Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism asks whether societies caught in political or social transition provide new opportunities for women, or instead, create new burdens and obstacles for them. Using contemporary case-studies, each author looks at the interaction of gender ethnicity and class in a divided society. The varying experiences of women are discussed in the following countries: Northern Ireland; South Africa; the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; Yemen; Lebanon and Malaysia.

Throughout history, women have become politically involved at crisis points only to be excluded once normalcy has been achieved again. Movements and parties seeking to assert their territorial autonomy and political independence have commonly employed the ideas of ethnicity and nationalism to consolidate the transition to new regimes. However, these transitions exert differential gender effects, within both dominant and subordinate communities, which have implications for the status of women. This volume focuses on those effects and the interaction of gender with ethnicity and class during...