Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
December Green (Committee Chair), Awad Halabi (Committee Member), Laura Luehrmann (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Abstract
The theory that women gain rights during the social upheaval of war has not held universally. While the debate has traditionally centered over women's participation in fighting and entry into the workforce this paper explores the topic from the form of mobilization, motherist or feminist, that women's organizing takes during war through the use of a longitudinal, comparative study of Lebanon and Liberia. Lebanese women's organizations overwhelmingly employed motherist mobilization and tackled practical gender interests that made no attempt to end women's subordination. In contrast, during the Liberian civil war women's groups were more apt to focus on strategic gender interests which acknowledged hierarchical gender relations. This paper addresses whether a motherist approach allows women a culturally acceptable space from which to make demands or if, in fact, the motherist approach limits opportunities to increase women's rights.
Page Count
271
Department or Program
Department of Political Science
Year Degree Awarded
2013
Copyright
Copyright 2013, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
