Description
Book SynopsisThirty years after the end of the civil war, Lebanese women are still struggling for gender equality. This study builds on recent scholarship on women's activism in the Arab world, in the context of the Arab Spring. It examines how discourses of secularism and equal civil rights have informed the contemporary Lebanese women's movement in their campaigns for a domestic violence law, women's nationality rights, a women's quota in parliament, the reform of personal status law and the recognition of civil marriage. This book argues that women are caught between sect and nation, due to Lebanon's plural legal system, which makes a division between religious and civil law. While both jurisdictions allocate women relational rights, guided by the logic of patrilineal descent, women's inequality is central to the reproduction of sectarian difference and patriarchal control within the confessional political system, as a whole.
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2.The Formation of Lebanon as a ‘Confessional Democracy’: An Accommodation of Difference? Chapter 3.Gender and Personal Status Law in Lebanon Chapter 4.A New Phase of Women’s Rights Activism: Online and Offline Chapter 5.Intersectional Activism: Civil Rights and Women’s Rights Chapter 6.The Quest for Civil Marriage Chapter 7.Conclusion: Caught Between Sect and Nation?
