the main social cleavage in Bahraini society was
between what were considered the “Arabs of tribal
descent,” who are Sunnìs, and the Shì≠ìBa™àrna,
while in Southwest Arabia – in Oman and Yemen
(although also mentioned in Kuwaiti literature) – a
distinction might be found between a variety of eth-
nic identities as well as the tribal, Arab, or Bayasira
(Wilkinson 1974).
Lienhardt (1972) who wrote of the Trucial States
in the 1960s suggests that the strict sex segregation
of the society accounts for the lower status of
women. Nevertheless, he wrote, men were not as
dominant in society as they claimed to be and one
of the reasons for their limited dominance, espe-
cially in the practices of divorce, was that the Tru-
cial States are influenced by Beduin rather than
peasant society, the mobile rather than settled.
Lienhardt’s description of the status of women in
the early days of development and oil, however,
also suggests that although women maintained the
honor of the family and often had its support and
protection, they had – as they intersected with the
statuses of their “ethnic” or “caste” positions – less
access to wealth, power, and prestige.
In contrast, it has been argued that the oil
economies of the region have enabled the expan-
sion of national education systems which, in turn,
have produced greater equality between men and
women in the professional labor market, countering
the practices of “traditional patriarchal societies”
(al-Falah 1991). However, the transformation of
the economies, bureaucratic regimes, and educa-
tion systems has also produced new gendered hier-
archies, based not only on new class formations,
but also on national and ethnic identities and strat-
ifications. Indeed, despite the formal “modern”
education of Gulf populations, relatively few women
enter the labor market, leaving most positions
to Arabs of other nationalities or to Europeans,
Iranians, and Indians (Longva 1993, Seikaly 1994).
And, while some of the Gulf emirates and states
have promoted the hiring of local populations, other
policies that encourage women to be good house-
wives seem to discourage local women’s entrance to
the labor market. Thus, although greater wealth
has given women in the Gulf a fair amount of inde-
pendence, many – sometimes in the name of “tra-
dition” – have not entered the labor market,
leaving both government and private employment
to men as well as a hierarchy of expatriate workers.
Similarly, while it seems as though the new hierar-
chies are more based on wealth rather than profes-
sion and patrilineal descent, marriage between
members of historically professionally and ethni-
cally distinct groups remains limited.
north africa 749Finally, it should be noted that town and village
social networks among women, often across differ-
ent status groups, continue to remain strong. And,
as men move to capital areas and the city-states
of the Gulf, women generally remain in the towns
and villages, sometimes complementing their re-
mittance incomes with small-scale trade. However,
as men in unstable labor markets lose their jobs,
they return to the towns and villages, sometimes
creating tensions with the women who have
remained.Bibliography
A. Bujra, The politics of stratification. A study of political
change in a South Arabian town, Oxford 1971.
N. al-Falah, Power and representation. Social change,
gender relations, and the education of women in
Kuwait, in E. Davis and N. Gavrielides (eds.),State-
craft in the Middle East, Miami 1991, 149–75.
P. A. Lienhardt, The position of women in the society of
the Trucial Coast, in D. Hopwood (ed.),The Arabian
Peninsula, London 1972, 219–30.
A. N. Longva, Kuwaiti women at a crossroads. Privileged
development and the constraints of ethnic stratifica-
tion, in International Journal of Middle East Studies
25:3 (1993), 443–56.
R. Owen, The Arab oil economy. Present structure and
future prospects, in S. K. Farsoun (ed.), Arab society.
Continuity and change, London 1985, 16–33.
M. Seikaly, Women and social change in Bahrain, in
International Journal of Middle East Studies26:3
(May 1994), 415–26.
R. B. Serjeant, Fisher-folk and fish traps in al-Bahrain, in
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
31:3 (1968), 486–514.
J. C. Wilkinson, Bayasirah and bayadir, in Arabian
Studies 1 (1974), 75–85.Mandana LimbertNorth AfricaThe hierarchies that characterize the social land-
scape of North Africa today are the outcome of
profound changes triggered by colonial institutions
beginning in the early nineteenth century. Since
1830, when the French first entered Algeria, North
African social organization and stratification have
been modified by new roles and functions open to
women. However, before discussion of how the
present reality slowly emerged, it is important to
place it in its larger cultural and historical context.
The three nation-states (Tunisia, Algeria, and
Morocco) that constitute the geographical area of
North Africa share a number of characteristics
making the claim of a single cultural area possible.
They have in common, for example, the following
elements: an ethnic-linguistic component in the form
of Berber and Arab populations as well as mixed
Berber/Arab groups; the experience of Islam as one