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231. Cross-National Responses to Discrimination: A Q&A with Michèle Lamont

Author:
Michelle Nicholasen
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Racism and discrimination are daily realities for members of marginalized groups. But what does it look like at the ground level, and how do individuals from various groups and countries respond to such experiences? Drawing on more than 400 in-depth interviews with middle class and working class men and women residing in the multi-ethnic suburbs of New York, Rio, and Tel Aviv, and representing five different racial “groups,” a team of sociologists examine how people deal with and make sense of the various forms of exclusion that are ever present in their lives.
Topic:
Race, Women, Discrimination, and Marginalization
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, Israel, Brazil, South America, and North America

232. Women, Gender and Terrorism: Gendered Aspects of Radicalization and Recruitment

Author:
Jeannette Gaudry
Publication Date:
09-2016
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Women In International Security (WIIS)
Abstract:
The rise of groups like ISIS has galvanized the expansion of the global terrorism problem. While ISIS is hardly the first extremist organization to attract women and to use gendered tactics for recruitment, its formation and growth has paralleled the explosion of social media, bringing unprecedented attention to the problem. As scholars and policymakers attempt to develop coherent responses to the threats that groups like ISIS pose, three critical issues need to be addressed. (1) What drives individuals to join extremist groups, and are these drivers different for men or women? (2) What are common methods of recruitment, and do they differ by gender? (3) Have states and international institutions integrated gender perspectives in their responses to radicalization and extremist violence? Do these approaches empower women to resist recruitment? Without an integrated dialogue between the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and counterterrorism communities, the answers to these questions will remain incomplete and policy responses may fall short.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Women, Radicalization, Violence, and Political Movements
Political Geography:
Middle East and North Africa

233. Women, Gender and Terrorism: The Missing Links

Author:
Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Michael E. Brown
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Women In International Security (WIIS)
Abstract:
In March 2016, WIIS launched the Women, Terrorism, and Violent Extremism program. With the generous support of the Embassy of Liechtenstein in Washington, D.C., WIIS will facilitate a series of expert roundtables to explore the role of women in terrorist and violent extremist organizations, including the gendered dimensions of radicalization. These round tables will provide a forum for bringing together an international group of experts and policymakers from the counter-terrorism and Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) communities. Key takeaways and recommendations of expert roundtables will be captured and disseminated in the form of policy briefs. The first Policy Brief draws on the first roundtable discussion, held on March 20, 2016. This roundtable featured four noted experts: Ms. Sanam Anderlini, Co-founder and Executive Director of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN); Dr. Kathleen Kuehnast, Senior Gender Advisor at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP); Dr. Paul Pillar, former official of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and now a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, Terrorism, Women, Radicalization, Violence, and Peace
Political Geography:
Middle East and Global Focus

234. Women & Armed Conflicts and the issue of Sexual Violence

Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
This report derives from a colloquium on the theme of ‘Women & War’ organised jointly by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) which took place on 30 September 2014 in Brussels. The proceedings of this colloquium have been written by the speakers or by the Delegation of the ICRC in Brussels on the basis of audio recordings of the event.
Topic:
Gender Issues, War, Peacekeeping, and Women

235. Reimagining Peacemaking: Women’s Roles in Peace Processes

Author:
Marie O'Reilly, Andrea Ó Súilleabháin, and Thania Paffenholz
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
Peace and political transition processes provide key opportunities to transform institutions, structures, and relationships in societies affected by conflict or crises. Despite these wide-ranging implications, women’s participation in formal peacemaking remains low. And empirical evidence regarding the impact of women’s participation on peace has been lacking. The International Peace Institute’s new report, “Reimagining Peacemaking: Women’s Roles in Peace Processes” examines the challenges and opportunities presented by women’s participation in peace and transition processes. It shares new quantitative and qualitative evidence on the impact of this participation and explores models and strategies for strengthening women’s influence throughout mediated processes. Based on research carried out at the International Peace Institute in New York and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, the new report shows how the lag in women’s participation is linked to broader dilemmas in the peacemaking landscape today. Drawing on a comparative study of forty peace and transition processes from the Broadening Participation Project, it demonstrates that when women are able to effectively influence a peace process, a peace agreement is almost always reached and the agreement is more likely to be implemented. The report also features a case study on two distinct peace processes in the Philippines, where an unprecedented level of women’s participation offers lessons on their influence
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, United Nations, Peacekeeping, and Women
Political Geography:
Global Focus

