Women’s Global Life Stories Project & Publication – Male Authority in Muslim Contexts – 12 Countries – Musawah
guardianship? How do these experiences play out in a girl’s childhood, when she
is getting married, in her role as wife or mother, or if the couple divorces?
Stories Project over several years. In 2011, a team formed in Indonesia to
conduct a pilot project by developing the methodology, deciding on the scope
and testing their process by documenting a number of stories. The team
comprised five activists from Alimat, an Indonesian coalition working on
reforming religious knowledge to advance gender equality and justice. The team
decided to approach the project as a collective and mutual learning experience
that is inter-disciplinary and grounded in national activism and the process of
movement building. Over the course of a year, the Indonesian team worked
carefully to better understand the issues, decide how to undertake the process
in an ethical and principled manner and actually document the life stories of
five Muslim women from different regions of the country.
conclusion of the pilot project, the project coordinator recruited Musawah
Advocates from 12 countries (see box) to take part in the global project as
country teams. Ranging in size from one to seven persons, the national ‘teams’ implemented
the project with the guidance of one or more coordinating members. Team
composition differed from country to country but included individuals from
different disciplines such as Islamic theology, anthropology, law, literature,
agriculture, development studies, gender studies, etc., who worked in a range
of fields such as academia, women’s rights and advocacy work, international
development, education, family law, human rights, etc. Most teams were
supported by non-governmental organizations that worked on women’s issues
within the country.
selection of regionally representative Muslim-majority and -minority countries,
with the potential for expanding to more countries later. Musawah Advocates
from 12 countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Canada, Egypt, the Gambia,
Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, the United
Kingdom) agreed to join the Global Life Stories Project. The organizations from
Afghanistan, Jordan, and the Philippines eventually withdrew their
participation because of other priorities in their national work, so the
project was completed in only nine countries.
April 2012 initial Methodology Workshop in Bali, Indonesia, the Indonesian
pilot team, the Musawah Knowledge Building Working Group, and representatives
of the country teams worked together to clarify objectives, reflect on feminist
principles and Islamic guiding values, understand concepts and develop a
methodology for the global project building on the Indonesian framework. After
this workshop, the country teams further elaborated on goals and work plans
that they would implement in their specific contexts in accordance with their
own advocacy agendas, then conducted interviews and documented the stories. We
collaborated through online discussions and a series of Skype meetings between
the project coordinator and the country teams.
The nine teams eventually documented life stories from 55 women. As discussed
below, teams recruited the women based on a variety of factors, including how
their stories spoke to various issues within the country and how well the women
would be able to talk about such personal and sensitive matters. Interviewers
generally met the resource persons for several extended sessions, discussing
details of their stories as well as emotions, reflections, hopes and plans for
the future. Teams offered a variety of support services as necessary for each
woman. Many of the women felt the process of telling their stories to be
empowering, and wanted to share what they had experienced in order to help
others. These women shared their stories, experiences and insights,
contributing valuable resources to both national and global movements for
equality and justice. Consistent with feminist research methodology, we thus
recognized and referred to them as resource persons and not merely
respondents or passive subjects.
In December 2012, we held a Mid-Term Review Workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
to explore in more depth the concepts of qiwamah and wilayah and
their linkages to the documentation of stories. We discussed the teams’ progress
and challenges and developed a collective framework for analysis that the teams
could adapt to their specific contexts as they saw fit. After this workshop,
the teams and project coordinator continued to hold regular Skype meetings to
address obstacles teams encountered in implementation, share analysis processes,
further develop the framework for analysis and discuss key articles in Muslim
legal tradition related to themes revealed in the life stories in a collective
learning process.
from which this global report was written in ongoing consultation with the teams.
The resource persons whose stories are shared all consented to having their
stories included in those country reports and this global report.
