Women and Politics in the Middle East through a Marxist Feminist Lens (PDF)

Scientific Study from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Miscellaneous, grade: 4.0, University of Reading, language: English, abstract: The hierarchical social relations inherent to any patriarchal system have resulted in women's social identities becoming dependent on their relationship with men, as a fathers or husbands. Such relationships have encouraged the view that the oppression of women is the cornerstone of such systems and that their liberation is an essential condition for overcoming it. My question for this paper is: What is the relationship between patriarchy and women's marginalization and absence in the political sphere? In this paper I will discuss how women are marginalized and silenced by force rather than by choice. To further elaborate on that it must be clear that women, especially in the Middle East, are constrained by different types of patriarchy. They are restrained from growing and aspiring to change power relations by the legal system, by the social conventions and the unequal power relations between male and female, and lastly by externalities that constructed the polity of the region. In order to further carry out this research paper, I will use a Marxist feminist theoretical framework to analyze the issue of women's marginalization in the Middle East.