The Islamic legislative drafting methodology is meant to bring the family law of Islamic countries into line with current conceptions of gender equality found not only in the West but in Islamic law (the shari’a) as well. The methodology involves identifying the fundamental principles of shari’a and recognizing that they must be adapted to the socio-economic conditions in which they are to be applied.

The methodological approach used to tell the Smith sisters’ story is first and foremost a case study of women in the nineteenth century and the gendered categories that were constructed to define women. The story will be told through a biographical narrative, which will allow Hannah, Julia, and Abby Smith’s to tell their story in their own voice. Also, included within the biography is an examination of the nineteenth-century theories that defined women’s lives, and what effect, if any, these theories had on the Smiths. Each chapter is layered with three different narratives in an attempt to unravel the world that women lived in the nineteenth century. First, the chapter provides a description and analysis of the specific theories such as Republican Motherhood and cult of domesticity to ground the Smith women in the discursive world in which they lived. Then the chapter closely examines the practice or the way the Smith women lived their lives and what they thought about their world. Lastly, each chapter explores the secondary sources that have been written about each subject, such as the new female seminaries that opened in the nineteenth century. By combining these approaches, I hope to avoid some of the shortcomings that dominate the study of women today. First, the theoretical models and the study of real lives of women actually leave women out of their own stories. Second, historians tend to evaluate women’s lives from the past based upon their own political agendas and their own beliefs of what freedom and rights mean completely discarding what it might have meant to women in their own time period.

Family law regulates the formation of marriage, divorce, marital property rights, child custody, inheritance, and spousal duties. This study aims to demonstrate how family law formation in the Middle East and North Africa reflects the struggle among social and political forces to capture the state and assert authority. The balance of power between competing social forces impacts both the timing (short-term versus long-term struggle) and type (progressive or regressive) of family law after independence. The ability of one of two competing forces, broadly categorized as traditionalist versus modernist, to capture the state is necessary for codification and is predictive of family law content. Case studies reveal that systemic shocks (e.g. revolution, social unrest, or foreign intervention) tip the balance of power in favor of traditional or modernizing forces in the post-independence state-building process and facilitate the successful consolidation of power and the codification of family law.

Despite Senegal’s ratifications of the UN Conventions CRC and the CEDAW, a noticeable discrepancy regarding secondary school attendance due to the pupil’s sex has been recognized in enrolment and fulfilment ratios. (www.unicef.org, 2011a) The main issue to be examined in this thesis was the teacher-students’ knowledge of girls’ right to education and their attitudes concerning the difference in pupils participating in secondary schools based on the pupil’s sex and how the matter is being addressed amongst teachers. Qualitative interviews were carried out amongst teacher-students at University of Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar. We reflected upon the collected material mainly through theories of feminism and social constructivism, and moreover briefly through post-colonialism and structural functionalism, as well as in relation to previous research. We found that the respondents lacked deeper juridical knowledge concerning right to education. Overall the respondents expressed an ambiguity in their gender awareness, and their perception of girls’ education in relation to cultural traditions. The main obstacles for girls schooling were gender cultural traditions and socio-economic factors.

What, this project asks, are the impacts of the alliance between women and Native Americans in the nineteenth century debate over Indian Removal? How might groups similarly excluded from patriarchal systems of government by race and gender turn exclusion into arguments for inclusion? In what ways might this alliance change interpretations of the women’s right and Native American rights movements? While arguments made by women and Native Americans during Indian Removal receive considerable scholarly attention, most studies-especially those concerned with women’s involvement- subordinate Indian Removal to abolition or create significant omissions in the narratives of both movements by adopting a critical approach that interprets strategic use of racialized and gendered ideology as assimilation. In “ Creating Domestic Dependents” I fill these gaps and situate Indian Removal as a significant intersection of the Native American rights and women’s rights movements. Using historical romances by Catherine Sedgwick and Lydia Child, Catherine Beecher’s “Circular Addressed to the Benevolent Ladies of the United States,” the Cherokee Nation’s “1829 Memorial” and “Letter to the American People,” and domestic fiction by E.D.E.N Southworth and Nathaniel Hawthorne, I argue that, during Indian Removal, white women and the Cherokee come together to fight for rights by situating property-- the very thing used to exclude them-- at the center of their arguments for rights and against Indian Removal. In doing this, they create interdependent approaches that simultaneously embrace and reject prescribed societal roles in order to construct a rhetorical strategy composed of moments of public solidarity and strategic distance.

This thesis aims to shed light on issues related to women’s rights to access and benefit from land in matrilineal communities in rural, northern Mozambique. It portrays the environment in which organisations working with implementation of land rights operate as well as proposes conclusions on the core obstacles to their work. A qualitative study was conducted and forms the basis of the study and is complemented with previous research on this topic. Women in rural, matrilineal communities in northern Mozambique are not equal with their male counterparts and they hold a lower social position despite the alleged matrilineal structure. However, they appear to be less marginalised than women in southern, patrilineal Mozambique, which suggests that the matrilineal structure does have a positive effect on the lives of the rural women. Furthermore, this study shows that the obstacles when implementing women’s land rights can be summarised as: (i) strong patriarchal attitudes, (ii) an insufficient level of education that excludes women from decision-making and (iii) a too narrow understanding of the gender-power relations.

The Islamic legislative drafting methodology is meant to bring the family law of Islamic countries into line with current conceptions of gender equality found not only in the West but in Islamic law (the shari’a) as well. The methodology involves identifying the fundamental principles of shari’a and recognizing that they must be adapted to the socio-economic conditions in which they are to be applied.

Utilizing a gender-based violence approach, this study investigated service delivery realities for a Moroccan women’s centre serving unwed mothers and their babies. Primary research methods included participant observation and semi-structured interviews (n=20) with unwed mothers and centre staff. This study aimed to determine what factors lead mothers to seek assistance, types of assistance offered, and challenges and future opportunities for services. Findings indicate a lack of social support to mothers, lack of social and economic support for the centre and reduced service capacity, and the use of deceit in interactions between mothers and staff rooted in cultural notions of shame. Future opportunities for program development and sustainability are discussed. This work hopes to contribute to a richer understanding of gender-based violence in local contexts through the investigation of unwed mother’s experiences of gender-based violence in Moroccan society and how these experiences impact the reality and capabilities of social service provision.

The Islamic legislative drafting methodology is meant to bring the family law of Islamic countries into line with current conceptions of gender equality found not only in the West but in Islamic law (the shari’a) as well. The methodology involves identifying the fundamental principles of shari’a and recognizing that they must be adapted to the socio-economic conditions in which they are to be applied.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban entered the Afghan capital, Kabul, and a new period in Afghanhistory began. Fear of return to the former Taliban regime in the 1990s spread. However, the Taliban promised that women's rights would be respected. Their rights would be respected within the framework of the Islamic Sharia law. Women would have a place in society and access to work and education. Despite their promises, the Taliban soon began restricting women's rights.The purpose of this essay is to examine the Taliban's understanding of Sharia and see what view of women it results in. The essay also intends to clarify whether this view includes rights for women. The Taliban's understanding is examined from a rights perspective and through a critical perspective. A qualitative hermeneutic methodology is the basis for the thesis method, this method refers to understandings and interpretations. Additionally, 3 deep structured interviews were conducted and constitutes an important part of the essay.The study shows that the Taliban's understandings are strongly rooted in local traditions of Pashtun communities. Much of The Taliban's view of women comes from traditional Pashtun societies, and a lot of what they call Sharia is in fact taken from the Pashtun code of honour, Pashtunwali. The Taliban declare that they endorse Human Rights and believe that both men and women have rights, but that the rights appear different