From Women’s Rights to Feminism: The Urgent Need for an Arab Feminist Renaissance

This chapter proposes the need to establish Arab feminist movements with ample room for internal dialogue, criticism and objection, provided they share specific objectives that target comprehensive social change in all the institutions of society. We also need to undertake a general assessment of the current condition of women’s rights and the development of women’s and feminist movements in the Arab world, and their ability to forge a theoretical and practical path to equality and freedom. Based on this, the chapter takes the framework of an internal dialogue that hopes to be a constructive critique from within rather than outside these movements. Although I address the theoretical or intellectual situation and its importance in building movements, I focus more on the movements themselves with their particularities and daily practices. I address the problematics of women or womanist vs. feminist movements in our region in general, and then expound on a subject I believe the women’s movement has so far failed to address in a satisfactory manner. This is our relationship with our body and sex, a domain in which, in my opinion, a feminist movement could achieve considerable progress.
Author(s): Zeina Zaatari
Date Published: 2014

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