Women and Gender in the Twentieth-Century Middle East (review)

Notwithstanding prevalent views to the contrary, write the editors of Women and Gender in the Twentieth-Century Middle East, scholars—more than fifty of them in Israel alone—have always been concerned with women’s status in Islamic and Middle Eastern societies. The goal of this anthology, according to the opening report by Ruth Roded and Noga Efrati, is “to express trends and reflect recent developments in the field, enrich the knowledge base and undermine stereotypes.” Although the volume is not problem-free, I believe it succeeds in reaching these goals.

The anthology’s first four articles deal with major historical processes, beginning with Ilan Greenberg’s discussion of women’s education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Cairo and Istanbul, cities that led the way in educational reform for the entire region. Missionary schools and Catholic orders played a key role in this process, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as did governments seeking to define their countries’ educational goals (oddly, the article’s only reference to Jewish educational institutions is based on S.D. Goitein’s A Mediterranean Society, which deals with the Middle Ages). Greenberg also discusses the beginnings and expansion of higher education for women and the role played by the American University in Beirut, as well as the constant tension between nationalist and colonial influences.

Noga Efrati defines several stages in the emergence of a women’s movement in the Middle East, and particularly in Iraq. The combined influence of intellectual discussions of women’s status and roles in society, women’s education, and the newspapers had a significant impact on the public sphere and on women’s awareness, coming to concrete expression in the women’s organizations that were established after World War I. Al-Nahḍa al-Nisaiyya, the first women’s organization in Iraq, had Jewish and Christian members, though the majority were Muslims. One of Efrati’s most important findings is that, similarly to the West, women’s organizations in the Middle East made a crucial contribution to the development of social services—a familiar phenomenon in Israel as well, as has been shown in recent studies by such scholars as Dvora Hacohen, Lilach Rosenberg-Friedman and Shifra Schwartz (to which Efrati might have, but does not, refer). Later on, women began participating in the national struggle. Analysis of the process in Iraq reveals that generalizations should be avoided when discussing women’s organizations and their development.

In “Gender and Social Change: Between the Shar‘i Court and Orphan Funds in Jaffa and Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Period,” Iris Agmon shows that the mid-nineteencentury Tanzimat reforms effectively turned the Shar‘i Court into a family court. The article outlines the division of labor within marriage, the division of parental responsibility and the family-building process. The reforms removed orphans’ property from family control, reducing their vulnerability and dependence on their families, while reinforcing the status of care-giving mothers. In this light, the author concludes, “the transition to modernity seems less linear and one-dimensional and more complex, dynamic and multi-dimensional.”

Until the end of the British mandate over Israel, its Bedouin led a tribal lifestyle. According to Fatma Ahmad Qasem in “Identity and Education of Bedouin Women: Establishing and Disassembling Tribal and Official Identities,” the establishment of the State of Israel brought crises and confusion. The land was considered a liberating, constitutive resource for women, while education was considered a threat. With the passage of time, Israel’s Ministry of Education has not sufficiently concerned itself with Bedouin women’s needs for education. Given the complexity of attitudes toward education and the West, spending time on a campus has a significant impact on developing the young Bedouin woman’s identity.

“The Turkish woman was the symbol of the nation,” asserts Ruth Barzilai-Lombardo in “Kamalism and Feminism: The Official Feminist Balance in Ataturk’s Turkey.” In the period...