Urbanization and Women’s
Citizenship in the Middle East
Valentine M. Moghadam
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is not usually associated
with women’s movements. In the popular imagination shaped by media accounts,
the region is better known for Islamist movements, authoritarian governments, and
unending conflicts. To the contrary, the region has seen the emergence of women’s
movements and organizations, calling for family law reform, equal nationality rights,
laws against domestic violence and sexual harassment, and increased economic and
political participation. Such movements, which have proliferated since the 1980s,
are centered in cities and are comprised primarily of urban, educated professional
women. This should not be surprising given that cities play a key role in globalization processes as well as in popular protests and social movements.1
After Latin America, which is about 75 percent urbanized, the MENA region has
the highest level of urbanization in the developing world. The most rapid growth in
urbanization occurred in the oil-exporting countries during the oil boom era. Between 1960 and 1980, the urban population doubled in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Libya,
and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and it doubled in Iran and Iraq between 1950
and 1985.2 The slowest rate of urbanization was in Egypt, whose population’s urban
share increased from 32 percent in 1950 to 43 percent in 2005. While countries are
at different levels of urbanization, the majority of the region’s inhabitants now reside
in urban areas. Yemen is the least-urbanized country in the region, whereas Kuwait,
Qatar, and Bahrain are virtually city-states. While high fertility rates (expected
number of births per woman) contributed to both the population growth in general
and the growth of cities, international migration has also played a part. In the small,
Dr. Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Purdue University.
Her publications include Globalizing Women: Gender, Globalization, and Transnational Feminist Networks and Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East.
Brown Journal of World Affairs, Copyright © 2010
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Valentine M. Moghadam
oil-rich countries, labor migration from other Arab countries contributed to rapid
urbanization, especially during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, labor migration
from South and Southeast Asia to the oil-rich Gulf countries has contributed to
urban growth through the construction boom.
By 1990, the number of large cities with populations of over one million exceeded
20, and 10 years later, there were 25 such cities in the region. In addition to megacities
such as Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran, a second tier of cities—including Alexandria,
Isfahan, Mashhad, Riyadh, Ankara, and Adana—saw population growth in the 1980s.
But the growth of cities was not always met with adequate public services. Some of
these megacities, especially Cairo, have extremely high population densities, severe
shortages of housing and services, and a lack of regulation of construction and
urban development. The economies of many such cities cannot absorb their large
populations, leading to unemployment, underemployment, and poverty among
urban populations. Other problems include a shortage of clean drinking water, the
growth of slums or shantytowns, polluted air, inadequate waste disposal systems,
power shortages, and noise pollution.
In the MENA region, urbanization has created social problems, but it has also
created conditions favorable to the emergence of claims-making citizen groups and
other expressions of collective action. Cities across the region are now participants
in the global economy through investments and trade and are linked to the world
polity through government involvement in multilateral organizations and international treaties. A growing population has access to the new information and communication technologies that link it to world society and world culture.3 Women’s
rights groups are composed of those among this population of urban, educated, and
tech-savvy citizens. The objective of this article, therefore, is to highlight the role of
urbanization and its concomitants—in particular, education and the demographic
transition—in women’s capacity to engage in collective action and to mobilize for
full citizenship in the MENA region.
Education and Women’s Advancement
Educational institutions in the Middle East have undergone major growth since the
mid–twentieth century. Education has served a central role in the development of
modern states and citizenship, and world society theorists have highlighted its role
in reflecting and reinforcing world culture.4 Now widely considered a basic right
as well as a key institution of modernity, the provision of education has become essential to state legitimacy.
A host of social changes are associated with the rise of mass education, including
decreasing fertility rates, higher age at first marriage, and shifts in family structure
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Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
and dynamics. Levels of education in the MENA region have risen significantly over
the last 50 years, even though the region is facing concerns about educational quality, increasingly stretched resources, and the relevance of available education to the
imperatives of globalization. Across the region, the development of education has
been uneven, with some countries seeing greater gains than others. The quality of
educational institutions also varies within individual states, with urban areas faring
better than rural ones. Nevertheless, while education in the MENA region is beset
by problems—from overcrowding and outdated textbooks to education-employment
mismatches—decades of public education have produced claims-making urban
citizens.
Morocco, Yemen, and Egypt currently have the lowest adult literacy rates in
MENA, at 56, 59, and 66 percent respectively.5 Other MENA states have literacy rates
that range between 75 and 94
percent. Around 60 percent of
Literacy tends to spread more
women over the age of 15 are ilrapidly in urban areas; with their significant
literate in Yemen and Morocco,
rural populations, Egypt, Morocco, and Yewhereas only approximately 10
percent of women are illiterate
men have the region’s lowest adult literacy
in the UAE and Qatar. Women’s
rates.
literacy levels continue to lag
behind those of men in nearly all MENA states, with rates lowest in rural areas.
