as
the latter offered an alternative "authentic"
space
for women who could now
organ-
ize without
having
to
worry
about
violating
social norms.
At a local
level,
as
well,
international and
regional developments
were
particu-
larly
detrimental to Palestinian
women,
especially
as
they
affected the PLO. As a
punishment
for its
opposition
to U.S.
intervention,
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf
states cut off their
petrodollar pipeline
to the
PLO,
thus
curtailing
the
ability
of its
groups, especially
Arafat's
Fatah,
to
financially
subsidize their full-time militants
in the
occupied
territories. The U.S.-led
victory
left the Palestinian
leadership
with
a no-win "choice": either
joining
the
U.S.-proposed negotiations
with Israel (as an
alternative to an international conference under UN
auspices)
or
risking
a loss of
power
in a
region
dominated
by
the United States and its allies. Combined with
worsening
economic
conditions,
the
political negotiations depleted
the Palestinian
movement of its
insurgent
character and
preempted any
serious confrontations with
the Israeli
military.
It was
virtually impossible
for the Intifada to
persist
as a
popular
mass-based resistance movement. As the Intifada
declined,
an
emerging
laid-off
army
of
Shabab,
or
young
men,
launched a
campaign
of "social violence"
against
their own
people, according
to a feminist
professor
at Bir Zeit
University.
Self-
assigned
the role of a
morality police
that
operated
in the streets of the West Bank
and
Gaza,
the Shabab embarked on
"rooting
out" what
they
viewed as moral
decay,
according
to a Fatah leader in Nablus. The effect of
enforcing
a code of
morality
worsened the lot of Palestinian women.
How, then,
did the
early
1990s
open
windows of
opportunity
for Palestinian
women to mount their
challenges?
To answer this
question,
we must
expand
our un-
derstanding
of a
structure to include
sociopolitical changes
beyond
the confines of a
single
state and to
incorporate gender
as a lens
through
which we can see the distinct effect of
changes
in the
political
context on women as
opposed
to the Palestinian movement as a whole or even the Palestinian Left. Local
political changes
in the West
Bank, Gaza,
and Israel were not conducive to the
emergence
of the Palestinian women's autonomous movement.
Regional
and inter-
national
developments
were more favorable.
First,
Palestinian women
deployed
newly
available
ideological concepts
such as
perestroika
and
glasnost
to frame their
claims
(Gamson
and
Meyer
1996;
Snow et al.
1986;
Swidler
1986); second,
Pales-
tinian women networked with the international women's movement
(Meyer
and
Whittier
1995).
Perestroika embodied
glasnost,
or
openness,
an essential idea that
greatly
facili-
tated Palestinian women's
challenges, especially
members of leftist
political
organizations,
who constituted a
majority
of activists.
By challenging
the
rigid
Len-
inist
conceptions
of internal
party
life,
especially
democratic centralism and the
uniform
party
line,
glasnost opened spaces
for Marxist women to break their
silence and to criticize abuses
by
their
leadership.
Historically,
Palestinian leftist
organizations
had
publicly professed support
for
women's liberation and
waged
a
vigorous campaign
to recruit women. While much
more
forthcoming regarding
women's
rights
than Yasser Arafat's Fatah,
Palestin-
ian Marxist
groups,
nonetheless,
viewed women's
participation
as a
constituency
issue of recruitment and mobilization.
Every
leftist
group
created a women's bu-
reau to
expand
women's
membership;
women members were also
assigned
the task
of
promoting
their
groups' political platform
within the GUPW and other women's
forums. In
addition,
because PLO Marxist
groups
were modeled after Lenin's con-
ception
of
party building, they
were so centralized that it was almost
impossible
for
their women members to
negotiate
the fine line between democratic centralism and
gender hierarchy.
As a former member of the
Popular
Front for the Liberation of
Palestine
put
it,
"In most cases the two fed on each
other, reinforcing
our low rank
and status." Marxist women leaders
practiced
hierarchical, centralized,
and fac-
tional rules of
leadership
similar to their male comrades.
Gorbachev's introduction of
glasnost,
however,
created a storm
among
demo-
cratically
minded women and men. It diffused
(see
Tarrow
1996, 52)
the Soviet
Communist
Party's
internal debates to other Marxist-oriented
groups
around the
world.
According
to a coordinator of the Women's Studies Committee of the Bisan
Center for Research and
Development:
Of course
glasnost
had an effect. We do not live in an isolated
cocoon;
international
developments
affect national
processes
not
only
for the Palestinians. We are not dif-
ferent from
Nicaragua,
or
any
other
place
in the Third World. As leftist
women,
we are
influenced
by changes
in leftist
thought, especially among
our allies. Glasnost meant
that we were not
stupid
or
suffering
mental defect. It meant that we could
discuss,
de-
bate,
and
argue-debate theory
and
argue
about criticism and
self-criticism;
we could
criticize the
structure,
the
hierarchy,
and the
ideology;
we could
question
where we
were
going.
In
addition,
the
spillover (Meyer
and Whittier
1995)
from their
networking
and
interaction with international feminist
groups
had
varying
effects on Palestinian
women. On one
hand,
Palestinian women encountered different brands of femi-
nism in
Mexico,
Copenhagen,
and Nairobi. These encounters
provided
Palestinian
women with international models of feminist
struggles,
which made it harder for
them to
accept
the limited roles their
leadership assigned
to them. Above
all,
they
drew on liberation
strategies
formulated
by
other Third World
feminists,
especially
those from
Nicaragua,
South
Africa, Vietnam,
and
Cuba,
according
to the research-
ers at the Women Affairs Center in Nablus. A member of the Women's Action
Committees,
affiliated with the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine,
noted that "the dialectical
linking
of feminist and national
agendas
in Third World
women's
discourses,
particularly
those
engaged
in national liberation
struggles,
resonated with our own
experiences
and reinforced our determination." A sociol-
ogy professor
at Bir Zeit
University
cited
writings by
women from the Indian sub-
continent as
exemplary
theoretical frameworks that
analyzed
and
posited
solutions
to the multitude of obstacles women in such contexts faced.
