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Feminist Research in the Middle East at the Nexus of Intersectional Identities and Democratic Decline
Abstract
Hasso (2005) argues that researchers need to pay more attention to the lives of women on the margins as as this is where the essentialist binaries that dominate the discourse on women in the Middle East are shown as failing to accurately reflect the complexities and realities of women's lives. In a similar vein, Sehlikoglu (2017) shows that as feminist research in the Middle East has developed, it has often worked towards breaking stereotypes about women. This paper makes three key arguments: first, that more research, especially in the social sciences, needs to focus on women’s lived experiences. Heeding Hasso’s words, I argue this research needs to utilize methods that can show the details of women’s lives and work beyond what current trends in empirical research emphasize. This is due to the limits such research places on respondents’ narratives and due to the declining democratic climate research may occur in. I argue case studies give the opportunity to forefront women’s voices, thoughts, and reasoning—illustrating the complex identities and realities that Hasso urges researchers to center. This paper’s second argument is that the next phase of development among feminist research needs to be guided by research informants/participants. As Sehlikoglu points out, feminist work has recently focused on exploring the relationship among gender, Islam, and secularism. In order to escape such researcher-imposed themes, feminist research needs to begin with and forefront women’s experiences and the identities participants feel are most important. This paper’s final argument is that researchers should employ social media to conduct case studies. Researchers—especially those who have years of field research to contextualize the work—under-utilize social media. Yet, the use of public social media accounts has many benefits. The benefits include that they are written in the women’s own words, the women managing the accounts only post as much as they are comfortable with given the security situations they face, and that the posts on these accounts often highlight the intersectionality of women’s identities.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies