Lexington Books
Pages: 170
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-1-4985-2274-8 • Hardback • January 2020 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-4985-2276-2 • Paperback • March 2022 • $41.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-4985-2275-5 • eBook • January 2020 • $39.50 • (£30.00)
Nelia Hyndman-Rizk is lecturer in cross-cultural management at the University of New South Wales.
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2.The Formation of Lebanon as a ‘Confessional Democracy’: An Accommodation of Difference?
Chapter 3.Gender and Personal Status Law in Lebanon
Chapter 4.A New Phase of Women’s Rights Activism: Online and Offline
Chapter 5.Intersectional Activism: Civil Rights and Women’s Rights
Chapter 6.The Quest for Civil Marriage
Chapter 7.Conclusion: Caught Between Sect and Nation?
This book explores the nature and persistence of gender inequality in Lebanon in the context of the political and social upheavals triggered by the 2011 Arab Spring. In October 2019, activists again mobilized street demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience calling for an end to state corruption, economic failures, and rampant inequality, including gender discrimination. Using interviews, surveys, and archival and ethnographic research, Hyndman-Rizk (Univ. of New South Wales, Australia) reveals the dynamics of gender inequality and its role in the country’s unique sociopolitical and legal systems. A legacy of the French mandate, the Lebanese state formally recognizes 18 distinct religious communities resulting in a plural legal system, where personal status codes that regulate marriage, divorce, and inheritance are embedded in the different religious laws of each confessional community. The author’s careful analysis reveals the deep-rooted patriarchal values entrenched in both the civil and religious laws that trap women between sect and nation in Lebanon. Ongoing popular demands for secularization and democratic reform will, no doubt, lead to improvements in gender equality, a goal that Lebanese women activists continue to strive for. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.
— Choice Reviews
Lebanese Women at the Crossroads is a must-read handbook for activists and policymakers, showing how Middle Eastern women can exploit the lingering disruptions of the Arab Spring to fight for equal rights. In her up-to-date study of women’s activism in Lebanon, Hyndman-Rizk argues that civil marriage is the key to unlocking colonial-era patriarchy and to unleashing freedom for women and democracy for all. The primary task ahead, therefore, is wage a longterm campaign, online and off-line to change popular opinion and so to challenge the continued resistance of religious elites.— Elizabeth F. Thompson, American University