Gender inequality in the Muslim world has become the object of high drama on the international scene. Ghostlike images of women wrapped in burqas and begging in the streets of Afghan cities swept television screens in the United States following 9/11. The number of articles on Muslim women in English newspapers has increased exponentially in the last few years. Although the popular press and the media continue to emphasize seclusion and subordination in their description of Muslim women, scholars have written extensively and persuasively to debunk the myth of the Muslim woman as a victim, passively suffering the subordination imposed on her. Starting in the 1970s and continuing to the present, a rich literature has argued that as elsewhere in the world, Muslim women have not only resisted subordination but have actively shaped their own destiny (e.g., work by Leila Ahmed [Reference Ahmed1992], Nadje Al-Ali and Nicola Pratt [Reference Al-Ali and Pratt2008, Reference Al-Ali and Pratt2009], Elizabeth Fernea [Reference Fernea1998], Nikki Keddie [Reference Keddie2002, Reference Keddie2007, Reference Keddie2008], and Fatima Sadiqi and Moha Ennaji [forthcoming]).
The lower participation of women in the paid labor force in the Muslim Middle East relative to other world regions (World Bank 2004, 2005) raises questions, however. Female labor force participation is defined as the fraction of the formal labor force made up of female citizens. The major question then is: What is the culprit of gender inequality in the Muslim Middle East? Could it be Islam or is it something else? Most scholars of gender in the Muslim Middle East have shown that Islamic doctrine does not in itself subordinate women. Focusing on the original texts of Islam, they have demonstrated that the doctrine can be interpreted in many different ways and that the religious scriptures contain within themselves the possibility of interpretations that favor women's rights (Ahmed Reference Ahmed1992; Mernissi Reference Mernissi1991). In the same vein, other scholars have documented the rich diversity in women's rights and opportunities within the Muslim world, thus suggesting that factors other than Islam are the culprits of gender inequality (Charrad Reference Charrad2001, Reference Charrad2007a; Keddie Reference Keddie2007). Still others have suggested that the Islamic revival has not resulted in a decrease in female employment or prevented improvements in women's condition, such as in education (Bahramitash and Kazemipour Reference Bahramitash and Kazemipour2006).
If it is not Islam, then what else is at work that can help explain the lower rates of female labor force participation? In “Oil, Islam, and Women,” Michael Ross (Reference Ross2008) argues that oil is to blame. An oil-based economy with its emphasis on nontraded goods may contribute to lower numbers of women in the paid labor force. I suggest, however, that other factors are at work. They may be more significant than oil in some cases or combine with oil in complex ways in other cases. We also must pay more attention to history than Ross does.
In my own work, I have ascribed women's subordination in the Muslim countries of the Middle East to the kinship/politics nexus. I have pointed to a form of kinship that relies on bonds among men. I have focused on a long history of “kin-based solidarities” in the political system (Charrad Reference Charrad2001, Reference Charrad2007a). This history has led to the development of powerful patriarchal networks that tend to perpetuate gender inequality in law, politics, and the economy. If we are to develop a fuller and more nuanced understanding of macro processes that shape gender inequality in the Muslim Middle East, I see our challenge in terms of analyzing how such different forces as oil, kinship structures, and politics come together to produce different outcomes in different times and places in the region.
Oil Booms or Patriarchal Networks
Oil, not Islam, is the culprit of gender inequality according to Ross (Reference Ross2008), who argues that the oil industry has halted the progression of gender equality throughout the Middle East, contrary to the Western assumption that Islam is the main culprit. Oil-rich countries have fewer women workers in the formal economy. They also have fewer women in positions of political influence. He indicates that oil-rich countries tend to invest in the nontraded sectors such as construction and to neglect the traded sectors (agriculture and manufacturing), which traditionally employ large numbers of women. Ross's basic pathway is as follows: High oil rents lead to low levels of female labor participation, which in turn leads to low levels of female political participation, measured by the number of female parliamentary seats and ministerial positions. Ross concludes that “petroleum perpetuates patriarchy” (Reference Ross2008), while conceding that several oil-producing nations outside of the Middle East—Norway, New Zealand, and Australia—have not seen reductions in the female labor force or in female political representation because these states had high baseline female involvement before the oil industry boom.
