Essays On Gender And Governance - United Nations Development ...

Gender and Governance : Concepts and Contexts
Women’s activism within religious movements often displays an
affirmation of their traditional gendered identities. 7 For example,
the Muslim Sisters in Egypt justify their activism by reference to
Islamic principles. Aisha Abd al-Rahman, a well known Koranic
scholar, argues that “the right path is the one that combines
modesty, responsibility and integration into public life with the
Koranic and naturally enjoined distinctions between the sexes”
(Hoffman-Ladd, 1987:37). Muslim women were active in the
“turban movement” in Turkey, which opposed the legal prohibition
of the Islamic head scarf for women students. This movement
played a vital role in radicalising the Islamic cause (Toprak,
1994:301). A striking feature of women’s participation in the
activities of the BJP women’s organization is women’s re-enactment
of conventional sex roles in the public arena.
If women’s activism within movements has a significant impact
on institutions, what implications does it have for movements? The
de-radicalization of social movements and the co-optation of
activists is one important possibility. An important debate among
social movement scholars is whether working within the state
undermines or enhances women’s power. The dominant tendency
of social movement scholars in the past was captured by Frances
Piven’s and Richard Cloward’s argument that states undermine
protest when they concede to its demands, thereby reducing the
longevity and radicalism of social movements. (Piven and
Cloward,1979).
However, other scholars have argued that far from being
domesticated, social movements have developed the capacity to
circumvent state regulation. David Meyer and Sidney Tarrow speak
of a “social movement society” in which more diverse
constituencies employ protest tactics to make a wider range of
claims than before at the same time that social movements are
becoming professionalized and institutionalised (Meyer and
Tarrow, 1998:4). Writing of women’s participation within dominant
institutions, Mary Katzenstein argues that women’s activism has
7
There are many parallels between Hindu women’s activism in “communal” mobilization
and the activities of women in the Nazi movement in Germany. See Valentine M. Moghadam
(1994), Claudia Koonz (1987), and Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman and Marion Kaplan
(1984). There are also some striking parallels with women’s participation in the Ku Klux
Klan (see Blee, 1991) and right wing women in the U.S. (see Klatch, 1987).
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