Mittwoch, 16. Mai 2018 - 18:00
+++ENTFÄLLT+++ Vortrag: Universal conventions on women’s rights meeting besieged feminism
+++Leider muss der Vortrag im Rahmen des Cornelia Goethe Colloquiums entfallen!+++
Universal conventions on women's rights meeting besieged feminism: the case of Palestine
Islah Jad
This presentation addresses the impact of transnational feminism and global governance as represented by UN agencies and global donor community on a 'home grown feminism'. I argue in this presentation that transnational feminism and global governance have had a demobilizing impact on Palestinian feminist and women's movements, the vacuum left by these movements was immediately filled by a well-organized Islamist women's movement. Starring from 1988 and with the influx of funding to support the Palestinian intifada, a new type of women's organisation emerged in the form of NGos. The proliferation of these forms of women's organisations led to the spread of a new discourse on women and women's status mainly driven by transnational feminism advocating women's rights approach. However, this took place in the context of a steady decline in women's capacity for organisation and mobilisation. The new women's organisations were mainly situated in urban centres and led by urban middle class female elite. The earlier discourse of modernising 'traditional' society, prevalent in women's organisations at the turn of the century, was resuscitated this time to qualify Islamist women as the 'other'.
ISLAH JAD is a lecturer on gender issues and politics at the Women's Studies Institute and Cultural Studies Department of Birzeit University in the West Bank. She joined Birzeit in 1983, and is a founding member of its Women's Studies program. She has written books and papers on the role of Women in politics, Palestinian Women and the relationships among them, Islam, and NGos. Dr. Jad is also a consultant on gender issues to the UN Development Programme and is co-author of the UN's Arab Development Report on Women's Empowerment. She received her Ph.D. from the School of oriental and African Studies in London in 2004.
This lecture is part of the Cornelia Goethe Colloquium in 2018.