Elham Manea – författare

Researchers studying gender politics in Arab societies have been puzzled by a phenomenon common in many Arab states – while women are granted suffrage rights, they are often discriminated against by the state in their private lives. This book addresses this phenomenon, maintaining that the Arab state functions according to a certain ‘logic’ and ‘patterns’ which have direct consequences on its gender policies, in both the public and private spheres. Using the features of the Arab Authoritarian state as a basis for a theoretical framework of analysis, the author draws on detailed fieldwork and first-hand interviews to study women’s rights in three countries - Yemen, Syria, and Kuwait. She argues that the puzzle may be resolved once we focus on the features of the Arab state, and its stage of development.Offering a new approach to the study of gender and politics in Arab states, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of gender studies, international politics and Middle East studies.

Researchers studying gender politics in Arab societies have been puzzled by a phenomenon common in many Arab states – while women are granted suffrage rights, they are often discriminated against by the state in their private lives. This book addresses this phenomenon, maintaining that the Arab state functions according to a certain ‘logic’ and ‘patterns’ which have direct consequences on its gender policies, in both the public and private spheres. Using the features of the Arab Authoritarian state as a basis for a theoretical framework of analysis, the author draws on detailed fieldwork and first-hand interviews to study women’s rights in three countries - Yemen, Syria, and Kuwait. She argues that the puzzle may be resolved once we focus on the features of the Arab state, and its stage of development.Offering a new approach to the study of gender and politics in Arab states, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of gender studies, international politics and Middle East studies.

In response to recent media controversy and public debate about legal pluralism and multiculturalism, Manea argues against what she identifies as the growing tendency for people to be treated as 'homogenous groups' in Western academic discourse, rather than as individuals with authentic voices. Building on her knowledge of the situation for women in Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, she undertakes first-hand analysis of the Islamic shari'a councils and Muslim arbitration tribunals in various British cities. Based on meetings with the leading sheikhs - including the only woman on their panels - as well as interviews with experts on extremism, lawyers and activists in civil society and women's rights groups, Manea offers an impassioned critique of legal pluralism, connecting it with political Islam and detailing the lived experiences of women in Muslim communities.

This book suggests an innovative theoretical framework to understand the meltdown and civil wars of countries such as Yemen, Syria, and Libya after their 2011 uprisings, using Yemen as a case study. The interaction between different types of state formation and regional rivalry can explain, respectively, the civil wars of these countries and the preservation of the Bahraini system, despite its ethnic nature.The analysis works on two interconnected levels: First, an internal level focusing on the state formation of the country in question; and second, a regional level examining the operational context within which each country functions, and the type of actors involved in its political affairs.The recurrent instability in Yemen has been a result of overlapping group grievances repeatedly rising to the surface. This reflects a process of different attempts at state formation that ultimately failed to produce a modern state, along with core elites defined by (and at the same time exploiting) ethnic markers, perpetually infighting throughout Yemeni history. These three elements—tensions between groups, unsuccessful state formations, and the ethnic markers of its elites—stand at the core of the Yemeni dilemma. This book is based on original archival research and more than 100 interviews conducted by the author with all parties of the Yemeni Civil War and with other regional actors.