MACMILLAN Women in the Kurdish Movement: Mothers, Comrades, Goddesses

This book offers the first historical account of Kurdish women’s politicization in Turkey, starting from the mid-1980s. Çağlayan presents a critical feminist analysis through women’s everyday experiences, incorporating women’s self-narrations with her own autoethnographic reflections. The author provides an account of the socio-political dynamics which constrained women’s politicization, of the factors and mechanisms which enabled their political activism, and of the construction of women’s political history through their own narrations. Women in the Kurdish Movement is a highly original contribution to Kurdish women’s political history. It will be key reading for students and scholars across various disciplines with an interest in gender, political participation, everyday resistance, feminist methodology, nationalism, ethnicity, secularism, social movements, post-colonial studies, and the Middle East. Review “This is a powerful book and essential for any research on Kurdish women. A feminist critical inquiry providing invaluable insight into the struggle of Kurdish women challenging the roles imposed on them and transforming their political identities to be at the forefront of the Kurdish political movement.” (Şemsa Özar, Boğaziçi University, Turkey)“A pioneering monograph recovering Kurdish women’s voices and agency, this is a much-needed critical intervention that breaks the silence prevalent in feminist and Middle Eastern scholarship on Kurdish women. Çağlayan skillfully weaves together the (auto)biographical with the social, and activism with scholarship.” (Metin Yüksel, Hacettepe University, Turkey) From the Back Cover This book offers the first historical account of Kurdish women’s politicization in Turkey, starting from the mid-1980s. Çağlayan presents a critical feminist analysis through women’s everyday experiences, incorporating women’s self-narrations with her own autoethnographic reflections. The author provides an account of the socio-political dynamics which constrained women’s politicization, of the factors and mechanisms which enabled their political activism, and of the construction of women’s political history through their own narrations. Women in the Kurdish Movement is a highly original contribution to Kurdish women’s political history. It will be key reading for students and scholars across various disciplines with an interest in gender, political participation, everyday resistance, feminist methodology, nationalism, ethnicity, secularism, socialmovements, post-colonial studies, and the Middle East.Handan Çağlayan is a Visiting Scholar, Department of General Linguistics, Bamberg Otto Friedrich University, Germany. About the Author Handan Çağlayan is a Visiting Scholar, Department of General Linguistics, Bamberg Otto Friedrich University, Germany.