CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Iqbal, Tuba |
|---|---|
| Title | Aurat March: Religion and Feminism in Pakistan |
| Summary | Feminism has played a pivotal role in the transformation of modern societies. Feminist movements globally have altered traditional patriarchal mentalities and helped women negotiate for their social and political space in a male-dominated world. In simple words, what have feminist movements striven for, among other things? Equality. However, beginning from a historically specific (western) and ethnocentric understanding, feminist theories have evolved to appreciate nuances brought about by culture and history across geographical contexts. Nevertheless, despite the differences in culture, outlook, practices and rhetoric of different feminist movements, the core ideal of feminism, that of gender equality, remains at the epicenter across the world. Broadly speaking, despite the immense differences in different feminisms, and critiques of western feminism for being ethnocentric and ignorant of realities of non-western women, feminism has striven for agency, freedom and gender equality. Freedom and gender equality have broadly agreed upon definitions, but the word agency here means an individual’s potential to act, but only under a given set of cultural, social, political and religious boundaries. This concept will be critically elaborated upon, and discussed in extensive detail later. Keeping in mind the Marxist and postcolonial critiques of the so-called universalizing western feminism, this thesis is an appreciation of the universal value of feminist ideals and their expression through an insight into a postcolonial feminist movement ‘Aurat (women) March’ within a semi-theocratic Islamic republic, Pakistan. In addition to this argument, this thesis also argues for the creation of more theoretical space to understand feminism in a religious and socially conservative society since its practices, demands and outlook might be different from the western approach, but its aspirations are equally revolutionary and transformative. Eventually, this movement’s practices and ideas, are a source of rich theoretical insights. This research gathered data through online semi-structured qualitative interviews with the duration of 25-30 minutes each. Some of the interviews were bilingual (English and Urdu) that were later transcribed into English. The interviewees talked about their affiliations with the march and how they became a part of the march, how it helped them to claim their basic rights, to express them themselves in a male dominated space |
| Supervisor | Naumescu, Vlad; Fabiani Louis, Jean |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/iqbal_tuba.pdf |
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