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This paper is based on a three‐year research project entitled Minority Women Negotiating Citizenship. Conceived of in the aftermath of Gujarat 2002, the project studied 75 life‐history narratives of Muslim women survivors of communal violence in Gujarat, Hyderabad and Mumbai, in order to map their everyday experiences of negotiating survival, marginalisation and exclusion. While analysing our material we found that our preliminary organising or analytic categories – victim, agent, Muslim, woman, class, location – could not contain the negotiations and fluid ‘subjects’ of the narratives. The most useful analytic concepts and tools were those being used by the women themselves in their narratives, such as bahar nikalna and sambhalna. …

This chapter attempts to give an overview of the trends in research, thinking and programmes in Pakistan from 1975 onwards in the area of women’s empowerment and bodily integrity in order to understand what makes change happen. It also identifies drivers of change and enabling factors, and discusses what women in Pakistan have done to establish their rights and the implications of this. Secondly, it seeks to identify areas that need to be explored through further research. The author considers the concept of empowerment, the definition of bodily integrity, and examines the social constructions of the woman’s body in Pakistan. …

This paper deals with two related themes: bodily integrity and women’s empowerment in the Indian context. Delving into both the politics of gendered culture and sexual politics (the politics of the body) it argues that the dichotomy between the woman’s body and the mind is a synthetic one and socially constructed. The identification of women with their physical bodies is the root cause of their oppression in a patriarchal culture and society like India. Most often women are denied the rights to emotional, mental, psychological and physical spaces. …

This chapter makes an attempt to probe into the politics of women’s voice in Bangladesh. The chapter argues that there are structural factors within the state and society that act as barriers for women in Bangladesh to vocalise their opinions in the public sphere. Yet parallel forces are at work at national and international levels that enable women to create their spaces and voices despite these structural limitations. …

This article introduces an issue of writing on the ways in which religion enters cultural and social life. The papers in this issue concentrate on the way that Islam impacts on the everyday aspects of the lives of people in Muslim societies or communities where Islam plays a part. This issue emerged from a panel presentation on ‘Women Negotiating Islam’, about how women cope with the ways that religion enters their lives, and brings out the cultural aspects behind women’s negotiations of the positions made available to them and their struggle to carve their own spaces. The issue aims to show how women, culture and religion form a difficult and complex terrain in which our political and social lives are lived. …

This article introduces an issue of writing on the ways in which religion enters cultural and social life. The papers in this issue concentrate on the way that Islam impacts on the everyday aspects of the lives of people in Muslim societies or communities where Islam plays a part. This issue emerged from a panel presentation on ‘Women Negotiating Islam’, about how women cope with the ways that religion enters their lives, and brings out the cultural aspects behind women’s negotiations of the positions made available to them and their struggle to carve their own spaces. The issue aims to show how women, culture and religion form a difficult and complex terrain in which our political and social lives are lived. …

The South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment research consortium held an inception workshop based on scoping papers on the themes of ‘voice’, ‘work’, and ‘body’. The purpose of the research is to seek to identify discourses and interventions that have led to the greater empowerment of women, based on these three themes. The papers in this book are culled from that inception workshop and give an idea of the mosaic that forms the lives of women in the heartland of South Asia. Three main arenas of activism and interventions emerge from the papers. …

The South Asia Hub of the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment research consortium held an inception workshop based on scoping papers on the themes of ‘voice’, ‘work’, and ‘body’. The purpose of the research is to seek to identify discourses and interventions that have led to the greater empowerment of women, based on these three themes. The papers in this book are culled from that inception workshop and give an idea of the mosaic that forms the lives of women in the heartland of South Asia. Three main arenas of activism and interventions emerge from the papers. …

In December 1995, when Hamas announced the establishment of the Islamic National Salvation Party, a political organization separate from its military wing, it opened the way for involvement of the Islamic movement in the political processes brought about in the West Bank and Gaza with the signing of the Oslo Accords and the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority. In speaking of the rights of different groups, including women, in its founding statement, and in setting up in Gaza a Women's Action Department, the new party opened its doors to the ‘new Islamic woman’ and to a significant evolution in Islamist gender ideology in Gaza, if not in the West Bank – where, due to Hamas' policy there of targeting only males, there exists no parallel to the Salvation Party or organisational support for women like that represented by the Women's Action Department in Gaza. Hamas' gender ideology, like that of the secularist parties, remains contradictory, and doors to women's equality only partly open; nevertheless, Islamist women have managed to build impressive, well‐organised women's constituencies among highly educated and professional women coming from poor and refugee backgrounds; and the Salvation Party shows an increasing tendency to foster gender equality and more egalitarian social ideals, while holding fast to the agenda of national liberation. These advances have been achieved both through alternative interpretations of Islamic legal and religious texts, and through positive engagement with the discourses of other groups, whether secular feminists or nationalists. …

Postcolonial feminist representations of Muslim women as subjects and agents have successfully cleared a space for unsettling oppressive colonial representations of Muslim women as unchanging victims of patriarchal religion and Muslim men. This space has also brought into view new problems and issues that divide Muslim women into feminist and fundamentalists, secular and religious, diasporic and native. This paper focuses on one of the most contentious issues of Muslim women's representation: secular feminists' attempts to represent women in Islamic religious movements. In this process I examine some of the normative and ethical dimensions of feminist research as they emerged in my research with women in the Jamaat‐e‐Islami, a movement for religious reform and renewal in Pakistan. …

The issue of women's empowerment has a long history. This article intends to trace the issue of women's empowerment in the area that now forms contemporary Bangladesh. In this regard, we have delved into the early part of the twentieth century to look into women's writing in numerous journals that were beginning to be published in that era. Looking into Muslim-edited journals, we look into how issues of women's education, writing and the place of women in society were being debated. …

This book explores the role that religion, culture and society play in the social and political positioning of women. The collection of essays in the book aims to capture the variety of policies, discourses, debates and interventions that have influenced the lives of women in South Asia and to identify those that have led to greater empowerment of women. The contributors assess the current situation and provide a rallying call for progressive politics that is committed to universal values. The essays also review as well as show us the new directions that are opening up new pathways for women to traverse. …

This book explores the role that religion, culture and society play in the social and political positioning of women. The collection of essays in the book aims to capture the variety of policies, discourses, debates and interventions that have influenced the lives of women in South Asia and to identify those that have led to greater empowerment of women. The contributors assess the current situation and provide a rallying call for progressive politics that is committed to universal values. The essays also review as well as show us the new directions that are opening up new pathways for women to traverse. …

In Bangladesh there is a well-documented reign of patriarchal institutions and practices, causing women to have little control over their bodies and restricting their experience of the completeness of a vital body and a vital mind. However, this control over women’s bodies appears to be shifting, and nearly all the key elements tat constitute ‘bodily integrity’ are in a state of flux. Whether this is the beginning of a new era with weakened structures, norms and customs remains to be seen, but it certainly is a change. The male-dominated society and economy is now experiencing an increasing infiltration by women of all ages and social classes, with significant implications for siciety’s and men’s hold over women and their bodies. …

This presentation to the Pathways South Asia Hub Final Conference held in Dhaka from 26-28 July 2011 outlines Pathways South Asia research which explores Bengali women's ability to become cultural markers and their place in shaping an emerging nationalist discourse. By using a focus on music, the research looks at the binary between the secular and the religious and questions how the Bangladeshi nation can be understood through this through history. …