The Core of Resistance: Recognising Intersectional Struggle in the Kurdish Women’s Movement

Abstract

The paper addresses the women’s movement in the Northern Syrian region known by Kurds as Rojava, a movement whose central role in building an autonomous political project has its roots in the Kurdish nationalist struggle, specifically that organised by the Kurdish Worker’s Party, also known as the PKK, in Turkey. This study brings to the fore reflections on the power relations that cross the struggle carried out by these women, who, for their part, are crossed by the intersection of gender, ethnicity and class, which feeds and composes the critical praxis of this organised struggle. The Kurdish women’s political path is approached through the contradictions and ambiguities they encounter when they face the challenge of becoming aware of their own place in a political project, which at first had a nationalist character and is now beginning to gain new contours. The presence of the female figure in a political context of armed conflict endows these women with the role of challenging the boundaries on which the foundational elements of international politics rely, namely, the boundary between public and private spheres and gender roles played socially and politically. The Kurdish women’s movement in Rojava disturbs the foundational boundaries of the modern nation-state alongside the hegemonic constructions of masculinity and femininity, and the militarised character of politics, which are constitutive of the modern imaginary of political community.

The Status of Women in Kurdish Society and the Extent of Their Interactions in Public Realm

“…In that period, most of the Kurdish population lived in isolated, mountainous, and poor rural areas in the south-eastern part of Turkey. For this reason, in the early decades of the Turkish Republic, “the vast majority of Kurdish women did not have access to this set of legal measures that transformed women’s lives in urban areas” (Ferreira & Santiago, 2018, p. 482).…”

“…All in all, the Rojava revolution was recognized as “a radical democratic polity beyond kinship associations, which makes women’s liberation conditional to its principles and identity, [and] has a liberating effect on people’s everyday lives” (Dirik, 2018, p. 174). More importantly, it became a flagship movement in disturbing “the foundational boundaries of the modern nation-state alongside the hegemonic constructions of masculinity and femininity, and the militarised character of politics, which are constitutive of the modern imaginary of political community” (Ferreira & Santiago, 2018, p. 479). That is why their resistance for liberation alongside male partners in Rojava “is at the same time voiced and defended as a struggle for equality” and the guarantor of democracy (Küçük & Özselçuk, 2016, p. 186).…”

Intersectionality as a radical framework for transforming our disciplines, social issues, and the world

“… how power functions within particular (in both oppressive and liberatory) structures (e.g., academic institutions, fields of study, the American Psychological Association, social justice movements) (Bullock et al., 2020; Cole, 2020; Gilmore, 2002; Richter et al., 2020; Young, 2020); what is considered a valuable resource in obtaining power within those structures, who controls (and has access to) valuable resources in those structures, and the means by which those resources are obtained (e.g., authority, violence, collective self‐determination, collective capacity/resource building) (Fanon, 1952; Gilmore, 2002; Rosenthal et al., 2020; Settles et al., 2020; Watts, 2004); what actions, practices, and ideologies maintain, disrupt, and dismantle the status quo (Case, 2017a; Case et al., 2020; Fanon, 1952; Freire, 1994; Rosenthal et al., 2020; Rosenthal, 2016; Settles et al., 2020; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999); how power shifts in time and space by reflecting on the historical and political contexts of critical social issues and how power dynamics operate within particular structures (e.g., coalition building) to maintain or dismantle the status quo (Bonam et al., 2018; Cole, 2008; Collins, 2019; Ellison & Langhout, 2020; Ferreira & Santiago, 2018; Hagai et al., 2020; Nair & Vollhardt, 2020); and areas where we can be more precise in an intersectional analysis of power, reflecting on the above, about how interlocking systems of power reinforce and uphold each other in our logics, actions, and practices (Bowleg, 2017; Case et al., 2020; Cole, 2020; Cole, 2009; Heberle et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2020). …”

Representation of Female Members of Ypj in British Media

“…The roles taken by women have historically been more passive and female combatants are merely seen as victims and targets of physical or sexual violence, rather than fighters who have agency (BASER;TOIVANEN, 2016). In a different manner, women in Kurdistan are a substantial part of the insurgency and make up one of the most important armed groups of the country, recognized for confronting conventional gender expectations and redefining the conflict dynamic in the region, the Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (YPJ) (FERREIRA; SANTIAGO, 2018).…”