Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Gender and the Arab world

One of the most rewarding aspect of researching and writing the book was my growing realization of the central role of gender in social and political life, in the Arab world and elsewhere. Reality television animated the discussion of gender by featuring unmarried young men and women dancing, singing, eating, and (in some shows) living together under one roof.

That’s Marwan Kraidy in part two of an interview by Henry Jenkins.

That’s something I noticed while in Morocco. Morocco is a comparatively moderate, Arabic-speaking, north African country. And yet, the rigidity of gender lines compared to the United States amazed me. Men were highly visible in public spaces. Cafés are almost exclusively male. We were two of a handful of women on the beach in Casablanca. Most of the Moroccan women we saw were accompanied by a man, though there were also plenty of women wearing t-shirts and jeans and walking around solo. I didn’t get the sense that women were repressed, mind you, just that they lacked visibility compared to men there and to women here.

Kraidy and Jenkins don’t just discuss gender in the interview (also see part 1), however. Kraidy also talks about reality television and the Arab world and how it relates to Arab struggles around national identity versus pan-Arab identity, and resisting Western cultural influence.

  • LovelyParadox

    I lived in Morocco for a few years and I think they were struggling to find an adequate image… The country is modern enough, “westernized” enough, and yet struggles with some key social mores that are truly anchored in the psyche of citizens… I think most “progressive” predominantly Muslim countries have or will go through that stage… Hopefully most won't end up like Iran or Afghanistan and skew towards radicalism…

  • tiffanybbrown

    Plus I think Morocco — and much of the Arab world — is struggling to form a national and regional identity. In much of the Arabic-speaking world, traditional culture was disrupted by colonialism or empire. So in some quarters, I think they're swapping Europe and the U.S. for Persian Gulf states as a way of reclaiming an essential Arab-ness. Pan-Arabism is the only apparent opposition to Euro-American cultural domination.