E-raamat: Gender and Political Support: Women and Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Cowper-Coles has written a fascinating and insightful book on the gender gap in Palestinian politics. Cowper-Coles finds that women are more likely to support Hamas and are more conservative on multiple issues. Why is this so? Using impressive quantitative data and original qualitative interviews, Cowper-Coles argues that the local political economy creates segmented gendered dis/advantages for women and men which in return shapes political loyalties.

Amaney A. Jamal, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and Director of the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University, USA

As Minna Cowper-Coles writes, research on women and gender in the Middle East has often been seen as unimportant to mainstream political science. Dr. Cowper-Coles makes an impressive addition to scholarly understanding of gendered patterns of political support. With a rich body of interview and survey data, Minna Cowper-Coles highlights the counterintuitive finding that Palestinian women are more likely than men to support HAMAS. Her work further explains why extant theories from the American context are inadequate for explaining the gender gap without an understanding of the role that the authoritarian and clientelistic context plays. I recommend this book for scholars and policymakers interested in comparative politics and the Arab world.

Lindsay J. Benstead, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University, USA

This book is the first systematic study of the gendered patterns in political support in Palestine, and offers an essential contribution to the field. Cowper-Coles presents remarkable, surprising, and crucially important findings. Not only is there a gender gap in Palestine, its direction challenges theorizing on the modern gender gap in the existing, largely Western-focused, literature. Why do women tend to support the Islamist Hamas more than men? Cowper-Coles offers answers that would be of great interest to scholars of gender in the Middle East, Islamist movements, and women and politics more broadly across the globe, as well as anyone intrigued by the fascinating tendencies of gendered politics in Palestine.

Lihi Ben Shitrit, Associate Professor of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, USA