Patronizing Women

Sheila Carapico

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139022781.004

3 - Patronizing Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Sheila Carapico

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Sheila Carapico: Affiliation:
University of Richmond

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Summary

Western democracy brokers looking at the Middle East pay special attention to women. Many projects in the legal sector, dealing with elections, and encouraging civic involvement specifically addressed Arab women’s rights and participation, and some women’s empowerment projects cut across those categories. Like all political aid programs, activities for women consist mainly of research and instruction, on the one hand, and institution-building, on the other, or more generally with the production of specialized kinds of information. By the same token, women’s empowerment is a sub-sector of socio-economic as well as political development assistance, noted for specialized thematic and institutional agendas grouped under two prevalent acronyms: WID (women in development) and GID (gender in development). WID and GID studies constituted a specialized field of academic and policy research beyond the recognizable transitology literature. Whereas until now our attention was mostly on national and international-level processes, the literature on gender empowerment leads us through anthropology, cultural studies, and political sociology to the participants’-eye view of interpersonal interactions, individual life experiences, and cross-cultural exchange.

From this perspective, we can consider how people interpret and instrumentalize the ideals of gender empowerment. Drawing on scholarship in women’s studies, this chapter tackles the dual connotations of ‘representing’ Arab women by looking closely at the semantics and mechanisms of political aid. It asks: how did individuals and bureaucratic actors react to and act on aspirational and material enticements – how did they interpret discursive and institutional practices? This question is addressed in two parts. The first dissects the ways ‘foreign’ experts and ‘local’ interlocutors respectively adduce the significance of matters such as voting, Islamic law, media performances, and ‘culture.’ The second part, about the political sociology of international aid for various women’s institutions, places recent initiatives in the historical context of feminine activism in national, pan-Arab, and international circles.

Type: Chapter
Information: Political Aid and Arab Activism
Democracy Promotion, Justice, and Representation
, pp. 112 - 149

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139022781.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2013

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