Gulf Women’s Lives: Voice, Space, Place(Trajectories of Gender, Cultures and Social Change in the Middle East)

This edited volume investigates how Gulf women negotiate spaces of dissent through their writing. The focus on women’s narratives offers critical perspectives on how women in the Gulf construct themselves as gendered selves and authors, how they exist within public and private spaces, and how voice and agency are part of their conversations in various spheres. In the process, the book engages readers in theoretical reflections and conversations with literary works, media, the law, disability studies, and oral narratives from the Gulf. This timely volume fills in a serious gap in research and contributes to countering stereotypes and prejudices about Muslim and Arab women, specifically those located in the Arabian Gulf. The chapters gathered here challenge narratives of submissiveness, powerlessness, and victimization in order to uncover women’s social, cultural, and political contributions in their countries of origin or residence. The editors and contributors are specialists of the area, with the majority of them being from the Gulf. They include scholars and students, practitioners and entrepreneurs, all writing from a position of insight that stems from long-term engagement with the region. This offers a wide range of voices and perspectives that enrich the volume with a variety of topics, methodologies, and formats. This multidisciplinarity makes for the book’s broad appeal to the general reading public as well as specialists, practitioners, members of the press and civil society, as well as policymakers. This volume will also be a valuable resource to international audiences with an interest in the region.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Revisiting Women in the Gulf Emanuela Buscemi, Shahd Alshammari, and Ildiko Kaposi DOI: 10.47788/UIJR2942 1. From Stigma to Speech: An Autoethnography of Bedouin Culture, Writing and Illness Shahd Alshammari DOI: 10.47788/MKWD4340 2. Women Talking Back: In Conversation with Sekka Magazine’s ‘Managing Storyteller’ Sharifah Alhinai Ildiko Kaposi DOI: 10.47788/XSXW3918 3. Bodies on the Margins: Nonconforming Subjectivities in Gulf Women’s Literature Emanuela Buscemi DOI: 10.47788/LYZH2631 4. Unmasking Patriarchy: Emirati Women Journalists Challenging Newsroom Norms in Pursuit of Equality Noura Al Obeidli DOI: 10.47788/OVPM7566 5. A Critical Analysis of Women’s Petitions and Gender Reform in Saudi Arabia Nora Jaber DOI: 10.47788/JREF4746 Open Access: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/90273 6. Divorce: The Narratives of Qatari Women Maryam Al-Muhanadi DOI: 10.47788/VNZT1371 7. Female Socialization in the Omani Oases and the Impacts of Modernization on Women’s Identity after 1970 Aminah Khan DOI: 10.47788/IIJD8427 8. Women’s Narratives and (Im)mobilities in English: Modern Literature from the Arab Gulf Alice Königstetter DOI: 10.47788/LUYI4361 9. Palestinian Women in the Gulf: Gender, Sexuality and Alienation in Selma Dabbagh’s Fiction Nadeen Dakkak DOI: 10.47788/NZQW3091 Open Access: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/90274

About the Author :
Emanuela Buscemi is a sociologist and International Relations specialist whose areas of research include women and gender narratives, social (non)movements, agency and activism in the Arabian Gulf and Latin America. Shahd Alshammari teaches literature and is the author of Head Above Water (Neem tree Press, Feminist Press, 2022). Her research interests include Disability Studies, autoethnography, and women’s illness narratives. Ildiko Kaposi is a social scientist whose work focuses on issues of democracy from the perspective of media and communication.