Literacy tends to spread more rapidly in urban areas; with their significant rural
populations, Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen have the region’s lowest adult literacy rates.6
In 1960, the average years of schooling among individuals over the age of 15 in
MENA ranged from a low of 0.61 in Tunisia to a high of 2.9 in Kuwait. By 2000, the
average years of schooling had risen to a regional mean of 5.4 years. At that time,
Yemen had the lowest average at 2.9 years, and Kuwait and Jordan had the highest
at 7.1 and 6.9 respectively.7 Today, primary school education is nearly universal and
secondary school enrollment rates across the region average nearly 80 percent. Secondary school enrollments are highest in the Gulf countries and lowest in Morocco,
Yemen, and Iraq.
Higher education enrollment in the MENA region also has expanded, albeit more
slowly than in other regions. In 1970, tertiary enrollment was under 10 percent in
most of the region, with a high of 21 percent in Lebanon. In 2005, Libya’s higher
education enrollment rate of 56 percent surpassed all other MENA states. The lowest higher education enrollments were found in Morocco and Yemen, at 11 and 9
percent respectively.8
Women’s gross enrollment rates have been improving steadily since the 1970s,
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Valentine M. Moghadam
and currently stand at 85 to 95 percent of male enrollment in most Arab countries.9
In some cases female enrollment exceeds that of males, particularly at the secondary
and tertiary levels. In fact, women’s gross enrollment in higher education now exceeds
that of men’s in the majority of MENA countries. This mirrors a global trend: women
currently outnumber men at the tertiary level in most industrialized countries.10 For
the MENA region, this trend may be explained by the growth in most countries of
a lucrative private sector, to which men tend to gravitate.
While women may be disproportionately represented at the tertiary level across
the region, they tend to specialize in the humanities and social sciences. The concentration of women in certain traditionally female disciplines is said by some economists
to contribute to the overall mismatch between education and labor market demands.
Others emphasize the personal and social returns to women of higher education
attainment, and the unintended consequences for political activism and cultural
change. For example, Golnar Mehran describes the transition in post-revolutionary
Iran to compulsory sex segregation, the revision of textbooks to reflect traditional
ideas about gender, and the direction of female students toward fields deemed gender
appropriate. At the same time, women’s enrollment and completion rates improved
at every level of education, especially after the first decade of the revolution.11 While
state actors intended that schools be a means of creating the “New Muslim Woman,”
Mehran concludes that education provided a platform for women’s increased gender
consciousness and political awareness. Indeed, the feminization of higher education
in Iran has been accompanied by the growth of advocacy for women’s rights in Iran.
Although women’s equal or even greater educational attainment across the region
does not indicate the achievement of gender equality, what it signals is a growing pool
of educated women who are more likely to challenge their second-class citizenship
both in the family and in society at large.
If education provides urban women with a capacity for heightened awareness and
collective action, another factor to consider is the decline in the fertility rate, which
is especially pronounced among urban women. Other aspects of the demographic
transition similarly have socio-political implications, which are discussed below.
The Demographic Transition and Gender Implications
Population growth rates in MENA were, until recently, among the highest in the
world, second only to those in sub-Saharan Africa. In the late twentieth century,
fertility rates began to fall, especially among young, educated women in urban areas.
For the region as a whole, the total fertility rate dropped from seven children per
woman in the 1950s to 4.8 in 1990 and 3.6 in 2001.12
Urbanization and educational attainment have accelerated the region’s falling fer22
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Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
tility and mortality rates, changes that are associated with increasing access to health
care, family planning information, and contraception. Over the decades, MENA
countries have exhibited a variety of population policies and concerns. Countries that
were concerned about the rate of population growth (e.g., Iran and Egypt) pursued
the goals of improving health facilities on the one hand, thereby reducing maternal
and infant mortality, and decreasing the birth rate on the other hand. Other countries
have sought to reduce mortality rates and improve the population’s health but do not
actively seek to reduce birth rates (e.g., Yemen and Saudi Arabia). Thus, fertility rates
vary across the region even as infant and maternal mortality rates have declined.13
Fertility remains relatively high in Oman and Saudi Arabia, and is highest in lowincome Yemen, where the average number of births per woman was 5.3 in 2007.
