The chapter examines the political mobilization of women and its limits, and sectoral tensions among women’s associations.

This chapter explores William Morris’s developing views about the ‘woman question’ across his life, focusing in particular on his comments within press interviews, his literary works, and his interpersonal relationships, be this with employees, friends, or family. It considers the past scholarship on this topic, which has tended to focus on debating whether Morris can be considered a ‘feminist’ or not. It emphasises that although Morris agreed in the need for adult suffrage for all and at times actively promoted progressive causes such as equal pay and the need for sexual freedom (even within marriage), he did still believe women had different roles to play to men in society, although these views could be inchoate and ill defined. The chapter showcases how Morris’s views were shaped by the male-orientated networks he inhabited in his political and professional life and by contemporary anxieties about the supposed effeminacy of artistic men. Moreover, it examines his views in relation to others within the networks of fellowship which made up the socialist and women’s movements, to situate and compare his views, and to best explore how Morris’s writings and ideas contributed to public discourse about women and gender at the brink of the twentieth century.

The concluding chapter sets out some of the key themes to emerge from the book. It recalls the influence of the various groups of actors who gave meaning to the Abortion Act, emphasising how the Act was shaped over time in a complex process of negotiation, dispute, revision and consolidation. We locate the Act within the shifting contours of a country undergoing a demographic revolution, exploring how it shaped and was shaped by processes of secularisation, the decline of discursive Christianity and an enhanced role for science in ordering understandings of the world, changing norms of gender, family and disability, shifting ideas of medical authority and changing technologies.

This chapter describes the processes by which the foundations were laid for Canada to become one of the world’s great industrial nations. In this period, Canadians build more railways, encouraged massive immigration, and experienced growing class, ethnic, gender, religious, and regional tensions. Immigrants flocked to jobs in urban centres, developed Canada’s resource frontiers, and swamped the Indigenous populations of British Columbia, the Prairies (from which the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and an enlarged Manitoba were carved), and Yukon Territory (where gold was discovered in 1896). Meanwhile, Montreal and Toronto emerged as nation-dominating metropolises, and progressive civil society organizations agitated for social reforms that would smooth the rough edges of industrial capitalism. Although national unity was a fragile flower and the national policy based on immigration, railroad building, and industrial development was called into question from a variety of critics, both the nation and the national policy survived all challenges, including demands for annexation to the United States and Imperial Federation.

This chapter looks at the spread of global history globally and the abandonment of historiographical nationalism. It examines the long practice of comparative, transnational and global history writing since the Enlightenments. It also looks at the construction of peculiarities and exceptionalisms through comparison as well as their critique. It distinguishes between comparative and global history and links the rise of both to the renewed crisis of historicism since the 1980s. It also discusses the controvery between comparative historians and historians of cultural transfer, arguing that both approaches need to be united. The chapter highlights the idea of circulations and examines the explosion of global history around particular themes. It also underlines its usefulness in overcoming Western-centric models of development and questioning universalisms. Transnational, comparative and global histories have all contributed to decentring collective identity constructions and making historians more aware of the ways in which historical writing has been connected to the construction of such collective identities. This is shown in relation to spatial boundaries, be they national or supra-national, but also in relation to class, racial and gender identities. Postcolonial perspectives on global history have been particularly adept at questioning the Western-centrism of historical writing and understanding diverse regimes of colonialism. It has also made transnational global history more aware of its own temptation to further global identities.

This chapter opens with a brief vignette on the long struggle to give women a voice in history across different parts of the world. It then examines the agendas and ambitions of gender histories, the discovery of men’s studies, the history of private life, the history of the body. Gender, it argues, did not only develop new fields of historical inquiry, it also impacted massively on traditional fields of historical writing, including political history, the history of empire, the history of science, economic history, nationalism studies and the history of warfare. The fields of women’s and gender history have been closely connected to a feminist politics of historical writing. It sought to recover the full range and depth of women’s experiences and it discussed a range of diverse gender identiteis and multiple ways of constructing the category of ‘woman’ and ‘gender’. It also emphasised the relationality of gender with a range of other master concepts for historical writing, inclucing race, class and religion. By historicising gender identities, it also de-essentialised those identities and pointed to the discursive construction of gender, with more recent historians also rediscovering the embodied experience of gender. Gender history, the chapter concludes, played a crucial role in pluralising our understanding of identity.

This chapter notes the challenge of maintaining and building a democratic politics in the face of increasing inequality and the power of capital over the political process. It argues that among the main proponents of democracy, organized women have been increasingly effective in achieving inclusion in the polity.  Historically, they have done so by advocating solidaristic goals rooted in the social good, rather than by focusing on individual success.  While the advent of free market economics in the 1970s created divisions among them, there is evidence that in the early twenty-first century, women may once again be unifying around an egalitarian politics that will help to sustain a rising democracy.

