Women in the Kurdish Movement

This book offers the first historical account of Kurdish women's politicization in Turkey, starting from the mid-1980s. Çalayan presents a critical feminist analysis through women's everyday experiences, incorporating women's self-narrations with her own autoethnographic reflections. The author provides an account of the socio-political dynamics which constrained women's politicization, of the factors and mechanisms which enabled their political activism, and of the construction of women's political history through their own narrations. Women in the Kurdish Movement is a highly original contribution to Kurdish women's political history. It will be key reading for students and scholars across various disciplines with an interest in gender, political participation, everyday resistance, feminist methodology, nationalism, ethnicity, secularism, social movements, post-colonial studies, and the Middle East.

Explores the central role women played in the constitution and unfolding of the public image of Kurdish opposition throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s Seeks to problematize the gendered working of politics in Turkey Offers a reading of possible sites of democratic challenge to this working through women's everyday experiences

Autorentext

Handan Çälayan is a Visiting Scholar, Department of General Linguistics, Bamberg Otto Friedrich University, Germany.

Klappentext

This book offers the first historical account of Kurdish women s politicization in Turkey, starting from the mid-1980s. Çälayan presents a critical feminist analysis through women s everyday experiences, incorporating women s self-narrations with her own autoethnographic reflections. The author provides an account of the socio-political dynamics which constrained women s politicization, of the factors and mechanisms which enabled their political activism, and of the construction of women s political history through their own narrations. Women in the Kurdish Movement is a highly original contribution to Kurdish women s political history. It will be key reading for students and scholars across various disciplines with an interest in gender, political participation, everyday resistance, feminist methodology, nationalism, ethnicity, secularism, social movements, post-colonial studies, and the Middle East.

Inhalt

1. Narrating the Field, Narrating Life.- 2. Kurdish Women as Political Agents: Kurdish Political Movement, Gender Equality and Women's Freedom.- 3. Kurdish Women in Political Organizations: The Kurdish Movement and pro-Kurdish Political Parties.- 4. Kurdish Women Talk: Narrations through Everyday Life.- 5. Conclusion.