Like the World Fertility Surveys of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of the 1990s confirmed the link between mother’s
education and total fertility rate: the higher the mother’s educational attainment,
the smaller the family size. Conducted in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey,
and Yemen, along with many other developing countries, DHS research found that
education, socioeconomic status, and rural versus urban residence determined the
number of children as well as the health of the mother and child.14 Several theories
have been developed to explain the link between level of education and fertility rates;
some posit that mass education affects changes in women’s perceptions of themselves,
expectations of their role in society, and reproductive choices. Demographer John
Caldwell has argued that women’s increasing agency in reproductive decision-making
implies a transition toward greater openness to women’s participation in work and
other social activities, and may reflect and accelerate a decline in strong moral views
on the separate roles of the sexes and the sanctity of maternity.15
With respect to the social impact of change in women’s agency in reproductive
decision-making, it is instructive to examine Iran. The country’s total fertility rate
was declining by the 1970s, but increased during the 1980s following the Islamic
Revolution. The dramatic population growth in the 1980s is attributed to the pronatalist policies of the new Islamic regime, which banned contraceptives and encouraged
marriage and family formation, but it may also have resulted from rural fertility
behavior, which was slow to decline during the 1970s. As late as 1988 the Islamic
Republic of Iran reported 5.6 births per woman. With the reversal of the pronatalist
policy following the results of the 1986 census and the introduction of an aggressive
family planning campaign after 1988, fertility declined again. Iranian women—whose
increased educational attainment seemed to have enhanced their social and gender
awareness—enthusiastically responded to the availability of free contraceptives. In the
new century the fertility rate has hovered at replacement level: between 2.1 and 1.8
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Valentine M. Moghadam
children per woman.16 At the same time, Iran has seen the emergence of a dynamic
women’s movement for equal rights and full citizenship.17 Smaller family size or delayed childbearing frees women’s time for civic or political activities. While declining
fertility rates are suggestive of changes to family dynamics and the status of women,
decades of high birth rates have helped to keep the population of Middle Eastern
countries young, with a potentially restive “baby boom generation.”18 According to
the 2009 Arab Human Development Report, some 35 percent of the region’s population is currently under 15 years of age, whereas only four percent is over 65. There is,
of course, variation across the region. In 2005, the share of the population under 15
ranged from 19.8 percent in the UAE to over 45 percent in Yemen, the West Bank,
and Gaza. Regionally, an estimated 60 percent of the population is below the age of
25.19 Similarly, in 2009, around 70 percent of Iran’s population was under 35. The
MENA population is expected to swell to 576 million by 2025—more than double
the current size. Given the aridity of much of the region, the growing population will
place increasing demands on water and agricultural land. Urban services, currently
strained, will need to be vastly expanded and improved. Other challenges will be the
creation of jobs and mechanisms for political inclusion. Such conditions and challenges are the impetus for the emergence of social movements or popular protests.
Indeed, the presence of a large population of young people, along with the existence
of urban social problems, has economic and political implications. Young people
tend to suffer from high rates of unemployment and may engage in social protest
either for jobs, housing, and income, or cultural change and freedoms. Young men
may also constitute a recruiting base for Islamist movements or radical campaigns.
While urbanization has been accompanied by lower fertility and greater access to
education, it has been accompanied by inequalities and an array of social, political,
and cultural tensions. High unemployment rates, especially among young people,
generate claims for greater participation and rights.
Employment Challenges and Social Inequalities
There has been considerable improvement over time in standards of living in the
MENA region as measured by social indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, age of first marriage, fertility rates, literacy, and school
enrollments; along with access to safe water, adequate sanitation facilities, and social
protection. However, MENA countries are at different levels of social and economic
development, and according to some observers, income inequality is growing.20 Such
inequalities, along with high rates of unemployment and the high cost of living, form
the basis of the sort of urban unrest that has been observed and analyzed in Egypt,
Iran, and other countries.21
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Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
Rapid urbanization and population growth have transformed the size and structure of the labor force. In most countries, the population has shifted from engagement
in predominantly rural and agrarian production systems to involvement in various
types of urban industrial and service-oriented economic activities. These changes
have affected women, who have been increasingly drawn into the labor force, albeit
at proportions still smaller than in other regions. Data from the International Labor
Organization (ILO) show that the economic activity rates of adult women do not
exceed 35 percent. For the region as a whole, the female share of the total non-agricultural salaried workforce is very small at under 20 percent.22 In most countries, the
majority of the measured female
workforce is concentrated in the
Urban labor markets, however,
service sector, though in some of
have been unable to absorb the growing
the larger countries a considerlabor force, resulting in the expansion of the
able proportion of the economiurban informal sector, income inequalities,
cally active female population
remains rooted in agriculture. In
and double-digit unemployment.
the highly urbanized Persian Gulf
States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, female labor force participation has
increased, although the less prestigious or “culturally inappropriate” service work
is performed by female migrant workers from Asia. Only in Morocco and Tunisia
do we find large percentages of the female workforce involved in the industrial
(manufacturing) sector.