The history of women’s activism in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is closely intertwined with the history of political resistance. In the 1950s, women mobilized against political oppression. Later, they joined the struggle as members of the underground movement, as couriers, as protectors and nurturers of male fighters, and sometimes as the peshmerga (those who face death) fighters. However, only few women played leadership roles in the resistance. After 1992, when a form of autonomy was attained, civil society organizations, including independent women’s organizations, proliferated. This growth in the 1990s and 2000s, combined with the end of the four-year Kurdish civil war in 1998, led to the formation of collaborative networks and umbrella organizations. Now we can speak of a women’s movement that, despite its internal shortcomings and outside obstacles, has been able to bring about change in the region (Hardi, 2013). This chapter builds on two earlier studies about the women’s movement in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (Hardi, 2011, 2013). It draws on the voices of a group of experts to highlight the achievements and limitations and focuses on what to do next to surpass the perceived stagnation.

This chapter historically contextualizes the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement and analyses the trajectory of its organizational structures from 1987 to the present. It traces how the women’s movement managed to establish its own army (1995) and party (1999) within the PKK, while also establishing the co-chair system and the women’s quota in the political sphere in the early 2000s. The chapter zooms into one crucial moment of contestation between the women and men of the movement: the formation of the Kurdistan Women’s Worker’s Party (Partiya Jinên Karkerên Kurdistanê, PJKK) in 1999. It asks to what extent this and similar internal struggles can help us to gain a more nuanced understand of how the women managed to carve out the spaces for autonomous organizing within the wider movement, how the liberation of women came to feature so prominently in the movement’s ideology and how this speaks to ongoing debates around nationalism and feminism. The chapter also highlights some of the tensions and contradictions that emerge between the claim to liberation and the clear framework around the ‘free woman’.

“Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, Feminist Studies,” with the theme of the subordination of women, is marked by diverse and overlapping intellectual traditions and movements. We take a non-Western perspective of this diversity. We use the terms interchangeably, as in the historical development from the earlier focus on Women’s Studies and more recent shift to Gender Studies in the West as well as in third world Women’s Studies, these disciplines have a close relationship with Feminism and the Women’s Movement and have gained from each other.The chapter covers issues including the Women’s Movements, Women’s Studies/Feminism, the different waves of feminism, feminist perspectives, feminist research / feminist methods, objectivity for feminist research and feminist theories. We cover theory and method for social science in general, but there is a section that features psychology specifically and highlights the different strands of feminism.

Chapter 2 presents a brief history of women in political leadership. Arguments used to deny women suffrage and the full political rights of citizenship were deeply rooted in stereotypes that women lacked the stamina to excel in public life and that women’s proper roles were as mothers and caregivers. These beliefs that women lacked the qualifications needed to operate in political spheres still affect how voters view the political acumen of women running for political office today. I not only discuss the historic exclusion of women from positions of political leadership through the lens of gender stereotypes, but I also analyze over time public opinion data about the role of women in politics. Polling data offer an optimistic picture about the prospects of electing a qualified woman to the presidency. These data, however, do not provide insight into who constitutes a qualified female political candidate, and how the public might assess those qualifications. I answer these questions in subsequent chapters.

Bangladesh’s gender relations have changed historically, but the late twentieth century saw a new dynamic: social movements that began to challenge the entangled systems of gender, kinship and sexuality – the ideological bedrock of society. They focused on social – rather than economic – change and they were often initiated by middle-class activists. Among these were a robust feminism, a rethinking of masculinities, and same-sex, bisexual and transgender activism. The current gender and sexuality movements build upon local cultural precursors. Distinctly Bangladeshi in character, they develop in constant dialogue with global debates about gender and sexuality, just as their forerunners were also linked to wider concerns and campaigns

This chapter looks at the interactions between the women’s movement, the king, the Salafis, Islamists, and the Islamist party, Party for Justice and Development (PJD), and the role the interactions between these actors played in bringing about gender reforms in Morocco. It shows how the symbolic uses of women’s rights made women and women’s rights a focal point of the contestations between the palace and the parties and a key instrument in the struggle against religious extremism. The chapter shows how the PJD changed its position regarding women’s rights for reasons of political expediency. It explores the role of the women’s movement in the middle of this unfolding contest. The chapter thus takes us through the main elements of the hypotheses outlined in Chapter 1 as they apply to Morocco.

This chapter looks at the interactions between the women’s movement, the king, the Salafis, Islamists, and the Islamist party, Party for Justice and Development (PJD), and the role the interactions between these actors played in bringing about gender reforms in Morocco. It shows how the symbolic uses of women’s rights made women and women’s rights a focal point of the contestations between the palace and the parties and a key instrument in the struggle against religious extremism. The chapter shows how the PJD changed its position regarding women’s rights for reasons of political expediency. It explores the role of the women’s movement in the middle of this unfolding contest. The chapter thus takes us through the main elements of the hypotheses outlined in Chapter 1 as they apply to Morocco.

This chapter shows how women became the focal point of the tensions between the Islamists and those who opposed extremism both symbolically and existentially during the Black Decade. It shows how in the post-civil war period women, their bodies, and ultimately women’s rights became a centerpiece of the regime’s fight against fundamentalism. Legal reform, which included an emphasis on political rights, was part of a strategy against extremism, which also had a negotiated and military dimension to it. In more recent years, the struggle has shifted to the cultural arena as women, including young women, push back against Islamist proscriptions on women’s dress. As a consequence, Algeria has seen the demise of militarized and political Islamist influences.