Reconstruction in the Midst of Rebellion

A Kurdish Case Study of Gender, Militancy, and Ideology in the MENA Region

Abstract

On January 14th, 2019, the Kurdish women of the Syrian region of Rojava garnered national attention for their hand in liberating the city of Kobani from the dominion of ISIS. The media depicted armed Kurdish women, lauding their military prowess yet misconstruing the significance of the conflict. By focusing solely on the military participation of women in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the media overlooked the societal reconstruction underway in Rojava, a movement undergirded by Kurdish women behind the scenes and on the frontlines. Existing scholarship on women in armed rebellion falls into three categories layed out in Assessing the Significance of Women in Combat Roles (Darden): opportunity structures, established ideology, and the nature of the given conflict. It is further accepted amongst scholars that the participatory space carved out for women during armed conflict does not endure, and that egalitarian and communist ideologies are conducive to women’s participation. The Kurdish case defies both of these notions. At first glance, the participation of women in all facets of the PKK seems to be explained by ideology, as the movement’s leader founded the party on communist principles. Kurdish women, however, did not leave their liberation in the hands of their egalitarian leader. Instead, they developed “Jineolojî.” Jineolojî  is a paradigm centering on the experiences of Kurdish women with the aim of understanding the roots of women’s oppression, as described in Beyond Feminism? Jineolojî and the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement (Al-Ali, Käser). Jineolojî provided a solution-oriented approach to transforming patriarchal Kurdish society while pursuing the goals of the Kurdish Freedom Movement; Kurdish women infused the movement with their own ideology. By examining primary and secondary sources pertaining to the struggles of Kurdish women, I will assess whether the enduring success of the Kurdish women’s liberation movement is attributable to a homegrown ideology unaccounted for by prevailing scholarship on women and war.