While official statistics show that salaried work remains a predominantly male
domain in the region, women have been moving into new professions that are in line
with economic globalization trends; among these occupations: call centers (especially
in Morocco); global banking and financial services; insurance agencies; consulting
firms catering to foreign businesses; offices of international organizations, banks,
and foundations; and high-end tourist shops.23
Urban labor markets, however, have been unable to absorb the growing labor
force, resulting in the expansion of the urban informal sector, income inequalities,
and double-digit unemployment. Despite the changes to the structure of the labor
force, unemployment in the region has been high since the early 1990s, hovering
at around 15 percent.24 Contributing factors include the decline in intraregional
labor migration, continued rural-to-urban migration, and a lack of formal sector
job growth. In some cases, layoffs occurred following enterprise restructuring or
denationalization and privatization (e.g., Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey). In other
cases, the unemployed population has consisted of first-time job seekers, primarily
male and female secondary school graduates seeking jobs out of economic need. In
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Valentine M. Moghadam
the 1990s, urban unemployment rates reached highs of 10 to 18 percent in Algeria,
Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Turkey, and Yemen.25 Female unemployment rates
soared to highs of 25 percent, indicating a growing supply of job-seeking women, a
function of both educational attainment and economic need.
In almost all countries, female unemployment rates remain considerably higher
than male rates despite their
lower labor force participaIn terms of access to services, urban
living is generally superior to rural living, but tion rates. This reality may
be a function of women’s
population growth and reductions in governpreferences for public-sector
ment social spending are straining the quality jobs, which are no longer
and quantity of urban services.
easily available, or of the
private sector’s discrimination against women. Iranian women’s very high rate of unemployment in 1991 was
almost halved by 1996, probably because more women began enrolling in university
or establishing their own businesses and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
While down to just below 16 percent (according to the 2006 census data), Iranian
women’s unemployment rate is far higher than the men’s rate of 9.3 percent, and remains disproportionately high, especially given women’s far lower participation rate.
How do the unemployed—those who seek jobs in the formal sector, but do not
find them—fare in countries where unemployment insurance is not in place or is
not available to new entrants? Some of the job seekers, especially men, appear to
have gravitated to the urban informal sector, which has grown tremendously in the
region. Informal sector workers may include taxi drivers, construction workers,
domestic workers, people who work in souks and bazaars (the traditional markets in
the Middle East), hairdressers, barbers, seamstresses, tailors, workers in or owners of
small industrial or artisan workshops, hawkers of sundry goods, repairmen, and so
on. They also include home-based female pieceworkers, such as women in Turkey,
Syria, and Jordan who are engaged in sewing and embroidery for a contractor or
subcontractor. The informal sector can also include high-end economic activities,
such as beauty services, jewelry making, catering, tutoring, and desktop publishing.26
As noted, urbanization has brought about access to health, safe water, and sanitation for residents in most of the MENA countries, but some countries continue to
have difficulties in the provision of such services. In other countries there are distinct rural-urban disparities. In terms of access to services, urban living is generally
superior to rural living, but population growth and reductions in government social
spending are straining the quality and quantity of urban services. These pressures are
not conveyed by the statistics but can be discerned by visiting the non-elite sections
“
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Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
of some of the large cities in MENA, where overcrowding, rundown and inadequate
public transportation, streets in disrepair, polluted air, high noise levels, and lack of
building codes are only some of the many problems that low-income urban dwellers
endure. Visits to the cities of the large and diversified economies—especially Turkey
and Iran, but also Morocco and Tunisia—vividly illustrate that income inequalities
have become quite pronounced, allowing those from the upper middle classes to
live very comfortable lives while the lower income groups struggle. While many of
the elites are quite complacent about such inequalities, others chafe at the injustices
that they observe. Many women-led NGOs, for example, are devoted to improving
the lives of low-income women.
Urban poverty has now joined rural poverty as a key challenge facing governments and citizens. Yemen has the poorest population in the region: 42 percent
lives under the poverty line and 45 percent lives on less than US$2 a day. Some 19
percent of Moroccans and 23 percent of Algerians are living below the nationally
determined poverty line, and 14 percent of Moroccans and 15 percent of Algerians
live on less than US$2 per day.27 In all countries, because of gender differences in
literacy, educational attainment, employment, and income, women are especially
vulnerable to poverty during periods of economic difficulty or in the event of divorce,
abandonment, or widowhood. Such vulnerability may be exacerbated by the cultural
norm of the male breadwinner and female homemaker ideal, the lack of government
programs to involve low-income women in the labor force, and Muslim family laws
that discriminate against women with regard to inheritance and encourage female
dependence on male “guardians” in the family. The connection has not been lost on
women advocates of family law reform.