Conversely,
an activist
from the
UPWC,
affiliated with the
Popular
Palestine,
expressed
her
outrage
over Western feminists who labeled "Third World women as
nationalists, ultra-radicals,
or bearers of male
agendas." Especially
directed at
Third World women who refused to
fragment
their
gender
from national
identities,
this line was
put
forth at the Nairobi Non-Governmental Women's Conference. For
example,
a member of the Palestinian
delegation
said that
Betty
Friedan and Bella
Abzug
echoed the words of Maureen
Reagan (who
led the official U.S.
delegation)
and criticized
what,
in their
view,
constituted a
"politicization
of the women's
movement"
(see Cagatay,
Grown,
and
Santiago
1986, 401-12). Egyptian
feminist
Nawal El-Saadawi said at a feminist event in New York that Friedan
strongly
criti-
cized her "because I dared
express my support
for the Palestinian cause."
The
emergence
of the Palestinian women's autonomous movement at the lowest
ebb of their national cause underlines the need for a contextualized and
gendered
analysis
of
structure.
Accounting
for Palestinian women's
collective actions necessitated
(1) transcending
the boundaries of a
single
state and
examining
the
regional
and international
sociopolitical
context and
(2) paying
closer attention to the
ways
in which windows of
opportunity
were
opened
to Pales-
tinian women at a time when
they
were blocked to their national movement.
DISTINCT
EXPERIENCES,
MULTIPLE
DISCOURSES,
DIVERSE STRATEGIES
The Palestinian women's autonomous
movement,
I
argue, emerged
from the
combination of
international,
regional,
and local
conditions;
the cumulative
strug-
gles
of Palestinian
women;
the effects of
networking
with other women from
around the
world; and,
of
course,
the Intifada. As is the case with other women's
movements in the Third World
(Jayawardena
1986;
Mohanty,
Russo,
and Torres
1991),
the Palestinian women's autonomous movement was not a uniform
develop-
ment,
nor did it
speak
with a
single
voice. The roots of
proliferating
women's dis-
courses and action-oriented
strategies
can be attributed to a
long history
of activism
(see Rupp
and
Taylor
1987;
Taylor 1989). During
this
history,
Palestinian women
generated
different forms of collective action and
organizational
models,
formed
networks
among
themselves and with international women's
groups,
and created a
particular
culture
(see
Whittier
1995)
of
struggle
and combativeness around
spe-
cific feminist identities
(see Taylor
and Whittier
1992).
As Hanan
Ashrawi,
former
Palestinian
spokesperson, explained
in her
keynote
address at the first
plenary
ses-
sion of the Global Feminist
Conference,
organized
in 1992
by
the National
Organi-
zation for Women and held in
Washington,
D.C.:
My participation
in the
peace process
is not because of an accident of
history
and not
as a result of tokenism or
symbolic
women's
presence.
It is rather a
part
of the cumula-
tive achievements of Palestinian women who have
struggled
for so
long
to make
themselves
heard,
to make their achievements
felt,
and to
forge
a
place
for
themselves,
a
place
of
equality
with the
men,
regardless
of all the different
types
of
oppression
we
suffer from.
Partly
because of the context in which the movement
developed,
and
partly
be-
cause of the
diversity
in the lives and
experiences
of the women whose actions and
interactions
shaped
its
course,
a
range
of discourses
emerged, depending largely
on
the situation of different constituencies of Palestinian women. While some Pales-
tinian women accommodated themselves to the
sociopolitical
status
quo
as a sur-
vival
strategy
intended to shield them from social ostracism and
political
isolation,
more
oppositional
views and action-oriented
strategies
were
generally
articulated
by
women whose social-economic location afforded them the
ability
to be more
confrontational.
My
discussion below includes
emergent
accommodational femi-
nist discourses
among
activists who chose to
struggle
for women's
rights
from
within Islamist and PLO leftist and mainstream
groups.
I also discuss the
opposi-
tional feminist discourses of activists
engaged
in
contesting
dominant views on re-
production
and women's bodies. I must stress that
although
the
examples
discussed
here
may
seem to
represent
either
extreme,
the situation "on the
ground,"
as militant
women describe
it,
is messier for a
couple
of reasons.
First,
most women I inter-
viewed
expressed contradictory
views that cannot be
neatly
framed as either ac-
commodation or confrontation. And
second,
confrontational actions
produced
a
normalization of
previously
considered taboo
issues,
while what
might
have
seemed at first
glance
as accommodation turned out to be of extreme value to
women's
empowerment.
The secular women I interviewed in 1993 shared a consensus that Islamist
women's views and actions were accommodationist.
However,
such conclusion is
contradicted
by
the visions articulated
by
Islamist women in
my
interviews. For ex-
ample, every
Islamist woman I interviewed in Nablus and Gaza
departed
from Ha-
mas and
strongly
criticized the
imposition
of the
Hijab
on
women,
invoking
the
Muslim
dictum,
"there is no
imposition
in
religion."
Also,
both the director of the
Educational
Development
Center in Gaza and a leader of the Muslim Woman's So-
ciety
in Nablus
emphatically
stressed the need for women to
engage
in
Ijtihad,
or
the
interpretation
of Islamic
scripture,
to contest the dominant "anti-women
rulings
by
conservative clerics." The Gaza
director,
for
example,
said that she "refused to
accept
the
rigid rulings"
that
prohibit
women from
physically coming
in contact
with men to whom
they
are not related
by marriage
or
by
blood.
Categorically op-
posed
to women's seclusion in the
home,
this
religious
woman said that the
exigen-
cies of her work necessitated that she shook hands with men and that she did not
cover her hair while
hosting foreign
women,
contrary
to conservative
teachings.
The Nablus leader also
engaged
in
interpretation
as she
strongly disagreed
with an-
other member of her
group
who was
opposed
to birth control.
According
to the
leader,
Ijtihad
and concern for women's health make it
possible
to use
contracep-
tives. Islamist women deviated from the strict doctrine advocated
by
the Islamist or-
ganizations
of which
they
were either members or
supporters
for two reasons.
First,
their worldview
upheld
Islam as a belief
system
and a
way
of life.
Second,
the emer-
gence
of the Palestinian women's autonomous movement made it
impossible
for Is-
lamist women not to come
up
with answers to issues of women's
rights initially
raised
by
secularists. The two factors motivated these women to articulate an
Islamist-shaped
frame for women's liberation
by incorporating
different elements
from their context: classical Muslim
tenets,
Ijtihad,
and
socially acceptable
femi-
nist
practices (Snow
et al.
1986).
Women who
recognized
the limitations of the PLO
political organization
to
which
they belonged
but maintained their
membership may
be classified as accom-
modationist. How else can we reconcile the
questions
raised
by
a Fatah member
who
complained
about the
unequal
distribution of her
organization's
resources be-
tween men and women:
"Why
does he have a
fax,
a
car,
a car
phone,
an
office,
and a
computer,
while I have
nothing.
And on
top
of
everything
else,
I have to walk to
my
meetings'?
I am a full-time
[on monthly salary]
activist too!" with her insistence to
maintain her
membership?
And what about a
Popular
Palestine
(PFLP)
member who had no doubt that her
group "privileges rifaq [male
comrades]
over
rafiqat
[female comrades]"
but refused to
resign?
At
first,
it
may
seem that these women did not know what was best for them.
However,
both were
fully
aware of what
they
were
doing.
The Fatah activist
explained
that she felt more
empowered
as a member of a
major organization
than as an unaffiliated activist.
The PFLP
member,
on the other
hand,
said that she and other women could influ-
ence attitudes and
policies
more on the inside than on the
outside,
especially
when
employing
a
strategy
of "constructive
engagement"
in which
they sought
to dia-
logue,
to
debate,
to
pressure,
and to
push
their male comrades toward
change.
Among
the actions
pursued
was the
publication
of a
poem
entitled,
"An Initial Dia-
logue
with our
Companeros
Who Do Not Wash Their
Socks,"
written
by
Cuban
poet Milagros
Gonzales and
published by
the Union of Palestinian Women's Com-
mittees,
identified with the
Popular
Front. The Union
employed
the
poem
as a vehi-
cle
by
which
they sought
to raise the consciousness of their comrades
by encourag-
ing
women,
on one
hand,
to
protest
their subordination while
embarrassing
men,
on
the
other,
by depicting
their behavior as unfit for
revolutionaries,
especially given
the
high
esteem with which Palestinian leftists hold the Cuban
experience.
On the other end of the continuum,
more
oppositional
discourses and confronta-
tional actions
emerged among
two
"categories"
of women: the more-educated
middle-class women, especially
those
receiving
their education
abroad,
and
politi-
cally independent
activists whose
fluency
in
foreign languages
and freedom to
travel abroad enabled them to
adopt
more radical feminist stands than the rest of the
women's movement. Some of these women teach at Palestinian
colleges
and uni-
versities, others are either leaders or researchers at women's
centers,
and a third
group
is made
up
of Palestinian feminists in Israel who view themselves as an inte-
gral part
of the Palestinian women's movement.
Oppositional
discourses focused
on
conceptualizing
a new vision of women's bodies and social roles. While first
viewed as
socially
confrontational and
isolated,
these discourses
gradually pro-
duced
socially acceptable
concrete actions.
Take,
for
example,
the
difficulty
in
op-
posing
the
"demographic
war"
argument
that was
deployed by
Israel and
adopted
by
the PLO. At the
beginning,
it was a handful of Palestinian feminists who refused
to
accept
the
perception
of their bodies as
reproductive
vessels for future
genera-
tions,
or "hatcheries,"
as former Palestinian
spokeswoman,
Hanan
Ashrawi, put
it
(Hadi 1992, 16). Popularizing
such a
position, however,
was almost
impossible
be-
cause of the
intervening sociopolitical
context in which
massacres, dislocation,
and
miserable
living
conditions for the Palestinians coalesced with
expanding
Jewish
settlements and various Israeli
right-wing
calls for
"transfer,"
or mass
expulsion
of
Palestinians from their land. While
recognizing
these
constraints,
Rita
Giacaman,
the director of the
Community
Health
Project
at Bir Zeit
University,
nonetheless in-
sisted on
exposing
the
contradictory
PLO stand: "The PLO cannot continue to ask
women to be
politically
and
socially
involved while also
demanding
that
they
'bear
more children for the revolution.' What we need is a Palestinian
population policy."
To arrive at such a
policy,
a
public
debate on women's
reproductive rights
was under
way, emerging
from the various
projects
in which Palestinian women were
previ-
ously
involved,
especially
in the area of health care.
Giacaman,
in
particular,
cited
the work of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees as
exemplary:
Not
only
did it care for Intifada
victims,
the Union's volunteers administered
prenatal
and
postnatal
services in the form of mobile and
permanent
clinics in
refugee camps
and distant
villages, sought
to lower the infant
mortality
rate and to
improve
the nu-
tritional health of
young
children,
and
gave
lectures in
personal hygiene
and
repro-
ductive health.
