Reshaping Boundaries Negotiating space among middle class women in Kurdistan

Abstract

This thesis is based on a 6 month ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2018 in Hawler, Kurdistan. I explore the concept of agency of young urban middle class women within the structural frames of a patriarchal society in a largely Muslim country in the Middle East. By following young urban women to the public social spaces they occupy, as well as being invited to their homes and hearing their stories of domestic life and marriage, this thesis will focus on how young Kurdish woman in urban areas create and negotiate social spaces. It will also discuss their perception of being modern and progressive, versus being modern and conservative. Through these topics I will discuss the debate around resistance in anthropological literature, and some issues surrounding this debate. The discussion on space and power structure will serve as a takeoff to a reflection on women’s agency within a largely patriarchal society and power structure, both within the domestic and the public sphere. Finally, this thesis will be a contribution to anthropological literature in a country that is relatively understudied, and the ongoing debates about women and agency in the Middle East.