Women’s Empowerment in Rojava : A Negotiation between War, Revolution, and Tradition / Dalir Barkhoda.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barkhoda, Dalir, author.

Series:

Middle East and Islamic Studies E-Books Online, Collection 2026.

Brill Kurdish Studies ; 5

Middle East and Islamic Studies E-Books Online, Collection 2026

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Middle East and Islamic Studies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (212 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

A Negotiation between War, Revolution, and Tradition

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2026.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How do revolutionary gender policies work amid political transformation and conflict? Based on ethnographic research in Rojava, north Syria, this book examines gender as a power relation organized around access to material resources, positions of authority, and the capacity to make life choices. You follow a processual analysis of how the interplay of war-related dynamics—economic hardship, mass emigration, shifts in the gender composition of society and the workforce, and the gender legislation and policies of the Rojava administration—reshapes everyday interactions in homes, workplaces, and public spaces. The book argues that while women gain new opportunities, these advances remain precarious, constrained by dominant patriarchal norms. Situating Rojava alongside historical cases from the United States and Britain during World War II and from Nicaragua and Vietnam during revolutionary and liberation wars, the study offers comparative insight into when wartime gains may—or may not—translate into lasting gender change in the post-conflict era.

Contents:

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Figures, Maps and Tables

Abbreviations

1 Introduction

1Into the Limelight

2A Bid to Transform Gender and Society

3Debating Rojava

4Rojava in a Broader Context

5Gender, Power, and Social Transformation in Rojava

6A Note on Theory and Method

2 A Fragmented Context: Gender, Power, and Everyday Life in Rojava

1A Morning in Qamishlo

2Entering a Landscape of Contested Change

3Sites of Encounter: Institutions, Market, and Homes

4Researching with Care: Ethics in a Contested Landscape

5A World in Motion

6Unsettling the Rules: Institutional Reform and Everyday Power

7Concluding Reflections: Tracing the Threads

3 Rojava, a Brief History

1Syrian Kurds under the French Mandate

2The Growth of Kurdish Nationalism (1946–2012)

3The Paradoxical Situation of Syrian Women

4The Rise of the Rojava Administration and Women

5Concluding Reflections

4 Women’s Economic Empowerment

1Demands for Women’s Participation in the Economy

2Women in the Private Sector

3Women in the Public Sector

4Women’s Entry into the Workforce: Constraints and Facilitators

5Concluding Reflections: Between Necessity and Transformation

5 Women’s Political Empowerment

1Women in Positions of Authority

2Women’s Needs Identification

3Women’s Mobilization and Political Challenges

4Concluding Reflections: Contours of Women’s Political Empowerment

6 Women’s Capacity to Make Their Own Life Choices

1Strategies for Change: A New Approach

2Negotiating the Change

3Legislation: Language and Scope

4Concluding Reflections: Open Doors, Guarded Thresholds

7 The Social Organization of Gender in Everyday Life

1Women in Public: Not Secluded but Controlled

2Who Sits Where?

3Workplace: Shifting Boundaries and Persisting Norms

4Women’s Negotiations of Gender: Evading, Challenging, and Complying

5Concluding Reflections: Continuity and Change

8 A Precarious Process of Women’s Empowerment and Insights from History

1The Precarity of Women’s Empowerment in Rojava

2Cases from the History

3The Post-War Transition and Its Impacts on Women’s Roles

4Insights from the Past

9 Postscript: Rojava and Syria after Assad

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Barkhoda, Dalir Women's Empowerment in Rojava

ISBN:

9789004765849

OCLC:

1603125925

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004765849 DOI