As a
result,
past
contributions
by
women's
groups
and health committees culmi-
nated in the
adoption
of a
position paper
on "Palestinian
Population
Policies and
Sustainable
Development,"
drafted for the UN Conference on
Population
and De-
velopment
held in Cairo in 1994.
During
a
preparatory meeting
in New York in
March
1994,
the Palestinian NGO's Network distributed a statement to
governmen-
tal and
nongovernmental delegates
at the United Nations that linked women's
health and Palestinian
population policies: "Today
the Palestinian women's move-
ment demands active
participation
in the formulation as well as the
implementation
of future
population policies,
as those are bound to have a radical
impact
on
women's lives."
Another taboo issue
confronting
Palestinian feminists centered on the
way
in
which women's bodies were
conceptualized
as
symbols
of familial and national
honor. This construct was
socially
translated in the so-called crime of
honor,
by
which 40 Palestinian women in Israel were killed
by
their male relatives in 1991 to
save their "honor."4 To
expose
this
practice,
Palestinian women founded the Pales-
tinian feminist
organization
El-Fanar
(the lighthouse),
and
organized
demonstra-
tions in
Nazareth, Haifa,
and Akka. On November
4, 1991,
for
example,
El-Fanar
picketed
across from the Ramleh Police station to
protest
the
delivery
of Amal Mas-
seerati to her
family "despite
the
police's prior knowledge
of the
danger
of death
that waits the
young
woman."
Highlighting
the intersection of communal
patriar-
chy,
Israeli state
policy, gender oppression,
and social
change,
El-Fanar
asserted,
This
police policy
is not a mistake. It was and still is a
premeditated
Israeli official
pol-
icy
aimed at
reinforcing
the
patriarchal
traditional
system through
its feudalist
repre-
sentatives. This sector's existence constitutes a
major guarantee
to maintain and eter-
nally
consolidate backward traditions and to
prevent any positive
social
change
in our
[Palestinian] society.
(1991, 2)
The
diversity
in Palestinian women's
expressions
can be understood
by recog-
nizing
that windows of
opportunity
and the
changing political
context affect differ-
ent
categories
of Palestinian women
differently,
thus
producing
distinct manifesta-
tions of the movement.
Furthermore,
the reason
why
each
category deployed
its
own
particular
discourse was also linked to the constraints
imposed
on,
and
oppor-
tunities
opened
to,
each
subgroup.
For
example,
the fact that
they
were
dealing
with
interpretation
of the
scripture imposed
certain constraints on Islamist women as
they
confronted conservative clerics.
Opportunities
were
relatively
more available
to feminist
professors
who were
engaged
in academic
production.
Likewise,
the
very
nature of internal
party
culture
placed organizational
constraints on
challenges
to
gender hierarchy
made
by
women cadre of PLO
groups. Conversely,
nonaffili-
ated women
working
in research centers faced less such obstacles in
articulating
their views as
they
interacted with other
feminists, intellectuals,
and with the out-
side world.
THE ISRAEL-PLO ACCORD AND ITS AFTERMATH
The Israeli-Palestinian
Accord,
signed
in
Washington,
D.C. on
September
13,
1993,
changed
the context for Palestinian women's collective
action,
raising ques-
tions about the
prospects
of their autonomous movement. Initial
signs,
however,
were not
promising. Anyone watching
television or
reading
a
newspaper
could not
fail to notice the masculinized
makeup
and the tone5 of those
gathered
for the White
House
ceremony.
It is no wonder that almost all the Palestinian women I inter-
viewed shared a common concern that within the context of a future Palestinian
authority,
their fate
may
not be
very
different from that of women in other national
movements once a state
apparatus
is set in
place.
The fact that the PLO never
attempted
to
provide
an
equal space
for women has
been
amply
demonstrated in this article and elsewhere
(Abdo 1991;
Abu Ali
1974;
Al-Khalili
1977;
Peteet
1991;
Strum
1992). Thus,
no reason exists to
expect
a radi-
cal
change
in the
posture
of the PLO. While the
previous political
context was
quite
fluid and thus enabled women to
organize,
such
fluidity
did not exist within the con-
fines of a self-rule
authority,
whose first
priority
continues to be the
financing
and
the
deployment
of a
police
force. Another
alarming sign
to women was the
possible
alignment
and/or truce between the Palestinian
authority
and Islamist
groups.
Pal-
estinian women
expressed
well-founded fears that
anytime
the PLO and
Hamas,
for
example,
come to
terms,
a
repetition
of the 1989
Hijab episode
becomes
possible.
Activists in
Nablus, Ramallah,
and Gaza wondered: If the PLO did not defend
women
during
the
heyday
of the
Intifada,
would it be realistic to
expect
it to behave
otherwise in its decline? Anti-Arafat alliances between leftist and Islamicist
groups
were also formed at the
expense
of women. An activist in
Gaza,
for
example,
nar-
rated the electoral
process
of the Palestinian Accountants Union in Gaza:
A month
ago [July 1993]
I was
talking
to women who
joined
the nationalist block in
the Accountants' Union. I asked
them,
"If
you
have between 100 to 150 women mem-
bers,
how come none of
you
was nominated for the nationalist slate?" One
said,
"In-
shallah
[God willing]
next
year!
The nationalists told us: 'vote for us now and we will
include one or two of
you
next
year.'
" Because Hamas was there now
[in
1993 elec-
tions],
no woman was allowed to run.
In view of such
gloomy prospects,
how did Palestinian women
go
about
negoti-
ating
their
rights?
One
way
was
through
intensified efforts to draft a Personal Status
Code.
