The 2008 global economic crisis has had vast repercussions on the Gulf countries. In particular, Bahrain's weak economy has survived under the umbrella of various conflicting pulls: the hegemonic western impact toward globalization, and increased regional and local retrenchment that is expressed in religious, traditional, tribal, familial, and politico-economic interests and concerns. Collectively, these concerns have been exacerbated by the economic crisis and vocalized in a politicized discourse that has underpinnings of religious and ethnic alliances as its driving force. Within this framework, this paper traces the historical background and analyzes the current struggle of Bahraini women for codified rights of equality as already specified in the Constitution. This struggle has become entangled in the quagmire of local and international politics, and family law--one of the more controversial issues--reflects the local and global undercurrents of the fight. Despite Bahraini women's relative head start in education, employment, legislation of protective laws, and achievements compared to other Gulf States, local media, human rights organizations and individual interviews have provided ample evidence of the agony women and families suffer due to the lack of national protective laws and due to domestic violence against women. (Local Newspapers 2008-2010, & others) The official view as represented by the Bahrain Higher Committee for Women is that the battle is to legally confirm CEDAW's universal codes to benefit all women in Bahrain, in both the private and public arenas. While this is urgently needed, it has become an issue used to showcase power--both by the government and State-opposition forces. The opposition has used the discourse of the pulpit, and social and traditional norms while invoking women's support opposing the legislation. This resulted in the passing of a one-sided family law that split the society's legal reference and established a crisis of political confidence, the undertones of which are multi-dimensional and are further complicated by global politics. The focus of this research is to investigate the environment in which this struggle for rights exists and how it is manipulated by local politics and affected by international globalization efforts. Using a transnational approach and the voices of women themselves, the struggle for equality is studied through local, regional, and international media, as well as through interviews of Bahraini women, which will provide an ethnography of the subject and illustrate the diversity and complexity of the struggle facing women in Bahrain.

This paper is concerned with analysing the policies of family law in relation to women's rights in multi-religious settings. It asks the following research question: 'How does the enactment of family laws impact on the ways women negotiate their personal relationships in post-conflict Lebanona' The paper challenges the view that family law in non-western settings is a positive legal instrument that defines women as statutory legal subjects It takes a broader view of the 'enacted' aspects of family laws and examines their impact as historically-bound social institutions in order to analyse women's agency in negotiating their rights in the family. It uses qualitative research methods to examine the case of post-conflict Lebanon in the light of the renegotiation of 'consociational' citizenship in the national reconciliation pact era (1990-2005). Findings suggest that the enacted policies of family law fragment women's agency over individual and collective social spaces. These spaces are formed through clashes of the discursive regimes of local family law frameworks on one hand, and universalist gender equality and feminist activism on the other. It also constructs women's agency in multiple directions through contested notions of resistance and freedom beyond the conventional Western perspectives. The paper's main contribution is to argue for the need to move beyond a statutory view of family law in order to engage more thoroughly with their institutional complexity and the processes of their enactment. The focus on enactment helps explain why women have so far been unable to organise effectively towards challenging or reforming family laws. It also informs the complexity of citizenship in mutli-religious settings by contextualising the religious influence and framing it within political discourses on national identity and post-conflict state building.