Although the last twenty years have witnessed the publication of several works addressing the politics and institutions of women’s health, the history of midwifery in the Middle East remains relatively understudied. Those works that examine the social position of midwives in the colonial period typically chart an arc in which the growth of hospitals and Victorian gender norms reduced women medical practitioners to mere assistants to male doctors, with the “respectable” figure of the “nurse-midwife” rising as a replacement for the dangerously autonomous traditional midwife and the colonial medical regime deliberately suppressing the indigenous. In this historiographical context, this paper presents a brief social biography of Alya “Um Hadi” al-Zayyat, a retired midwife who has inhabited the center of social and political life in Tyre for the past half-century. Its primary purpose is to trace the construction of Um Hadi’s local social authority, following her education and professionalization as a medical practitioner in Lebanon, Transjordan, and Palestine and the development of her social network following her return to Tyre in late 1947. Drawing upon oral interviews with members of Um Hadi’s professional, personal, and philanthropic networks, an examination of account books, photographs, and other documents from the Zayyat family papers, as well as archival research in the American University of Beirut School of Nursing’s institutional records, this paper attempts to use Um Hadi’s education and early medical career to highlight interactions between colonial and indigenous systems of medical training, practice, and professional legitimization that defied their usual antagonism. My central argument is that Um Hadi built her influence on the back of the social and professional legitimacy conferred by both indigenous and colonial systems of midwifery. The dearth of medical infrastructure and regulatory enforcement that characterized mid-20th century southern Lebanon, I argue, allowed Um Hadi to transform the government-issued clinical licenses that normally would have restricted her social networks into a powerful form of social capital and enabled her to practice a hybrid form of midwifery that incorporated elements of the typically contradictory indigenous and European medical regimes. This account thus offers a complication of existing literature that frames the weakness of the Lebanese state as an impediment to women’s social and professional advancement while pointing to conditions in which colonial medical regimes might fail – for a time – to subjugate and eliminate indigenous medical practices that comparatively empower women practitioners.

The Muslim veil, also known as hijab, has been an issue of debate. Scholarship concerned with the hijab has focused on women residing in the Muslim majority countries. Recently the hijab has gained visibility in the West because of immigration and conversions. While the hijab identifies one as a Muslim, the experiences of individual woman wearing it are unique. For instance, location is a fundamental factor when exploring the lives of Muslim women. Muslim women residing in the United States of America have a different relationship with the hijab than women living in a country where hijab is widely observed or enforced as in Saudi Arabia. The lack of research on Muslim American women generates assumptions and categorizes their experiences as monolithic.   Furthermore, scholarship specifically focusing on women wearing the hijab in the workplace remains scant. In light of this, I focus my research on a series of interviews with Muslim American women and their experience within the workplace. The workplace is particularly of interest because here, Muslim women interact in a non-veiled environment. The hijab is a complex symbol with religious and social significance, but it also has personal value for women who wear it in the West. Exploring testimonies, I provide real life accounts of how Muslim American women deal with workplace expectations while negiotating their religious identity. I demonstrate that Muslim American women are active agents in defining themselves. Although socially marginlized, I argue that the particpants in my research assert their confidence and self-valuetion. I draw on examples of women challenging social assumptions of what it means to be a Muslim woman. Donning the hijab while being socially active has navigated for Muslim women to break steortypes of weighty misconceptions. Using narratives and social identity theory I offer new perspectives on Muslim American women in the workplace.

This paper analyzes data from the Islamic Social Attitudes Survey (ISAS) 2007 of 1100 Kuwaiti College students’ attitudes towards women’s political leadership after women were granted the right to vote and run for parliament in 2005 along with an update of student perspectives in 2013. No women won parliamentary seats in the first election of 2006, but since 2007 a handful of women have won and lost seats in parliament, and even more have served as government ministers and proposed important legislation. We use the results of the 2007 and 2013 data to understand the link between youth perceptions of the compatibility of Islamic values and women’s entry into politics in Kuwait and note any changes over time. Much has been made of women’s political participation in Kuwait, a majority Muslim country, since women were given their political rights in 2005. While previously Kuwaiti women’s rights and roles were written as mostly relegated to protected, often private, spaces (Tetreault 1993), scholars have noted the way that women’s entry into politics has afforded new avenues for political and institutional discussions, particularly regarding government transparency, accountability, fighting corruption, and reform of personal status laws, since women have entered the legislative arena as voters, lobbyists, parliamentarians, and government ministers (Al-Sabah 2013). The Kuwaiti case is one of great value to the study of women and politics. While women have had access to university education in Kuwait since the country’s founding in 1961, women were only granted the right to vote and run for parliament in 2005. Since then, only a handful of women have been elected to office, incrementally initiating legislation that will equalize rights for women and men in the majority Muslim country, such as legalizing women’s ability to obtain passports without male permission. In our study, we assess the role of Kuwaiti young adults and their perceptions of women’s political leadership as well as their levels and methods of political engagement. Few studies of women’s increasing political participation in the Arab Gulf have used empirical methodology to evaluate the impact of women’s increasing political participation and its broader effects on society. The role of youth in particular is one of increasing sociological importance. Several recent surveys on youth attitudes and perceptions reveal the extent to which the future of the Middle East will be determined by the inter-generational transfer of values with respect to politics, religion, and gender roles.

Drawing on interviews conducted with women leaders in Oman in February 2016, this paper will investigate the political, social, and economic conditions that allow women in Oman to attain positions of leadership. It will explore the role of internal domestic factors, such as the leadership style of Sultan Qaboos, and external factors, such as the so-called Arab Spring, in shaping opportunities available to Omani women. Oman is an understudied country, and provides a unique and interesting case since the country’s geography differentiates it from other Gulf states and it practices the lesser known Ibadi form of Islam. It does not have the same degree of wealth at $19,000 per capita in 2014 as either the United Arab Emirates ($44,000 per capita in 2014), or Qatar ($96,000 per capita in 2014) (World Bank, 2015) . Women hold a number of leadership positions, including the Minister of Higher Education and the Ambassador to the United States. However, the 2014 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap report ranked Oman 96 out of 142 for educational attainment, and 128 out of 142 in terms of economic participation and opportunity. The data indicates a disconnect between educational and economic achievement, and suggest that, at least, in economic terms, the gap between women and men remains sizeable. Despite this gap, the presenters at the 2014 conference on women’s leadership in Oman demonstrated that there are women in significant leadership positions in Oman, even as some challenges persist. Recent studies highlight the “agency and determination” of Omani women even in “socially conservative” areas of the country. This paper draws on the stories of women leaders in Oman to document the social, political, and economic factors that enhance women’s capacity to obtain leadership roles in Arab societies. Using interviews conducted by the author situated in an analysis of Oman’s gender-related policies and socio-political and economic indicators, the authors make recommendations regarding the factors that seem most conductive to women’s success in the public sphere.