The Family, Sexuality, and Family Law
The Middle Eastern family was long described as patrilineal, patrilocal, and sometimes polygamous, an integral part of what Caldwell called “the patriarchal belt” and
what Deniz Kandiyoti termed “the belt of classic patriarchy.”28 However, urbanization
and its concomitants—schooling, the opening up of public spaces to women, and
links with world society—have affected the traditional family and prescribed gender
roles, replacing the patrilocally extended family with the nuclear family, creating
many more opportunities for women, and affecting attitudes toward sexuality. In the
region’s urbanized countries, polygyny has become a statistically insignificant family
form. While only Turkey and Tunisia have banned polygyny outright, monogamy
has become the norm in the region. For example, the 2004 reform of family law in
Morocco has made it extremely difficult for a man to obtain a second wife. Early marriage is also becoming rare as educational attainment rates increase
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Valentine M. Moghadam
and young women and men interact with each other in universities, workplaces, and
other public spaces typical of urban settings in the region. Before 1970, women in
the region commonly married in their teens and early twenties. Today, the average
age at first marriage for women in the region has shifted to the mid-twenties and the
average age for men is three to five years older, giving rise to concerns, especially on
the part of religious and conservative leaders, about the moral implications of delayed
marriage. Marital patterns are influenced by urbanization: urban youth marry later
in all countries. The lowest age of marriage for girls is found in the poorest countries
and in rural areas. For example, more than 15 percent of women marry before the
age of 20 in Yemen, Oman, predominantly rural parts of Egypt, and in Gaza.29
In Iran, the legal age of marriage was lowered to puberty after the revolution, but
after many parliamentary debates it was finally increased to 15 in the new century.
The average age of first marriage is now 25. The surge in unmarried young people
and the fear of illicit sex led some clerics and lay authorities to encourage “temporary marriage” (muta’a in Arabic, sigheh in Persian), a contractual arrangement for
licit sexual relations under Shiite interpretation of Sharia law. Temporary marriag,
however, is highly unpopular in middle-class society, where it is associated with
legalized prostitution. Instead, as Iranian-American anthropologist Pardis Mahdavi
has explained, young people rebel against social restrictions through unorthodox
modes of dress and hairstyles, and by holding parties, dancing, drinking alcohol,
“and kissing our boyfriends in the park.”30 As such, young people are “comporting
their resistance” and using their bodies in deliberate ways that suggest a kind of
sexual or generational revolution.31 Likewise in Tunisia, only 3 percent of young
women aged 15 to 19 were ever married in the 1990s; subsequently, the average age
at first marriage rose dramatically, reaching 28 years for women in 2005. According
to one feminist organization, the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates,
the current social realities require that the issue of “sexual rights” be addressed.32 In
general, countries remain conservative on issues of sexuality and pre-marital sex is
considered unacceptable, especially for young women. Still, educational attainment
and delayed marriage have given rise to public debates about appropriate responses
to the sexual behavior of young people.
Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi has argued that the idea of a young unmarried woman was completely novel in the Muslim world, for the concept of patriarchal
honor is built around the idea of virginity, which reduces a woman’s role to its sexual
dimension: reproduction within an early marriage.33 The concept of a menstruating
and unmarried woman is so alien to the Muslim family system, Mernissi adds, that it
is either unimaginable or necessarily linked with fitna, or moral and social disorder.
The unimaginable is now a reality.
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Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
Urbanization thus has brought about social advances and social inequalities, both
of which have helped to generate claims-making women’s groups. The region’s cities
have seen the growth of a population of educated and employed women with aspirations of full social participation and equal rights of citizenship. From this population have emerged dynamic women’s movements and campaigns for the repeal of
discriminatory laws, specifically the Sharia-based family laws, which place women
in the position of a minor, dependent, or subordinate in the family. These laws are
increasingly regarded as anachronistic by much of the female population and activist generation, as well as by some state officials. At issue is male “guardianship” over
women, leading to the requirement that women must ask for permission to engage
in an array of activities; unequal family inheritance; male privilege in divorce and
child custody; the absence of a concept of jointly-owned marital property; and the
normative assumption that men “maintain” wives and children, while wives “obey”
their husbands.
The Collectif Maghreb Egalité 95, a transnational feminist network operating
in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, began to spearhead a campaign for family law
reform in the early 1990s. In a 2003 book that was subsequently translated into
English, the authors point out that among the many reasons why Muslim family
law is in need of reform is its divergence from the social realities and actual family
dynamics in many countries, where women must seek work to augment the family
budget, and women are increasingly looking after their elderly parents.34 In other
words, where Muslim family law does not directly stand in the way of women’s equal
participation and rights, it is an anachronism in light of contemporary family needs
and women’s aspirations. In Morocco, the decade-long campaign by women’s rights
activists and a political opening
in 1998 led to the reform of the
Where Muslim family law does
highly patriarchal Mudawana
not directly stand in the way of women’s
in 2004.35 In Algeria in 2005,
equal participation and rights, it is an
the government of President
anachronism in light of contemporary famBouteflika agreed to some
amendments to the family law,
ily needs and women’s aspirations.
which had been introduced
amidst a storm of controversy in the early 1980s. In Iran, the One Million Signatures
Campaign for repeal of discriminatory family laws was launched in 2007, though
it has faced serious state repression. A meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February 2009
brought together “Islamic feminists” to devise a set of arguments that would bolster
their case for reform.
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Valentine M. Moghadam
Women’s Movements
“
Urbanization, educational attainment, declining fertility, and labor force participation have contributed to women’s capacity to mobilize around grievances and
goals. At the same time, the global women’s rights agenda and the United Nations
conferences of the 1990s—especially
The main form of women’s
the 1994 International Conference
on Population and Development,
civil society participation lies in
which convened in Cairo, and the
women’s rights organizations.
1995 Beijing Conference—created
a favorable opportunity structure that allowed for the proliferation of women’s
organizations and women-led NGOs in the Middle East. Thus, apart from Islamist
movements, women’s movements represent the most visible of the MENA region’s
social movements and constitute a significant contribution to the growth of civil
society. Rising educational attainment and smaller family size have freed up women’s
time for civic and political engagement. This which allows them to staff or establish
NGOs; advocate for women’s equality and rights; and participate in campaigns for
family law reform, equal nationality rights, electoral quotas, the introduction of antisexual harassment laws, and the prosecution of all forms of violence against women.
Because MENA women have long been excluded from the corridors of power,
their strategies to gain influence include calls for electoral quotas and more active
participation in civil society. With respect to the former, Moroccan political parties
instituted a quota in 2001, raising the female share of parliamentary seats from zero
to 11 percent. A 25 percent female parliamentary quota was introduced in Iraq as
well, although the highly masculinist nature of Iraqi politics has precluded any real
influence on the part of the women in government. Tunisia has long had a respectable female parliamentary presence (at around 22 to 24 percent), but the power of
the presidency attenuates any real parliamentary authority. Elsewhere, women are
either excluded from, or occupy marginal positions in formal politics. For these
reasons, women’s rights activists rely on a parallel strategy of maintaining a strong
civil society presence. Given the conditions in formal politics, civil society is an
arena more amenable to women’s activism and—at least in principle—can increase
their access to decision-making positions. Here women may be involved in an array
of associations, from professional associations to human rights groups to women’s
rights organizations.
The main form of women’s civil society participation lies in women’s rights organizations. The highly-educated women of the region have formed and become active
in organizations such as Egypt’s Association for the Development and Enhancement
of Women (ADEW) and the Egyptian Organization for Women’s Rights (which has
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Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
been spearheading an anti-sexual harassment campaign); Morocco’s Association
Democratique des Femmes Marocaines (ADFM), which was very active in the family law reform campaign; Algeria’s SOS Femmes en Détresse, which seeks gender
justice for women victims of violence; Iran’s Change for Equality Campaign, which
has been leading efforts to raise the legal status of women; Tunisia’s Association
Tunisienne des Femmes Democrates (ATFD), which advocates for democracy and
human rights as well as women’s equality; and Turkey’s Women for Women’s Human Rights New Ways, whose members were active in the 2001 amendments that
successfully repealed some of the patriarchal aspects of Turkey’s Civil Code.
Even relatively conservative societies such as Bahrain and Kuwait are under
pressure as activists demand that women receive their full rights as citizens. The
right to vote and run for office has been a key demand of women activists in the
Gulf countries and in recent years they have won this right. There has also been an
increase in liberal arts colleges for women in the Gulf countries.36 It may be plausibly
argued that there is a connection between women’s higher education attainment in
the Gulf countries and the formation of women’s organizations, along with a higher
propensity for political claims-making. Research on Kuwait, for example, has shown
that women’s networking and involvement in professional associations is a strong
predictor of engagement with the political process.37
The relationship between women’s education, employment, and civic engagement
is clear. Women’s educational attainment not only correlates with employment and
involvement in professional and civic associations; it is also a powerful predictor of
women’s rights activism. The movements, organizations, and campaigns mentioned
above have been spearheaded by educated women—most of whom are also urban
professionals in an array of fields, including the arts, media, the university sector, and
business. It is in their own organizations that critically-minded educated women can
establish their authority, take part in decision-making, engage with various publics,
and exercise their political rights. In so doing, the women’s groups are “feminizing
the public sphere” and expanding the terrain of democratic civil society.38
Thus far, these developments are limited to the urban areas. Urbanization is a key
aspect of social change and economic development, with cities playing a central role
in social movements as well as in globalization processes. More needs to be done by
governments to include rural citizens in development and change, and by women’s
movements to include rural women in their campaigns for civil, political, and social
rights of citizenship. W
A
Notes
1. For cities and globalization see: Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Thousand
Fall / Winter 2010
volume xvii, issue i
31
Valentine M. Moghadam
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
32
Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2003). For cities and urban movements see: Farideh Farhi,
States and Urban-based Revolutions: Iran and Nicaragua (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois
Press, 1990), and Asef Bayat, Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1997).
