Lebanese Women at the Crossroads

Caught between Sect and Nation

By: Nelia Hyndman-Rizk

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Hardcover | 22 January 2020

At a Glance

Hardcover
170 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.9 x 23.7 x 1.2

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$328.25

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Thirty 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.

Industry Reviews

This book explores the nature and persistence of gender inequality in Lebanon in the context of the political and social upheavals triggered by the 2011 Arab Spring. In October 2019, activists again mobilized street demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience calling for an end to state corruption, economic failures, and rampant inequality, including gender discrimination. Using interviews, surveys, and archival and ethnographic research, Hyndman-Rizk (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) reveals the dynamics of gender inequality and its role in the country's unique sociopolitical and legal systems. A legacy of the French mandate, the Lebanese state formally recognizes 18 distinct religious communities resulting in a plural legal system, where personal status codes that regulate marriage, divorce, and inheritance are embedded in the different religious laws of each confessional community. The author's careful analysis reveals the deep-rooted patriarchal values entrenched in both the civil and religious laws that trap women between sect and nation in Lebanon. Ongoing popular demands for secularization and democratic reform will, no doubt, lead to improvements in gender equality, a goal that Lebanese women activists continue to strive for. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.

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