She views the social and political changes under way in the Middle East through a
"Marxist-feminist sociological lens", (p. 250). Middle-class women with education and
jobs are, she feels playing a pivotal role in change. The fundamentalist backlash is
directed at this stratum of women "who collectively symbolise social change in the
Middle East", (p250).
Individual countries
Bahrain
Saudi Arabia
Bahrain
Seikaly, May "Women and Social Change in Bahrain", International Journal of
Middle East Studies, 26, 1994, 415-426.
The dynamics of rapid change in socioeconomic and political structures in the Arab
world, especially in the oil-dependent states of the Arabian Gulf such as Bahrain, have
created superficially modem-looking societies without solving the dilemmas which
Western modernisation has brought. "Change has come into conflict with the traditional
cultural value systems tied to religion that control social behaviour", (p. 416). Seikaly
shows how the contradiction between modernisation and cultural/religious authenticity
explains the ambivalence shown by political leaders and strategists towards
development and how, as a wave of sociopolitical conservation spreads all over the
Arab world, Islamic fundamentalist thought is dictating limitations to women's social
development.
Women's educational and job opportunities began to grow in the 1970's but Seikaly
describes this development as mainly an urban, middle class revolution. In rural areas,
there was little change. She sees even the changes in the middle class as very limited as
women were unable to establish "practical sociocultural rights for all women,
regardless of class", (p421). Modernised young women had unconsciously distanced
themselves from the realities of their society and with a political approach which was
often elitist, could not reach all strata of women by traditional mechanisms. The article
goes on to examine women's educational and job opportunities and their position as
regards personal-status law. It concludes that after the liberalising experience of the
1970's and 1980's, the modem return to tradition is the more striking, particularly as it is
starting to attract women who once considered themselves politically radical and
socially liberal.
Saudi Arabia