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Kuwaiti Women at a Crossroads: Privileged Development and the Constraints of Ethnic Stratification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Anh Nga Longva
Anh Nga Longva
Affiliation:
Doctoral candidate at the Institute and Museum of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, and a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 8159 Dep., N-0033 Oslo 1, Norway
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Extract

As elsewhere in the developing world, the Arabian peninsula has undergone sweeping changes since World War II, with the important difference that the process here has been blessed with unprecedented prosperity and not marred by economic difficulties. To say that the effects of modernization upon the local societies differ as a result from what can be observed in other countries would be to state the obvious. Yet, when it comes to understanding the position and status of contemporary women in the Arabian oil producing countries, prosperity and the particular circumstances around it are rarely considered as crucial variables. The women's situation often is evaluated, mainly if not exclusively, in light of the religious injunctions and traditional norms that govern the female condition in a Middle East that, by the same token, appears curiously monolithic and timeless. There seems to be an assumption that Arabian women are not part of the societies in which they live, and that, by virtue of some unique cultural principle, their condition remains unaffected by the vectors of change that have turned upside down all the other areas of life around them. Hence the general tendency to assess women's opportunities and constraints in terms of what the Qurʾan and Islamic tradition dictate, not in terms of secular and more immediate concerns they may share with the rest of the society. Aside from assuming a spurious dichotomy between the women and their societies, such an approach disregards the historical and material specificity of particular areas in the Muslim world. It also arbitrarily and a priori defines the character of the meeting between “Islamic tradition” and “modernity,” instead of leaving it open to empirical investigation.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , August 1993 , pp. 443 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

NOTES

1 For a cogent critique of the ahistorical, exegetical approach to the study of women and Islam, see Kandiyoti, Deniz, ed., Women, Islam and the State (1991)Google Scholar.

2 Besides referring to Nath, Kamla, “Education and Employment among Kuwaiti Women,” in Women in the Muslim World, ed. Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (1978) and Zahra Freethe, Kuwait Was My Home (1956), I am relying here on my own interviews with Kuwaiti women between the ages of fifty and sixty-fiveGoogle Scholar.

3 Annual Statistical Abstract 1989 (Central Statistical Office, Kuwaiti Ministry of Planning, 1989)Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 The Arab Times, 8 April 1989. He also indicated that Kuwaitis made up only 28 percent of the total population, not 40 percent, as previously stated in the official statistics. For the analysis of population statistics as an expression of political and nationalist projects, see Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (1991) and Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Identity and its Discontents: Women and the Nation,” Millenium 20, 3 (1991): 429–43Google Scholar.

7 For more information on the category bidoun jinsiyya (without nationality), see the information published in Kuwait in 04 1991 by the Committee for the Support of the StatelessGoogle Scholar.

8 Shah, Nasra and al-Qudsi, Sulayman, “Female Work Roles in a Traditional Oil Economy: Kuwait,” Research in Human Capital and Development 6 (1990): 213–46Google Scholar.

9 The Committee for the Support of the Stateless does not provide systematic comparative data.

10 Interview with the head of the Zakat House in Kuwait, 19 11 1988Google Scholar. In addition, I also refer to the information sheet by the Committee for the Support of the Stateless.

11 Shah, and al-Qudsi, , “Female Work Roles,” 225Google Scholar.

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14 Clerical work and social service also were listed in the statistics. But I chose not to include them, since the workers here were more likely to be bidoun than Kuwaitis.

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17 The majority of the non-Kuwaitis were Arabs. According to the last prewar census (taken in 1985) they represented 63 percent of the non-Kuwaiti population, followed by the Asians (35%) and the Europeans (1.2%).

18 The Committee for the Support of the Stateless.

19 Before the war, these were usually the children of Arab expatriates employed in the public sector.

20 They could join after five years' consecutive residence and employment but without the right to elect or to be elected (Article 72 of the labor law).

21 Research Studies on Population, 1985 Census Analysis, no. 1 (Central Statistical Office, Kuwaiti Ministry of Planning, 1987)Google Scholar.

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27 Rumaihi, Mohammed, Beyond Oil (1986)Google Scholar.

28 Crystal, Jill, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ghabra, Shafiq, “Voluntary Associations in Kuwait: The Foundation of a New System,” Middle East Journal 45, 2 (1991): 199–205Google Scholar.

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30 Shah, , al-Qudsi, , and Shah, , “Asian Women Workers in Kuwait,” 470Google Scholar.

31 It is interesting that female car driving has never been a major social issue in Kuwait.

32 The Arab Times, 4 05 1989Google Scholar.

33 Ballantyne, W. M., Legal Development in Arabia (1980)Google Scholar; Amin, S. H., “The Legal System of Kuwait,” Hannoversche Studien über den Mittleren Osten 3 (1988)Google Scholar; al-Awadi, Badria, The Legal Status of Women in Kuwait (Kuwait, 1985)Google Scholar.

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35 Crystal, , Oil and Politics in the Gulf, 103Google Scholar.

36 See, for instance, Hijab, Nadia, Womanpower (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kandiyoti, , “Identity and its Discontents”; Mernissi, Beyond the Veil; Patai, R., Society, Culture and Change in the Middle East (1971)Google Scholar; Magnus, Ralph H., “Societies and Social Change in the Persian Gulf,” in The Persian Gulf States, ed. Cotrell, Alvin J. (1980)Google Scholar.

37 Stoler, Anne L., “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth Century Colonial Cultures,” American Ethnologist 16, 4 (1989): 634–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Ibid., 634.

39 Ibid.

40 It would be a reductionist approach to claim that ethnic constraints alone account for the various organizational dilemmas faced by the Kuwaitis. I do argue, however, that ethnic constraints are among the most predominant and, so far, the most overlooked factors that could help cast light upon the main forms of social organization in Kuwait.

41 The crown prince's speech at the Kuwaiti People's Conference in Jedda, 10 1990Google Scholar.