Valentine M. Moghadam (Northeastern University, Boston)

Modernization and economic development in both Iran and Tunisia have led to the growth of an educated female middle class with aspirations for greater participation and rights, but women’s economic and political empowerment varies significantly, and the capacity of women’s rights organizations for the achievement of legal and policy reforms has been far more limited in Iran than in Tunisia. Utilizing a sociology-of-development perspective that draws on world-system, world polity, and feminist conceptual frameworks, the presentation examines and contrasts the evolution of development, social transformation, and gender relations in the two countries to show how the different outcomes result from (a) the nature of the development strategies in place and the role of the respective countries in the world-economy, (b) the different political systems, and (c) the different gender regimes.

Speaker Biography:

Valentine M. Moghadam is Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Northeastern University, Boston, and former Director (Jan. 2012-July 2017) of the International Affairs Program. Previously she was a professor of sociology and director of women’s studies at Purdue University and Illinois State University; a section chief at UNESCO in Paris, where she led policy-oriented research on gender equality and development in the Social and Human Sciences Sector; and a senior researcher at the United Nations University’s WIDER Institute in Helsinki, Finland, where she coordinated the research program on women and development. Born in Tehran, Iran, Professor Moghadam received her higher education in Canada and the U.S. Her areas of research include globalization, transnational social movements and networks, economic citizenship, and gender, development, and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of many journal articles and books, including Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East (1993, 2003, 2013), the award-winning Globalizing Women: Transnational Feminist Networks (2005), and Globalization and Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement (2009, 2013). She has edited or co-edited eight books, including Social Policy in the Middle East: Economic, Political, and Gender Dynamics (2006, with Massoud Karshenas) and Empowering Women after the Arab Spring (2016, with Marwa Shalaby). Most recently, she was a Co-PI in the SOAS-based, ESRC-funded project, Women’s Employment and Dynamics of Inequality in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, and a research participant in the project in the Rice University-based, Carnegie Corporation-funded project, Building Inclusive and Pluralistic Systems Post-Arab Spring.

Speakers: Valentine M. Moghadam (Northeastern University, Boston), Hannah Bargawi (SOAS)

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcasts