Author : Dr Ibrahim Saleh
Source : COSMOPOLIS: A Review of Cosmopolitics, Special Issue on“Surveillance, Intelligence and Strategic Communications
Date of Publication : 09/2015
Abstract :
The prevailing system of state or national security is incompatible with and is the foremost
obstacle to both human security and planetary security. If human security is to be achieved,
patriarchy has to be replaced with gender equality and a new thinking about power, because
patriarchy privileges a minority of men who rationalize the harm they cause to those over whom
they have power. This research attempts to investigate contemporary feminist thinking and
practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The research offers a hands-on experience
with the aim of understanding, critiquing, as well as comparatively analyze the politics of gender
in the MENA region. Media miss stories that address the factors that hinder women’s effective
participation as citizens in governance and decision-making processes, and in politics that make
media gender-blind. Mainstream media are a site of potential challenge to patriarchal discourse
that normalizes gender hierarchy. News accounts of women frequently invite their audiences to
blame victims by including details that can suggest that women provoke such as harassment with their clothing choices, drug or alcohol consumption, or decisions to leave the confines of
the home. The research covers current debates on the status of women, and closely examines
the processes by which the private/public lives of women are gendered. It addresses women's visibility in society and the mediatisation of women's and feminist movements. The researchfollows an interdisciplinary and uses feminist pedagogy to challenge orientalist, monolithic, and Eurocentric notions of studying the region and particularly the status of women. It gives equal
weight to theory and practice and draws on writings by local and global activists and theorists.
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