FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

Women's Role in Building a Society ­
A Finnish Perspective on the Palestinian Developments
• •
Dr. Sylvia Akar
University ofHelsinki, Finland
This article will address the role of women and, especially, the
role of feminism in building a society. I will make some remarks
about different kinds of feminism, both in Palestine, and in
Finland, and then try to evaluate the meaning of these discussions
in the process of building a viable and successful state.
With the concept of feminism, we usually refer to the theories
of political, economic, and social equality of the sexes on the
one hand, and the organized activity on behalf of women's
rights and interests on the other. In Arabic, feminism is usually
called nisa'iyya or nazariyya /-musawah bayna /-jinsayn.
The women's movements in Palestine - as in other Middle
Eastern Muslim countries - can roughly be divided into two or
three 1 overlapping categories:
1. secular women's movement;
2. Islamic feminism / Muslim feminism or Islamist feminism.
I Some writers make a distinction between Islamic feminism and Islamist, or
Muslim, feminism. Since the line between Islamic and Islamist in this context,
is quite fluid, I have decided to keep only two categories: secular and Islamic.
See Tohidi 2002 for a discussion on terminology.
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