On September 5th 2019 I presented to students in International Studies 2200, "Introduction to the Modern Middle East." My topic was "Understanding Gender Relations in the Middle East." I explained that there was a good reason for feminism and that feminist movements happen worldwide. Because I didn't know how much prior knowledge students may have about either feminism or the Middle East I started with statistics on the global gender gap, comparing the average with the statistics of the Middle East. This showed that while the Middle East is worse when it comes to certain metrics, the gap is a worldwide problem. This countered the prevailing stereotype that Middle Eastern women are oppressed. I also talked about how important it is to address issues such as violence against women here in the U.S. The students were very engaged by the topic. I showed a video I really enjoy by a woman martial arts instructor who teaches self defense to women in Jordan and we had a lively discussion afterward. I also gave some information on how Islam views gender relations so that students get a better understanding of why many Muslims practice gender segregation and observe the veil. We also did a Google search on Muslim women and discussed why the outer appearances of an identity, such as the hijab, are important to understand but don't tell the whole story. I was particularly pleased that a young man came up to me after the lecture to talk and share his experiences with me. I try to make the topic of gender in the Middle East relevant to everyone.


Is Gender Equality and Issue? Global and Local Perspectives

Global Gender Gap=32% on average, 40% in the Middle East (WEForum, Gender Gap Report, 2018)

"Nearly 1 in 3 (35%) women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence, not including sexual harassment, by any perpetrator." (WHO, Respect Women, 2019); UN Report: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/chapter6/chapter6.html; Violence against women="In the U.S., 43.6% of women (nearly 52.2 million) experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetime" (CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey Report, 2017);


Meet Lina, Martial Artist, Trainer

Watch video: Meet Lina in "Because I Am a Fighter."

Discussion questions:

What does Lina say about culture? What does this tell us about how well she fits in? Who comes to her studio?


Recent Study Looking at Gender in Society:

"An unsupervised machine learning study presented at the 2019 meeting of Association for Computational Linguistics—which examined 3.5M books published between 1900 and 2008—indicates that men are described based on their behavior, where women are described based on appearance." (Damiani,2019)


What are Gender Roles? Discussion questions:

What are gender roles based on? Culture or biology? (allow sufficient time - big question, no right answer, I ask students to develop their political stance on this, but after class because there isn’t enough time)

Hadith on gender separation (Islamicity).



Critical Analysis Using Google Image Search:

Google Image Search: "Muslim Woman" -

Discussion questions:

  1. Hijab=Muslim woman?
  2. How much does the veil matter for understanding gender in the Middle East?

Woman power logo, CC.0, Via Wikimedia Commons


Sources:


Damiani, J. (2019, August 30). Massive Machine Learning Study Demonstrates Gender Stereotyping And Sexist Language In Literature. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2019/08/30/massive-machine-learning-study-demonstrates-gender-stereotyping-and-sexist-language-in-literature/#667508e21c1b

RESPECT women: Preventing violence against women. (2019). Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/312261/WHO-RHR-18.19-eng.pdf?ua=1

National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey—State Report. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/2015data-brief508.pdf

The Global Gender Gap Report 2018. (2018). Retrieved September 4, 2019, from World Economic Forum website: https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2018/