History suggests that the “atypically strong patriarchal cultures and political institutions” that Ross (Reference Ross2008, 107) attributes to oil in fact predate oil economies in the Middle East. Several oil-producing countries in the region have a long history of strongly patriarchal structures and political institutions. Examples include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf Emirates, Libya, and Iraq. Oil was discovered in societies that were based on tribal or kin ties, with strong patriarchal networks invested in the control of women. These tribal or kin ties became the basis for the political system, and the oil economy later was grafted onto these social structures. In some cases, patriarchal networks were kept in place or were even reinforced by colonization, as in Algeria. As Pippa Norris points out in the current issue, some of the countries mentioned above are primarily responsible for the statistical relationship between oil rents and the economic and political status of women in the Middle East indicated by Ross.
The theory I have offered indicates that political systems that build their power on kin-based patriarchal networks tend to curtail women's rights, whereas those that have historically evolved to be relatively autonomous from such networks tend to favor more women-friendly policies (Charrad Reference Charrad2001, 1–13 and 233–41; Reference Charrad2007a). Ross notes that the regional “Middle East” variable is statistically significant in terms of lower levels of female labor force participation, in contrast to the Islam variable, which is not. He does not explain what it is about the “Middle East” that might have such a statistical effect, however. The Middle East is a dummy variable that includes the 17 states of the Middle East and North Africa as listed by the World Bank (Ross Reference Ross2008, 112). I suggest that the prevalence of patriarchal kinship networks may be one part of this distinction, as nations where politics are dominated by them tend to have more conservative gender policies and are, thus, likely to place more restrictions on women's activities outside the home.
Policies and Politics
To illustrate his conclusions, Ross uses a case study of the Maghreb, pitting oil-rich Algeria against oil-poor Tunisia and Morocco. He argues that although these Maghrebi nations, and specifically Algeria and Morocco, share a common culture and history, their respective level of oil production predicts their levels of female economic and political participation. Oil-rich Algeria, although it has made gains in recent years, lags behind oil-poor Tunisia and Morocco in female labor force participation and political involvement. What Tunisia and Morocco lack in oil rents per capita ($61 and $0, respectively) they make up for in textile and clothing exports per capita ($287 and $94, respectively), while Algeria (oil rents per capita $937) claims a mere $0.09 textile and clothing exports per capita. Algeria illustrates the pattern whereby oil-rich states neglect their export and manufacturing sectors (including textiles and clothing), which tend to employ large numbers of women, and thus witness a decrease in female labor force participation and political involvement. Ross also includes the influence of women's movements in Tunisia and Morocco, resulting in the following process: Low oil rents in Tunisia and Morocco lead to high levels of female labor participation, which in turn stimulates the growth of women's organizations and movements that lobby for and achieve high levels of female political participation.
I believe that Ross's argument is not sufficient to explain the differences in the Maghreb. If we shift the focus from comparing Algeria and Morocco as Ross does to comparing Tunisia and Morocco, we are led to raise a number of questions. Let us consider Ross's data on female political participation in Tunisia and Morocco. Tunisia has substantially more females in parliament than Morocco, 22.8% versus 10.8% in 2002, respectively. On the basis of a strict adherence to Ross's pathway, one would expect Tunisia, where women have achieved greater political participation, to have a smaller oil industry than Morocco. However, this is not the case. In fact, while Tunisia has oil rents at the relatively low rate of $61 per capita, Morocco has none at all.
Therefore, something more than oil production is at work in shaping processes by which greater gender equality in politics is achieved in oil-poor Middle Eastern countries. Ross hints at these mechanisms in his article, but does not distinguish between them or explain their importance. As described by Ross, Morocco and Tunisia began promoting the textile industry at about the same time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, expanded exports, and relied on low-wage female labor, thus following the same economic strategy. Yet Tunisia has witnessed greater female political participation and ranks higher on the Gender Rights Index than does Morocco. Neither oil nor Islam explains this difference. I suggest that a key difference between the two countries can be traced to the different family law policies and their implications for women. As Alice Kang mentions in the current issue, more attention needs to be directed to the role of political institutions in altering the effect of economic processes.
