Expansion of the Women's Role in the Middle East:
As Marnia Lazreg (1995) noted, women of the Middle East have been misunderstood by both Western men and Western women for over a century. In some instances their lives have been romanticized, in other instances condemned. But, as Islam and the Middle East itself has been poorly understood, the lives and thinking and aspirations of women in the Middle East has also been filtered through obscuring biases.
The intention in this study is to explore both the historical role of Middle Eastern women and some of the current situations of women in the modern Middle East. As Marilyn Booth (1995) indicated, in order to understand gender systems in such a diverse region, it is important to emphasize the complexity of the situation, and the impact of politics, economics, and historical conditions.
Many Types of Society in the Middle East
The popular perception of women in the Middle East is based on images of harems, belly dancing, and veiled and covered women subordinate to patriarchal sheikhs. This is obviously a distorted image. For one thing, there are several different kinds of society in the Middle East, and within Islamic cultures.
The kind of culture that this image fits most readily is the more fundamentalist cultures, as was reinstituted in Iran and is continually reinforced in Saudi Arabia. Even these cultures vary considerably, however. The ruling family in Saudi Arabia was afraid that the revolutionary fundamentalism of Iran would be exported to its country. The family slowed down the pace of modernization within Saudi Arabia in response to that threat. Yet, both countries consider themselves Islamic, ruled by the shari'a, rather than any system of secularized, constitutional law.
Saudi Arabia. Women in Saudi Arabia are governed strictly by shari'a law and by the interpretations of the religious police. They are segregated from men at all levels of society....