Beginning
in 1988 after the declaration of Palestinian
independence,
at-
tempts
were made
by
academic feminists and
by
women's bureaus of the
Popular
Front,
Democratic
Front,
and the Palestinian
People's Party
to
put
to
practice
the
much-celebrated
passage
from the Declaration
of
Palestinian
Independence
that
pledged
nondiscrimination on the basis of
sex, race,
religion,
or
political
affiliation.
Leftist women
sought
to
legislate
a Personal Status Code that
guaranteed
women's
rights
in such matters as
marriage,
divorce,
custody,
education,
employment,
and
decision
making.
As
greater
numbers of Palestinian women became involved in
founding
an autonomous
movement,
the discussion of a new social code was no
longer
limited to a select few. This was also indicative that the time for street
pro-
tests has
passed
and that new
frames,
forms of
action,
and
mobilizing strategies
were needed.
Three distinct drafts of the Declaration of
Principles
of Palestinian Women's
Rights,
a
precursor
to the
Code,
were circulated in 1993. A
majority
of activists I in-
terviewed said that the context in which these drafts were drawn increased their
radicalism and feminist combativeness. A leader of the Union of Palestinian
Women's Committees
observed,
"Because Palestinian women in the West Bank
and Gaza suffered
grave
losses and
waged
a serious
struggle against
the Israeli oc-
cupation,
we were less
willing
to
compromise
our
rights
under a Palestinian rule."
Thus,
the document drafted
by
the
occupied
territories' branch of the GUPW was
the most radical. The second was
adopted by
the
leadership
of GUPW in
Tunis,
while the
third,
adopted by
a
group
of GUPW leaders in
Jordan,
represented
the
lowest
possible
common denominator on which Palestinian women and men could
agree.
The Tunis draft was less
accommodating
than the Jordan
document;
the
women involved in
producing
it included a number of Palestinian leaders who ex-
perienced hardship
and
exile,
some of whom
having,
for
political
reasons,
to relo-
cate
many
times. In
addition,
the GUPW Secretariat in Tunis was made
up
of
repre-
sentatives of different PLO
factions,
including
the leftist
groups
that had a social
program
for women's
empowerment.
And
although
the Palestinian leftist vision for
women's liberation left a lot to be
desired,
it was more
sympathetic
to Palestinian
women's concerns than the vision of Palestinian centrists.
By
contrast,
the
group
drafting
the document in Jordan was made
up
of middle-class intellectuals and
GUPW
leaders,
whose
political
views did not force them to move from one
place
to
another.
Public announcement of the Declaration of
Principles
on Palestinian Women's
Rights
was
constantly delayed. According
to a GUPW leader in
Jordan,
from
Sep-
tember 1993 to
August
1994,
different
political
events,
such as the Hebron massa-
cre of 29 Palestinians
by
an Israeli settler in
February
1994,
precluded making
such
an announcement because the
majority
of the Palestinians were focused on the
trag-
edy.
In
August
1994,
I traveled to Jerusalem to attend the
press
conference
organ-
ized
by
activists from women's NGOs at the National Palace hotel to announce the
Declaration,
as formulated
by
the GUPW in the West Bank and Gaza. Over 100
Palestinian women
congregated
from different
parts
of the West Bank and
Gaza,
representing
different
organizations, committees, centers,
and intellectual con-
cerns. Some women handed out leaflets and brochures. Others
exchanged receipts
and
money.
Yet
others,
seeking
media
exposure,
carried
photos
of their relatives
who were detained
by
the Israeli
military.
In
short,
the scene resembled a festival of
achievement, the
atmosphere
filled with
anticipation
and
hope.
However,
as the
press
conference
got
under
way,
the Minister for Social Affairs in the Palestinian
National
Authority
arrived from Gaza
bearing
a
message
from Yasser Arafat and
accompanied by
two male
bodyguards.
The minister's insistence on
addressing
the
media
produced
mixed reaction
by
the
organizers.
While
supporters
of Arafat's
group
were
enthusiastic,
the
majority
of the women
protested:
Activists who were
politically
affiliated with both the secular and Islamist
opposition
did not want to
bestow
legitimacy
on Arafat's
political negotiations by offering
him a
public plat-
form,
nor did
they
want to allow the Palestinian
Authority
to
reap
the results of their
efforts and be
portrayed by
international media as an advocate of women's
rights.
Other
politically independent
women were
dismayed
at the
usurpation
of the
NGOs'
space by
Arafat's rule. A
compromise
was
eventually
reached in which the
minister was allowed to read out Arafat's
message
as
long
as she identified herself
as an official of the
PLO,
a liberation
movement,
rather than the self-rule
apparatus
of the Palestinian
Authority.
However,
the minister did not
comply
with the
agree-
ment, causing
some leftist women to
interrupt
her with anti-Oslo
slogans.
The min-
ister's
bodyguards, then,
assaulted two women activists from the secular
opposi-
tion. As a result, the
press
conference was
suspended
and no declaration was made.
Thus,
while social movements
emerge within,
or because
of,
a
specific receptive
context, political developments
also intervene to subvert the smooth
sailing
of col-
lective action
(Meyer 1993).
One response
to such
challenges
of hostile environ-
ment to social movements is a
greater emphasis
on inclusiveness and coalition
building.
This was the case with Palestinian women.
In
particular,
the
struggles
over the Personal Status Code
highlighted
socioeco-
nomic differences
among
women. Rita
Giacaman,
for
example, suggested
that
class differences
might
arise as middle-class women
strongly
advocated the inclu-
sion of divorce
rights
in the Personal Status Code. As it stands
now,
unless written
into the Shari'a
prenuptial agreement,
women cannot
easily
initiate divorce
pro-
ceedings.
Poor
women, however, might
be
adversely
affected because
marriage
for
them,
even a miserable one,
constituted social and economic
stability; extending
the civil
right
to divorce to women
may
be the
signal
for which
many
men are wait-
ing
to
escape
social
pressure
and divorce their wives with no
guarantees
of
security.