236. Journal of Public and International Affairs 2015

Author:
Joanna Hecht, Sam duPont, Cynthia Barmore, Natasha Geber, Abby McCartney, Emily A. Wiseman, Jordan Dantas, Stephanie Leutert, and Lauren Dunn
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Woodrow Wilson School Journal of Public and International Affairs
Institution:
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
Abstract:
Cynthia Barmore builds on primary survey research conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina to offer new explanations of the constraints placed on farmers by an unreformed land system. Natasha Geber addresses an underexplored policy area, looking at Russia’s geopolitical ambitions in the Arctic and offering a perspective on the chances of international cooperation on Arctic issues. Abby McCartney pulls together two seemingly disparate policies, seeing an opportunity for New Jersey to expand its successful drug court program using provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Emily Wiseman looks at how women and girls still tend to be excluded from post-disaster relief efforts, even though almost all implementers understand that this exclusion exacerbates gender inequality and retards reconstruction. Jordan Dantas analyzes the drop in piracy off the Somali coast, and finds private sector success where military solutions failed. Stephanie Leutert offers a clear-eyed perspective on the divergent narratives about the Obama Administration’s deportation policies, and analyzes how those policies have impacted immigrant communities. Lauren Dunn looks at two programs for using mobile phones to provide basic banking services—a success and a failure—and offers lessons for how the regulatory environment and existing institutions must shape program design.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, Government, Immigration, Piracy, Women, Conflict, Rural, Drugs, Land Rights, Barack Obama, and Medicaid
Political Geography:
Russia, India, Haiti, North America, Somalia, Arctic, United States of America, and Bosnia and Herzegovina

237. (Re)claiming the Body of the Somali Woman in Nuruddin Farah’s From a Crooked Rib

Author:
Helmi Ben Meriem
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
Nuruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, west of Mogadishu. In 1976, he was declared a persona non grata by the Somali president and dictator Siad Barre, who banished Farah into exile because his writings were seen as a rigorous and harsh critique of Barre, especially four of his early eight novels, which attacked the dictatorship in Somalia. However, Farah’s fiction not only attacks the dictatorship in Somalia, but it also criticizes the country’s most cherished traditions, values, and beliefs. For example, in his first novel From a Crooked Rib (1970), he breaks the homosexuality taboo in Somalia by questioning the inabil- ity to think of sex outside of the paradigm of heterosexuality, and in some of his later novels, he brings in the issues of incest, pedophilia, bestiality, and murder. Farah is one prominent figure of Anglophone literature in Africa, along with Achebe, and Soyinka. He is also con- sidered as the next most likely African Anglophone writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature after the Nigerian Wole Soyinka in 1986 and the South African Doris Lessing in 2007. Farah is described, among other things, as the “gift from Africa to contemporary world literature” (Bardolph, “On Nuruddin” 121). Farah’s fiction extends over more than eleven novels and other fictive and non-fictive writings. Most criticism of his fiction focuses mainly on four issues: the writing about Somalia in exile, the intertex- tuality between his fiction and other writers, the poetics of Farah’s fic- tion, and the feminist aspects of his fiction and how it presents a new image of Somalia. Indeed, one of the most interesting readings of Far- ah’s fiction is a gender-based one; the authenticity, with which Farah tackles the issues of womanhood and gender has pushed some of his readers to think of him as a woman, even sending him letters address- ing him as “she.” In this respect, the Nigerian scholar J. I. Okonkwo has argued that Farah is one of few others who have “done the greatest justice to female existence in his writing” (217). In a comparison estab- lished by Okonkwo, Soyinka is seen as depicting women as either a disguised or undisguised prostitute, Achebe depicting women as an appendage to men, and Farah depicting women simply as women, with all the variations and at times contradictions (216). Farah’s feminist attitudes have given him the title of “Africa’s first feminist male writer” by Kirsten Hoist Petersen (249). Indeed, Farah is well aware of his feminist attitudes; he states in his essay “A View of Home From the Outside” that he is interested in those denied their rights, be it women or men, and in the struggle behind it (qtd. in Okonkwo 217). Eventually, the women in Farah’s fiction become instruments to reconstruct Somalia and to reshape society by giving a new meaning to womanhood. In his fiction, women’s struggle for freedom and for the right to voice themselves become an allegory for a nation in search of its voice. New womanhood becomes interchange- able with a new Somalia, and eventually, Somalia becomes once more the mother, as opposed to its status as a father-land in a dictatorial system. His first novel, From a Crooked Rib, seen by Richard Dowden as “a dazzling spark” of light in the dark tunnel of silencing women (Intro- duction, vii), could be regarded as a feminist manifesto. If we were to describe this novel, we would resort to a line from “The Rights of Women” a poem by Anna Laetitia Barbauld: “Injured Woman! Rise, assert thy right” (28). From a Crooked Rib is a third person omniscient narrative about the story of Ebla, a Somali woman defying her society and escaping her family, who were forcing her into an arranged mar- riage. This novel, with its genuine depiction and voicing of oppressed women, has been widely read and acclaimed, and studied as an authentic representation of the Somali society. This paper aims at read- ing From a Crooked Rib from a Foucauldian perspective in order to highlight the forces that shape the lives of Somali women. The empha- sis will be on the relationship between the discourses used to contain the Somali woman and her body. We will try to set a link between the different discourses and the body within the dialectics of writing/(un) writing and silencing/voicing. Thus, this paper is divided into two major parts: first, a concise overview of the Foucauldian approach to discourse and power, and second, an examination of the different discourses that govern the body of the Somali woman. The second part will root the Foucauldian approach in a gender-related reading and will be divided into two sub-parts: the writing and the un-writing of the woman body.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Literature, and Sexuality
Political Geography:
Africa and Somalia

