Nationality, Sexuality & Liberation : A Field Study of the Interconnections of Feminism and Nationalism in Palestine

Abstract: This thesis investigates the interconnections of feminism and nationalism in the context of Palestine, and is based on a Minor Field Study of interviews with Palestinian women working for women’s rights. The study investigates their views and opinions when it comes to issues related to sexual proprietariness; the view that men own women and their reproductive abilities (Taylor & Jasinski, 2011:249f), and demography in relation to the Palestinian national struggle against the Israeli occupation. The women interviewed in this study argue for the importance of struggling for women’s and Palestinian rights in parallel, partly because the Israeli occupation is said to hinder the work for women’s rights in different ways. The ideology of the Palestinian women’s rights activists interviewed in this study can be said to be an example of nationalist feminism (McClintock, 1997:109) since they are trying to combine feminism and nationalism. By basing their rhetoric on the concept freedom from oppression combining feminism and nationalism is made possible, especially within national liberation movements. The thesis concludes with a discussion about why it might not be nationalism per se that is negatively correlated with women’s rights, but rather conservatism, and it argues that finding a way to theoretically connect individual and collective rights is of great importance in order to manage the struggles.