Subjects Archives: Feminism

  Beth Baron.  Egypt As a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics.   Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.  292 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-23857-2. In Egypt as a Woman Beth Baron explores the connections between Egyptian nationalism, gendered images and discourses of the nation, and the politics of elite Egyptian women from the late nineteenth […]

  Less than a minute in, Nawal El Saadawi, the ideological godmother of Muslim feminists, flouts author interview protocol rather fabulously, by pretending she’s not really doing one.  I’m at a sunny breakfast table in Edinburgh on the last day of her UK book tour, to discuss the republication of her seminal 1970s books, but […]

Canadian socialist Jeffery R. Webber interviews women leaders of PSUV in the state of Mérida. Teresa Mora and María Linares at the PSUV’s Mérida headquarters In the early afternoon of September 8, 2008, I sat down at the state headquarters of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), in the city of Mérida, for an […]

October 3-6, 2008 San Francisco The Women’s Building, 3543 18th St. Speakers Embattled civil liberties attorney Lynne Stewart Activists and scholars from Central America, China, Australia, and the U.S. Key topics Multi-racial organizing in a society divided by racism The dynamic leadership of youth and queers Women of color and immigrant women spark a labor […]

With sincere apologies for such short notice: please send messages of support for Marian Residence, a shelter and transitional housing program for homeless women in San Francisco, to SF mayor’s office, if possible in advance of press conference on Wednesday, August 20, at 11 a.m. (and please copy messages to for purposes of a tally). […]

  Frances Hasso.  Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan.  Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East Series. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005.  ix + 231 pp.  Bibliography, index.  $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8156-3087-6. Frances Hasso makes abundantly clear what her book, Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan, […]

In his book entitled Silence of the Poor, French writer Henri Guillemin said that those who were the foundation of the victory of the Revolution of 1789, the urban and rural poor, including women, were excluded from politics by an electoral law giving the right to elect and be elected only to citizens who could […]

Many capitalist roaders say the Left is out of touch with popular culture.  Well, I say NYET to that!  Here, for instance, is an episode of Sex and the City that I translated for my Marxist-Leninist study group, so that we may better throw off our Tiffany chains. [Scene I: Chic, Upper West Side restaurant] […]

Women in poor countries are bearing the brunt of the current food crisis.  Today we highlight some of the dimensions of the crisis as it affects women. The current food crisis is yet another reminder of the feminisation of poverty.  Women produce most of the food in poor countries, yet they have less access to […]

Chicago, IL (14 de mayo, 2008) — La “Marcha por la diversidad sexual” tomara lugar por primera vez en su historia de 12 años en el vecindario de Pilsen, el cual es predominantemente mexicano.  Esta marcha, conocida en ingles como “Dyke* March Chicago” ocurre cada año en el vecindario de Andersonville, al norte de la […]

  As feminists and people of conscience, we call for solidarity with Palestinian women in Gaza suffering due to the escalating military attacks that Israel turned into an open war on civilians.  This war has targeted women and children, and all those who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, and are also denied […]

Iman Bibars.  Victims and Heroines: Women, Welfare, and the Egyptian State.  London: Zed Books, 2001.  x + 330 pp. Bibliography, index. This sensitively written and thought-provoking book is based on the author’s fieldwork in seven poor neighborhoods within the Cairo-Alexandria conurbation.  Even though a systematic survey was conducted in one of the research sites, the major […]

  Shahla Lahiji is the first Iranian woman who succeeded in getting a publisher’s license registered in her own name.  She founded Roshangaran and Women’s Studies, a publishing house, 23 years ago.  Lahiji sees herself in a kind of living history on the question of women’s labor, for her mother was the fifth woman who […]

  Dror Ze’evi.  Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourses in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900.    Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. xiv + 223 pp.  Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. According to one tradition, the Prophet Muhammad once ordered a handsome youth from the tribe of ‘Abd Qays to sit behind him, so that he (the […]

  Kenya appears to be on the brink of an ethnically charged civil war following a disputed election on December 27. President Kibaki was declared the winner of a second term after a vote that opposition candidate Mr Raila Odinga denounces as rigged and that European Union observers agree was seriously flawed. As tens of […]

  En tant que féministes antiracistes et anticoloniales, nous avons d’importantes réserves à l’égard de la Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux différences culturelles.  Par ailleurs, le Conseil du statut de la femme du Québec (CSF) a suggéré des modifications à la Charte québécoise afin de réclamer la priorité relative du droit […]

  This meeting, after thorough discussion of all aspects of the situation arising from the imposition of State of Emergency by the Chief of the Army Staff, resolves as follows: We strongly condemn the imposition of State of Emergency, promulgation of Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), suspension of fundamental rights and the dismantling of the entire […]

The Democrats and Republicans are united in the belief that Iran poses a risk to US interests in the Middle East and must therefore be reined in.  Iran is too irrational to be trusted with nuclear weapons, cry the warmongers who only half a century ago dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Iran is […]

Listen to Saadia Toor (Assistant Professor, Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, College of Staten Island) and Kourosh Shemirani (of the Queer Iranian Alliance) on Doug Henwood’s Behind the News (WBAI, 99.5 FM, 31 May 2007) on liberal imperialism and how Western leftists should think about the conditions of women and LGBTQ people in Iran and […]

  Tune in to Out-FM this Monday the 12th of March at 11:00 AM on Pacifica Radio WBAI at 99.5 FM and at www.wbai.org. Brad Taylor hosts a discussion with CUNY- Staten Island Professor Saadia Toor and Kourosh Shemirani of Qiam (Queer Iranian Alliance) stemming from the discussion event hosted by Professor Toor at CUNY’s […]