Sammendrag
This study explores overlapping and distinct features of women’s male mediated citizenship in contemporary Arab states. Through a citizenship-as-legal-status approach, the article seeks to disentangle implicit webs of theoretical connotations that bind womanhood to male kin in Arab states, rendering the specificities of female citizenship hard to distinguish analytically from male citizenship.
The ‘woman question’ in Arab states is first explored by shedding light on how female citizens’ male mediated citizenship impacts their civic status. The concepts of ‘women’s interests’ (Vickers 2006), and Htun & Weldon on ‘status politics’ (2018) are then presented as analytical departures for comparing variation in the politics of divorce among 18 states in MENA. An empirical exploration of how and when divorce laws were amended in four states in North Africa –Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria is then presented, followed by a discussion on how change in women’s access to divorce in these states impacted reforms that extend women’s civil rights in nationality law and criminal law.
The analysis of the politic sof divorce in MENA provides two observations with potential theoretical value: First, after the turn of the millennium, a spill-over effect in amendments in divorce laws throughout the region can be observed through a ‘bandwagonning’-process (Ikenberry 1990) whereby the khul’ law in Egypt in 2000 impacted divorce law reforms in seven Arab states by 2010. Second, divorce law reforms after the turn of the millennium reveal a gap between monarchies and republics when it comes to one central aspect: female citizens’ legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce independently of the husband’s acquiescence. It is suggested that policies that expand female citizenship in monarchies can well be seen as measures to centralise state power, strengthen the political power of autocratic rulers, and ensure their survival after the 2011 Arab revolts.
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