Ragui Assaad, “Urbanization and Demographic Structure in the Middle East and North
Africa with a Focus on Women and Children,” Population Council Regional Papers, no. 40
(1995): 21.
On sociological studies of “world society,” “world culture,” and the “world polity,” see
John Meyer, John Boli, George Thomas, and Francisco Ramirez, “World Society and the
Nation-State,” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 1 (1997): 144–181; John Boli and
George M. Thomas, “World Culture in the World Polity,” American Sociological Review
62, no. 2 (1997): 171–190; John Boli, “Contemporary Developments in World Culture,”
International Journal of Contemporary Sociology 46, nos. 5–6 (2005): 383–404.
See Karen Bradley and Francisco O. Ramirez, “World Polity Promotion of Gender Parity:
Women’s Share of Higher Education, 1965–85,” Research in Sociology of Education and
Socialization 11 (1996): 63–91; and John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and Yasemin
Soysal, “World Expansion of Mass Education, 1870–1980,” Sociology of Education 65, no. 2
(1992): 128–49.
World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2006-2007 (New York: World Bank, 2007).
World Bank, Education in the Middle East & North Africa: a Strategy Towards Learning
for Development, MENA Development Report (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1999).
See also Valentine M. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the
Middle East, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), ch.4.
World Bank, The Road Not Traveled: Education Reform in the Middle East and North
Africa, MENA Development Report (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2008), Table 1.5, 16.
Information from the World Bank’s educational statistics database, EdStats, is available
at www.worldbank.org/education/edstats. See also Valentine M. Moghadam and Tabitha
Decker, “Social Change in the Middle East,” The Middle East, ed. Ellen Lust (Washington,
D.C.: CQ Press, 2010), Table 2.8, 85.
Ibid.; William A. Rugh, “Arab Education: Tradition, Growth and Reform,” Middle East
Journal 56, no. 3 (2002): 396–414.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Education at a
Glance: OECD Indicators 2006 (Paris: OECD, 2006).
Golnar Mehran, “The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity in Female Education in the
Islamic Republic of Iran,” Comparative Education Review 47, no. 3 (2003): 269-286.
Farzaneh Roudi, “Population Trends and Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa,”
PRB Policy Brief (Washington, D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, Oct. 2001).
On infant, child, and maternal mortality health indicators for the Arab countries, see
United Nations Development Report (UNDP), Arab Human Development Report 2009
(New York: UNDP, 2009). See also Assaad, “Urbanization and Demographic Structure in
the Middle East and North Africa with a Focus on Women and Children.”
T. Castro Martin, “Women’s Education and Fertility: Results from 26 Demographic and
Health Surveys,” Studies in Family Planning 26, no. 4 (1995): 187-202.
John Caldwell, Theory of Fertility Decline (London: Academic Press, 1982). A similar
argument is made in Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern
Muslim Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).
Moghadam, Modernizing Women, chapter 6; Roudi, “Population Trends and Challenges in
the Middle East and North Africa.”
Valentine M. Moghadam and Elham Gheytanchi, “Political Opportunities and Strategic
Choices: Comparing Feminist Campaigns in Iran and Morocco,” Mobilization: an
the brown journal of world affairs
Urbanization and Women’s Citizenship in the Middle East
International Quarterly of Social Movement Research 15, no. 3 (2010).
18. Though the elder population is still a fraction of the total population, it is expected to
grow in line with lowered fertility rates. Care for the elderly is already a matter of social
concern in Lebanon, though it remains largely the responsibility of women in the family.
See Seiko Sugita, Simel Eşim, and Mansour Omeira, “Caring is work: Meeting social care
needs in Lebanon,” (paper prepared for Mediterranean Research Meeting, Montecatini
Termé, Italy, March 2009).
19. Data from UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2009 (Tokyo, Japan: UNDP, 2009), 36
and Table 4, 232.