Within three months of declaring independence from French colonial rule, Tunisia passed its progressive family law, known as the Code of Personal Status, promulgated in 1956. Family law in the Islamic world is critically important in shaping women's status in the family, the community, and the society at large. As Asma Khadar, a Jordanian women's rights activist, declared, “[f]amily law is the key to the gate of freedom and human rights for women” (Reference Khadar1996, 2). The Tunisian Code of Personal Status did not deal with labor directly. However, it made women equal before the law by freeing them from some of the most patriarchal practices previously in effect. This facilitated their entrance into public life, whether in education, the labor force, or politics. By contrast, Morocco adopted a conservative family law in 1957, following its independence from France. Moroccan family law was essentially a reiteration of the existing and conservative version of Islamic law that had prevailed and enshrined patriarchal practices. It was not until 2004 that Morocco promulgated more “women-friendly” legislation.
The comparison of Morocco and Tunisia raises questions about the relationship between economics and politics in regard to gender equality in the recent history of the Middle East. It causes us to question the centrality of female labor force participation as the only or major pathway to political participation. Although it has greater female political participation and a higher Gender Rights Index rating, Tunisia actually has lower female labor participation than does Morocco. The lower female labor force participation can be attributed, as Ross suggests, to the relationship between female entry into the labor force and household income. If the latter is high enough, the former may drop. Since Tunisia has a much higher income per capita than Morocco, the difference in female labor force participation may be explained simply in terms of a lesser need for larger numbers of Tunisian women to work. We are still left, however, with having to explain the higher political participation of women in Tunisia. This is where the redefinition of gender relations that was included in the Tunisian family law reforms following independence made a difference.
A comment must be made on the role of women's organizations and movements in the Middle East. This is an area of inquiry of which we still know little, and which is in dire need of field research. I believe that we cannot import theoretical models from Western liberal democracies or from Asia or Latin America. In including women's organizations and movements in his model, Ross treats them as a consequence of increased labor force participation and as the cause of greater political involvement. Citing the examples of Bangladesh, South Korea, and the United States, he expects similar developments in the Middle East. I am not convinced that women's movements and organizations have resulted from increased numbers of female factory workers in manufacturing in the Middle East. The evidence suggests that, in the region in general, upper-class women from prominent families historically have been most active in women's organizations (Badran Reference Badran1995, Reference Badran2005; Stephan Reference Stephan2009).
It cannot be assumed that the countries that rank highest on the Gender Rights Index are those that have the most vocal or best-organized women's movements, as Ross implies. Tunisia's progressive family law was passed in the 1950s as a reform from above by a newly formed national state in the absence of a women's movement (Charrad Reference Charrad2001, 201–2, 215–32). Women's associations with a feminist orientation did not appear in earnest until the 1980s (Charrad Reference Charrad2007b; Labidi Reference Labidi2007) after a generation of Tunisian women had benefited from the development of national education (which had been available only to a few during colonization).
Finally, countries with active women's organizations have not always developed high levels of women's political participation, as is implied by Ross. In Algeria, women were a large part of the anticolonial war for independence in the 1950s. They later formed associations in the 1980s and 1990s but were unable to influence gender policy in the context of the bloody struggle that took place between the government and Islamic fundamentalist groups. Algerian women fought for increased gender equality earlier than did their counterparts in Tunisia and Morocco, but with little success. The fact that they did not succeed has at least as much to do with the lack of receptiveness of the government as with how well organized or robust the women's movement was. The motivations of governments and their interests in facilitating women's access to labor and political participation must be included in the equation. Ross himself mentions several exceptions to the oil-centered model on gender inequality, such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Syria, and Mexico, and explains the relatively higher status of women in these oil-producing countries with reference to the actions of their governments.
Conclusion
In focusing on oil, Ross's study presents a differentiated view of economic change, which raises questions about types of economic development for women, rather than simply overall growth. We still need to further develop the analysis of gender in social structures and political systems that do not conform to the features and processes of Western countries, however. In particular, there is more to learn about gender inequality in societies with strong kin-based solidarities and patriarchal networks. As a fundamental social structure throughout much of the Middle East, kinship is vital to an understanding of culture and politics in the region.
