This lucid and accessible collection explores gender and national identity within political movements in the Middle East, the Maghreb and South Asia. It reveals how nationalism, revolution and Islamization are gendered processes, and argues that in periods of political change, women are central to efforts to construct a national identity. The book focuses on predominantly Muslim movements, and includes Algerian women's experience in the national liberation movement; the struggle to construct a Bengali national identity and the creation of Bangladesh; events (...) leading to revolution and Islamization in Iran; revolution and civil war in Afghanistan; and the Palestinian intifada. (shrink)

On March 8, 1987, the Sandinista Liberation Front published its statement on the relation of women's struggles to the Nicaraguan revolution. The author argues that this official statement is consistent with the views of modern feminists on some key points relating to the need to eliminate women's double day, promote women's self-organization, and wage an ideological struggle against sexism if women's subordination is to be eliminated. The author believes that the Sandinista Front's emphasis on ideological struggle and political organization represents (...) an important break with more economistic, orthodox Marxist approaches to analyzing the condition of women and has important implications for Marxist feminism. (shrink)

Introduction to the special cluster of articles by feminists from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

An introduction to the experience of women in former state socialist countries, which attempts to unravel the legacy of state socialism in relation to women. The book explores women's status in East Central Europe, both before and after 1989.

This book explores the relations of culture, identity, and women, providing vivid illustrations from around the world of the compelling nature of Woman as cultural symbol and Woman as political pawn in male-directed power struggles.