MarwaShalaby is the Fellow for the Middle East and Director of the Women's Rights inthe Middle East Program at James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy atRice University, USA. Her research focuses on comparative politics and researchmethodology, with a concentration on Middle Eastern politics, gender politics,and democratization.

ValentineM. Moghadam is Director of the International Affairs Program, and Professor ofSociology, at Northeastern University, USA. Born in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Moghadamstudied in Canada and the U.S. She isthe author of Modernizing Women: Genderand Social Change in the Middle East (1993, 2003, 2013), Globalizing Women: Transnational FeministNetworks (2005, winner of the American Political Science Association'sVictoria Schuck Award), and Globalizationand Social Movements: Islamism, Feminism, and the Global Justice Movement(2009, 2013).

This book sheds light on some of the most critical issues impeding theadvancement of women's rights post Arab Spring, such as patriarchy, barriers to women's agency in the legal and socioeconomicrealms, women's access to the decision-making process, citizenship rights, andthe impact of conflict on women's status. It offers adistinct perspective that takes into account the diversity of the Arab worldand presents a theoretical framework on the study of women's empowerment amidthe transformations that have shaped the social and political fabrics of Arabsocieties. Empowering Women after theArab Spring represents cutting-edge research from a variety of academicdisciplines - anthropology, political science, and sociology - and presents comparativeanalyses from places including the United Arab Emirates, Syria, Egypt, andTunisia. This volume offers one of the first systematic efforts to combinequalitative and quantitative research to draw a more accurate picture of therealities of Middle Eastern women.

Introduction: Deconstructing Women's Empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa.- 1 Domestic Violence Laws in the U.A.E: A Religious Argument for Criminalizing Domestic Violence.- 2 Contextualizing the Legal Change: Addressing Normative Paradigms and the Constraints on Equal Rights for Women in the Arab World.- 3 Kin-Based Values and Attitudes Towards Gender Equality in Morocco and Egypt.- 4 No Agency Without Grassroots Autonomy: Exploring a Framework for Evaluating the Substance of Women's Political Inclusion across the Kingdoms of Jordan, Bahrain, and Morocco.- 5 What Islamic Feminists Want: Lessons from the Kuwaiti Experience.- 6 Interest and Exposure?Based Explanations for Egalitarian Attitudes in the Arab World.- 7 Syrian and Syrian Palestinian Women in Lebanon: 'Actors of Citizenship'?.- 8 Post Arab Spring Transformations: In Need of Feminine Politics.- 9 Women and Democracy after the Arab Spring: Theory, Practice and Prospects.

With studies on the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, this collection presents a theoretical framework on the study of women's empowerment amid the transformations that have shaped the social and political fabrics of Arab societies.