238. Somali Solutions: Creating conditions for a gender-just peace

Author:
Siham Rayale, Ed Pomfret, and Deborah Wright
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
This report looks at Somali women's experiences with conflict, peace, violence, insecurity and state rebuilding. It uses an approach geared towards gender-just peace-building to understand the ways in which Somali women have fulfilled their role as agents of change, while navigating the challenges posed by women's exclusion from many forms of public life (government, civil society, universities, open markets etc). Interviews and focus groups have been used to illustrate diverse perspectives and to demonstrate that Somali women have always been principal agents of change and social transformation. The report's recommendations are an acknowledgement of the role Somali women have played throughout the course of Somali history, and continue to play today, in shaping the pathway towards greater participation for women across Somali regions, and the challenges they face in so doing.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Social Movement, Women, and Gender Based Violence
Political Geography:
Africa and Somalia

239. Strategic Blindspots: Essentializing, Securitizing, and Empowering Women and Men to Counter Violent Extremism

Author:
Sahana Dharmapuri
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Fletcher Security Review
Institution:
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Abstract:
Today, the international community has at its disposal an underutilized tool to address the multidimensional problem of violent extremism: UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) on Women, Peace and Security. October 2015 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the adoption of the resolution, and the first time that the Security Council recognized that gender equality is a critical component of maintaining international peace and security. It is now widely recognized that conflict and peacebuilding are highly gendered activities, and that women and men experience violence and security differently. Recognizing that the roles of women vary greatly from perpetrators or victims of violence, to their role as peacebuilders and political actors, is an important first step by security actors to take into account women’s different experiences and perspectives in international security and peace decision-making. However, basing preventative approaches to violent extremism on a narrow understanding of what it means to be male or female—e.g. solely focusing on the roles of women or men—not only limits policy options but perpetuates two strategic blindspots: essentializing women and securitizing women’s roles in CVE. Both essentializing and securitizing prevents a diverse examination of how both men and women are affected by and influence the promotion and the prevention of extremist violence in of CVE policies and programs. This is because a narrow focus on the roles of women and men excludes an examination of the context-specific, socially and culturally relevant opportunities and constraints that both men and women experience. As such, an exclusive focus on men and women’s roles obscures the entry points available to understand and counter violent extremism more effectively. UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security can help shed light on these blindspots in CVE because it requires both the participation of women and a gender perspective in policies and programs related to international security and peace. As such, the resolution offers analytical tools to help CVE practitioners analyze the complex issue of violent extremism, namely the use of a gender perspective. A gender perspective helps to reveal solutions and courses of action that would otherwise be overlooked in highly localized, context-specific, socially and culturally sensitive conflicts.
Topic:
Security, Gender Issues, Violent Extremism, Counter-terrorism, and Women
Political Geography:
United Nations and Global Focus

240. Remembering and Making History in Egypt

Author:
Vicki Valosik
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Abstract:
Dr. Hoda Elsadda has spent years documenting history—as it has been lived and experienced by women in Egypt—but this time she’s the one making history. Elsadda, a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University and current Carnegie Foundation Centennial Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, served on the “Committee of 50” delegates who wrote the historic 2014 Egyptian constitution.
Topic:
Human Rights, History, Women, Constitution, Arab Spring, and Higher Education
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, Egypt, and United States of America