20. M. Riad El-Ghonemy, Affluence and Poverty in the Middle East (New York: Routledge,
1998); Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East,
3rd ed. (Oxford: Westview Press, 2007); Larbi Sadiki, “Popular Uprisings and Arab
Democratization,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32 (2000): 71-95; UNDP,
Arab Human Development Report 2002 (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 2003).
21. See in particular Joel Beinen, Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt
(Washington DC: The Solidarity Center, 2010); R. Tusi, “Voices of a New Iran,”
OpenDemocracy, December 11, 2009. http://www.opendemocracy.net/r-tousi/voices-ofnew-iran.
22. See Moghadam, Modernizing Women, chapter 2; Moghadam, “Women’s Economic
Participation in the Middle East: What Difference Has the Neoliberal Policy Turn Made?”
Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 110-146; and Moghadam,
“Where Are Iran’s Working Women?” Viewpoints: Special Issue on the Iranian Revolution
at 30 (Middle East Institute, January 2009). The World Bank’s World Development
Indicators 2006 gives a regional average of a 27 percent female share of the total labor
force. See Table 2.2, http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section2.htm.
23. Moghadam, “Women’s Economic Participation in the Middle East.”
24. World Bank, World Development Report 2006 (Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, 2006),
Table 2.5, http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2006/contents/Section2.htm.
25. UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Survey of Economic
and Social Developments in the ESCWA Region (1995); Radwan A. Shaban, Ragui
Assaad, and Sulayman S. al-Qudsi, “The Challenge of Unemployment in the Arab Region,”
International Labour Review 134, no. 1 (1995): 65-81; International Labour Organization
(ILO), World Labour Report 1999 (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 1999).
26. According to a recent World Bank survey of female home-based work and
entrepreneurship, MENA women are, in fact, less likely to engage in the informal sector
than are men. See Nadereh Chamlou, Silvia Muzi, and Hanane Ahmed, “Female HomeBased Work and Entrepreneurship in MENA: Evidence from Amman, Cairo, and Sana’a”
(March 2010). Draft paper made available to the author. In a personal communication,
Ms. Chamlou said that Iranian women may have higher rates than Arab women of
informal-sector involvement, but the empirical research has yet to be undertaken.
Nadereh Chamlou, personal communication, Washington D.C., 19 March 2010.
27. For data on the 1990s, see: World Bank, Implementing the World Bank’s Strategy to Reduce
Poverty: Progress and Challenges (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993), 5; ESCWA, A
Conceptual and Methodological Framework for Poverty Alleviation in the ESCWA Region
(New York: UN, 1993), esp. 6, 121; see also ESCWA, Survey of Economic and Social
Development in the ESCWA Region, 1994 (New York: United Nations, 1994) and ESCWA,
ESCWA Survey 1997 (New York: United Nations, 1997); Middle East Times, (November
3-9, 1996), 19; Moghadam, The Feminization of Poverty?. See also UNDP, Arab Human
Development Report 2009, Table 3, 229.
28. John C. Caldwell, Theory of Fertility Decline (London: Academic Press, 1982), 166–169;
Fall / Winter 2010
volume xvii, issue i
33
Valentine M. Moghadam
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
34
Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender & Society 2, no. 3 (September
1988): 274–290.
Hoda Rashad, Magued Osman, and Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, Marriage in the Arab World
(Washington, D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, 2005).
Pardis Mahdavi, “‘But What If Someone Sees Me?’ Women, Risk, and the Aftershocks of
Iran’s Sexual Revolution,” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 5, no. 2 (Winter 2009):
1-22. 11.
Pardis Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2008).
Personal communication from Mme Bochra Bel Haj Hamida, Tunisian lawyer and ATFD
activist, Helsinki, May 2003. Mme Bochra Bel Haj Hamida, personal communication,
Helsinki, May 2003.
Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society.
Collectif Maghreb Egalité 95, Guide to Equality in the Family and in the Maghreb
(Bethesda, MD: Women’s Learning Partnership for Rights, Development, and Peace,
2005). This is an authorized translation of Dalil pour l’égalité dans la famille au Maghreb,
produced by the Collectif in 2003.
Moghadam and Gheytanchi, “Political Opportunities and Strategic Choices.”
Katherine Zoepf, “Universities for Women Push Borders in Persian Gulf,” Chronicle of
Higher Education (April 14, 2007): 45-47.
Helen Mary Rizzo, Islam, Democracy and the Status of Women: The Case of Kuwait (New
York: Routledge, 2005).
See contributions in Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2, no. 2 (Spring 2006):
“Women’s Activism and the Public Sphere,” guest-edited by Valentine M. Moghadam and
Fatima Sadiqi.
the brown journal of world affairs