Finally,
also at issue are
questions facing
women's movements worldwide: with
what social sectors, groups,
and movements Palestinian feminists will
coalesce,
and what the commonalities for alliance
building
are.
Giacaman,
for
example,
stressed that the women's movement had to build alliances with other constituen-
cies,
such as the disabled. Both
sectors, according
to
her,
were
"weak,"
while "their
demands of social
integration
were similar." Another feminist
professor suggested
that women must
ally
themselves
only
with "secular forces" and underlined the im-
portance
of
adopting
new
tactics,
such as
lobbying
and
advocacy.
Almost
every
ac-
tivist I interviewed drew a
strong
connection between the women's movement and
other
challenging groups demanding greater
democratization in Palestinian
politi-
cal affairs.
The
changes
in the structure of
political opportunity,
such as the Israel-PLO Ac-
cord of
1993,
radically
altered
gender dynamics
and
produced
new forms of Pales-
tinian women's activism. On one
hand,
the
autonomy
of the Palestinian women's
movement was threatened
by
the Palestinian National
Authority's attempt
to
usurp
independent
women's action. On the other
hand,
the
emergence
of the Palestinian
National
Authority imposed
certain constraints on Palestinian
women,
producing
a
sense of
urgency
and
focusing
much of feminist activism on
advocacy, legislation,
and coalition
building.
CONCLUSION-UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL ACTION
The Palestinian women's autonomous movement
emerged
in the
early
1990s as
a result of both favorable
general
conditions,
as well as
specific
moments,
that led
Palestinian women to
begin addressing
their situation within the context of
gender
hierarchy.
Women's
organizing
was located on a feminist
continuum,
shifting,
evolving,
and
shaped by
their
relationships
to their
sociopolitical
and cultural con-
text.
Thus,
the article is informed
by
and
supports
the feminist
"paradigm
of differ-
ence" that
recognizes
the
diversity
in women's
experiences
and values the richness
of the
multiplicity
of women's voices and actions. This theoretical notion
rejects
at-
tempts
to
homogenize
women,
to erase differences between
them,
and to
forcibly
fit their
struggles
into one model of liberation. The case of Palestinian women dem-
onstrates that different
groups
of women live different
experiences
and
wage
their
struggles
for
emancipation according
to their locations and needs. A
topology
of
gender
and social movements-neither linear nor flat-warrants a vision that takes
all these
complexities
into consideration. Such a vision
clearly requires
an under-
standing
of the interconnectedness of
gender,
sexual, cultural, socioeconomic,
and
national
oppression.
Interconnectedness in social movement
analysis
entails
seeing
the links between
the
political
context in which a movement
emerges,
the historical
continuity
of so-
cial
action,
and the
necessary
conditions without which an action fails to material-
ize into a movement. Social movements do not sustain themselves without
organi-
zations. Protest
may
coalesce in
response
to a
particular
incident,
such as the
imposition
of the
Hijab
on Palestinian women in Gaza
during
the second
year
of the
Intifada.
However,
had there been no
organizing
structure such as the various Pales-
tinian women's committees and
voluntary
association,
and an
organizing
mecha-
nism,
such as the
HWC,
or the
GUPW,
the Palestinian women's movement would
not have sustained itself. In
addition,
Palestinian women's
organizational
models
and
practiced
forms of collective action did not
emerge along
with their autono-
mous
movement;
Palestinian women's
organizations
existed as
early
as
1929,
thus
lending support
to the notion of social movement
continuity.
I
attempted
to
highlight
the
complexities surrounding
the
emergent
Palestinian
women's autonomous
movement,
as well as its
dynamics.
The historical roots of
this movement were characterized
by
an
interplay
of societal
patriarchy,
Israeli
practices,
and nationalist discourses. The
Intifada,
initially raising
the
expectations
of Palestinian
women,
was also the context in which their
grievances
mounted.
However,
changing
international,
regional,
and local conditions intervened at dif-
ferent
stages
to
open
windows of
opportunities
for Palestinian women to resist the
multiple oppressions
to which
they
were
subjected.
Their
deployment
of
ideologi-
cal
concepts
such as
perestroika
and
glasnost,
as well as their
networking
with other
women's movements around the
globe,
were the two immediate
opportunities
seized
by
Palestinian women to launch their movement. The
changing political
context,
such as the Israel-PLO Accord and the
emergence
of the Palestinian Na-
tional
Authority, shaped gender dynamics
in different
ways.
The
emphasis
in Pales-
tinian feminist discourses and actions shifted
away
from resistance to the
occupa-
tion and
grassroots
activism
(during
the
Intifada), competing
views on feminism
and
gender
awareness work
(in
the
early 1990s)
toward
legislating
laws,
advocacy,
lobbying,
and coalition
building.
The
emergence
of the Palestinian women's
autonomous
movement,
as well as its
timing,
can be
explained,
then,
if we
expand
our
understanding
of the
"political opportunity"
both to account for
developments
that take
place beyond
the narrow confines of a
single
state and to
seriously analyze
the
ways
in which
gender
relations and
dynamics shape
and influence the structure
of
and how the
political
context,
in
turn,
shapes
and influences
gender
relations and
dynamics.
The rise of Palestinian women's collective action at
the lowest ebb of the Palestinian national movement
points
to the salience of
gender
in
shaping political opportunity.
NOTES
1. I refer to the
sample survey
of
22,000
Palestinians in
2,500
households conducted in
Gaza,
West
Bank,
and Arab
Jerusalem,
which was
published
in
Heiberg,
Ovensen,
et al.
(1993).
