Concept Paper: Gender and Citizenship in the Arab World
Author: Suad Joseph (University of California, Davis)
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Excerpt from the introduction:
This paper investigates the impact of cultural and gender systems in the production of the unequal relationships of Arab women and men to the laws and practices of citizenship. I analyze key laws, social practices and institutions through which citizenship in Arab states has privileged a masculine citizen. Given that citizenship is mandatory in the modern “nation-state” (Zubaida 1988), it is striking to observe the reality that the modern “nation-state” has mandated a masculine citizen. Many of the issues affecting the gendering of citizenship in Arab countries appear to be specific to Arab states. Many are shared within the Middle Eastern region. Other issues are similar to patterns found in Third World countries. And some appear to be common to state societies in general. We need to both challenge the misplaced assumptions of cultural homogeneity in the Arab world, as well as sharply identify the patterns which are specific to the gendering of citizenship in Arab states. Therefore, while the focus of this paper is the gendering of citizenship in Arab states, it is my aim to contribute towards the comparative study of processes, which lead to the gendering citizenship in order both to deessentialize Arab cultures and to understand their specificities.