The
survey
contains
one million
pieces
of data and was collected in a
period
of three months
(June 1992-August 1992) by
100
field-workers.
2. Yuval-Davis and Anthias "locate five
major (although
not
exclusive) ways
in which women tend
to
participate
in ethnic and national
processes"
( 1989, 8):
as
biological reproducers, reproducers
of eth-
nic/national boundaries, ideological reproducers
of the
collectivity
and as cultural transmitters,
as
signi-
fiers of ethnic/national difference,
and as
participants
in
national, economic,
political,
and
military
struggles.
I have found that Palestinian women do, indeed, participate
in all these
processes.
However,
the
images
that were
increasingly recurring
in national discourses and
consistently
cited
by
the women I
interviewed were the three I have outlined here.
3. Women's committees were formed
by
female cadres from the four
major political groups-Fatah,
Popular
Palestine,
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the
Palestine
People's Party-that enjoyed
broad
support
in the
Occupied
Territories.
Seeking
to involve
women in social and national
struggles,
activists recruited and mobilized women for
political groups,
while
simultaneously providing
women from conservative
backgrounds
with safe
spaces (Scott 1990)
where
they
became
politically
and
socially
active without
dealing
with
mixed-gender groups,
deemed
socially unacceptable by
the conservatives.
4. Israeli feminist and
peace
activist Simona Sharoni
suggests
that an almost
equal
number of Israeli
Jewish women were killed that same
year by
their
boyfriends
or husbands. Sharoni attributes violence
against
women to the extreme militarization of Israeli
society.
She further
suggests
that because Israeli
soldiers who served in the
occupied
Palestinian areas were not
penalized (or very slightly penalized)
for
violating
Palestinian
rights,
it was
impossible
for them not to extend this violence to Israeli women once
they
came back home and took off their
military
uniforms
(1995,120-21).
5. No women were seen on the White House
lawn,
which left
many
wondering why former Palestin-
ian
spokeswoman,
Hanan
Ashrawi,
in
particular,
was not there. The
gendered language surrounding
the
agreement
was,
perhaps,
best revealed in The New York Times on
September
5,
1993. Under the
heading,
"Mideast Accord: Behind the
Secrets,
Other
Secrets,"
The New York 7imes wrote:
During
the
discussions,
a form of verbal shorthand
developed
in which
people
like Mr. Peres and
Mr. Holst were called the
fathers,
top
leaders like Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat became the
godfa-
thers,
and officials at Mr. Beilin's level were the sons
[emphasis added].
REFERENCES
Abdo,
N. 1991. Women in the Intifada:
Gender,
class and national liberation. Race and Class 32
(April-
June):
19-34.
Abu
Ali,
K. 1974. Introductions to the
reality of
women and
experiences
in the Palestinian revolution.
Beirut: General Union of Palestinian Women.
Al-Khalili, G. 1977. The Palestinian women and the revolution. Acre, Israel: Dar al-Aswar.
Anderson, B. 1991.
Imagined
communities:
Reflections
on the
origin
and
spread of nationalism. Lon-
don: Verso.
Buechler, S. 1990. Women's movement in the U.S. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University
Press.
Cagatay, N., C. Grown, and A.
Santiago.
1986. The Nairobi women's conference: Toward a
global
femi-
nism? Feminist Studies 12: 401-12.
El-Fanar. 1991. Palestinian
feminist organization's report. Haifa, Israel: El-Fanar.
Fanon, F. 1963. The wretched
of
the earth. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.
. 1965. A
dying
colonialism. New York:
Monthly
Review Press.
Flax, J. 1990.
Thinking fragments: Psychoanalysis, feminism,
and
postmodernism
in the
contemporary
West.
Berkeley: University
of Califomia Press.
Freedman, M. 1990. Exile in the
promised
land. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.
Gamson, W., and D.
Meyer.
1996.
Framing political opportunity.
In
Comparative perspectives on social
movements, edited
by
D. McAdam, J.
McCarthy,
and M. Zald.
Cambridge,
UK:
Cambridge
Univer-
sity
Press.
Guardian Collective. 1977. Our roots are still alive. New York: The Guardian.
Hadawi, S. 1989. Bitter harvest: A modern
history of
Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press.
Hadi, R. 1992. The feminist behind the
spokeswoman: Exclusive interview with Hanan Ashrawi. MS:
The World
of
Women 2
(March/April):
14-17.
Hammami, R. 1990. Women, the
Hijab
and the Intifada. Middle
EastReport
20
(May-August): 24-28,78.
. 1991. Women's
political participation
in the Intifada: A critical overview. In The
Intifada and
some women's social issues, edited
by
the Women's Studies Committee. Ramallah, Israel: Bisan
Center for Research and
Development.
Hart, A. 1984.
Arafat:
A
political biography. Bloomington:
Indiana
University
Press.
Heiberg, M.,
G.
Ovensen, H.
Brunborg,
R. Giacaman, R. Hammami, N. Hawkins, H. Abu
Libdeh,
C.
Stoltenberg,
S. Tamari, S. Tamsfoss, 0. F.
Ugland,
and L. Weiseth, eds. 1993. Palestinian
society
in
Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem. Oslo: FAFO.
Hill
Collins,
P. 1990.
Blackfeminist thought: Knowledge,
consciousness,
and the
politics of empower-
ment. Boston: Unwin
Hyman.
hooks,
bell. 1981. Ain't I a woman: Black women
andfeminism.
Boston: South End.
Jayawardena,
K. 1986. Feminism and nationalism in the Third World. London: Zed Books.
Kanafani,
G. 1974. The 1936-1939 revolt in Palestine:
Background,
details,
and
analysis. Beirut,
Leba-
non: The
Popular
Palestine,
Department
of Central Information.
Katzenstein, M.,
and C. Mueller. 1987. The Women's movements
of
the United States and Western
Europe. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.
Kazi,
H. 1987. Palestinian women and the national liberation movement: A social
perspective.
In
Women in the Middle
East,
edited
by
Khamsin. London: Zed Books.
Khaled,
L. 1973.
My people
shall live: The
autobiography of
a
revolutionary.
Edited
by George Hajiar.
London: Hodder and
Stoughton.
McAdam, D. 1982. The
politicalprocess
and the
development of
Black
insurgency. Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press.
--- . 1996.
Conceptual origins,
current
problems,
future directions. In
Comparative perspectives
on
social
movements,
edited
by
D.
McAdams,
J.
McCarthy,
and M. Zald.
Cambridge,
UK:
Cambridge
University
Press.
McAdam, D.,
J.
McCarthy,
and M. Zald. 1996.
Comparative perspectives
on social movements. Cam-
bridge,
UK:
Cambridge University
Press.
Meir, G. 1975.
My life.
New York: Dell.
Meyer,
D. 1993. A winter
of
discontent. New York:
Praeger.
Meyer, D., and N. Whittier. 1995. Social movement
spillover.
In Social movements:
Readings
on their
emergence, mobilization, and
dynamics,
edited
by
D. McAdam and D. Snow. Los
Angeles:
Rox-
bury.
Minh-ha, T. 1989. Woman, native, other.
Bloomington:
Indiana
University
Press.
Mohanty, C., A. Russo, and L. Torres. 1991. Third World women and the
politics offeminism. Blooming-
ton: Indiana University
Press.
Najjar,
0. 1992. Portraits
of
Palestinian women. Salt Lake
City: University
of Utah Press.
The New York Times. 1993. Mideast Accord: Behind the Secrets, Other Secrets. 5
September.
Peteet, J. 1991. Gender in crisis: Women and the Palestinian resistance movement. New York: Columbia
University
Press.
Rupp, L., and V.
Taylor.
1987. Survival in the doldrums: The American woman's
rights movement,
1945
to the 1960s. New York: Oxford
University
Press.
Scott, J. 1990. Domination and the arts
of
resistance: Hidden
transcripts.
New
Haven,
CT: Yale Univer-
sity
Press.
Sharoni,
S. 1995. Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict:
The
politics of
women's resistance.
Syra-
cuse, NY:
Syracuse University
Press.
Snow, D., E. Rochford, S. Worden,
and R.
Benford,
R. 1986. Frame
alignment processes,
micromobili-
zation, and movement
participation.
American
Sociological
Review 51:464-81.
Staggenborg,
S. 1991. The
pro-choice
movement. New York: Oxford
University
Press.
Strauss, A., and J. Corbin. 1990. Basics
of qualitative
research: Grounded
theory procedures
and tech-
niques. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage.
Strum, P. 1992. The women are
marching:
The second sex and the Palestinian revolution.
Chicago:
Law-
rence Hill Books.
Swidler,
A. 1986. Culture in action:
Symbols
and
strategies.
American
Sociological
Review 51:273-86.
Tarrow, S. 1994. Power in movement: Social movements, collective action and
politics. Cambridge,
UK:
Press.
. 1996. States and
opportunities:
The
political structuring
of social movements. In
Comparative
perspectives
on social movements: Political
opportunities, mobilizing structures,
and
culturalfram-
ings,
edited
by
D. McAdam, J.
McCarthy,
and M. Zald.
Cambridge,
UK:
Press.
Taylor,
V. 1989. Social movement
continuity.
American
Sociological
Review 54:761-75.
Taylor,
V.,
and L.
Rupp.
1993. Women's culture and lesbian feminist activism: A reconsideration of cul-
tural feminism.
Signs:
Journal
of
Women in Culture and
Society
19:32-61.
Taylor,
V.,
and N. Whittier. 1992. Collective
identity
in social movement communities. In Frontiers in
social movement
theory,
edited
by
A. Morris and C. Mueller. New
Haven,
CT: Yale
University
Press.
Thornhill,
T. 1992.
Making
women talk: The
interrogation of Palestinian women. London:
Lawyers
for
Palestinian Human
Rights.
Tilly,
C. 1978. From mobilization to revolution.
Reading,
MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Warnock,
K. 1990. Land before
honor: Palestinian women in the
Occupied Territories. New York:
Monthly
Review Press.
Whittier,
N. 1995. Feminist
generations:
The
persistence of
the radical women's movement. Philadel-
phia: Temple University
Press.
Women's Task Force. 1991. Women's
agenda
for the West Bank and Gaza
Strip:
Initial
plan
of action.
Ramallah,
Israel: United Nations
Development Program.
Yuval-Davis, N.,
and F. Anthias. 1989. Woman-nation-state. London: Macmillan.
Rabab Abdulhadi is a doctoral candidate in
sociology
at Yale
University.
Her dissertation exam-
ines the
construction, contestation, and
transformation of Palestinian national
identity.
Her re-
search interests include
gender
and
generation,
nationalism and women's
activism, and collec-
tive
identity
and social
change.
More
recently,
she was a United Nations
Development Program
(UNDP)
consultant to the Women's Studies
Program
at Bir Zeit
University,
Palestine. She is a
formerjournalist
and a coeditor
of
Mobilizing Democracy: Changing
US
Policy
in the Middle
East
(1991).

Abdulhadi, Rabab (1998) - The Palestinian Women's Autonomous Movement - Emergdence, Dynamics, and Challenges

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Abdulhadi, Rabab (1998) - The Palestinian Women's Autonomous Movement - Emergdence, Dynamics, and Challenges

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

The Palestinian Women's Autonomous Movement: Emergence, Dynamics, and Challenges

Author(s): Rabab Abdulhadi

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi