In this chapter of Gender, Feminism and Development - A Trilogy in the Making, women’s rights and the specific forms of their commitments are analysed with the ambition of contributing to a better knowledge of the female condition of Muslim women in Turkey and in several Mashreq and Maghreb countries; a reality often truncated by a certain colonial viewpoint that obscures the transformations that these societies are undergoing. While underlining the particularities of the different countries, the reflection highlights the historical conditions of emergence and evolution of the issue of women’s emancipation and women’s rights. A process which is proving to be long and difficult, from the torments of colonialism and war to the recent rise of conservatism and Islamism, not to mention the paradoxical effects of development. It is more particularly a question of reporting on the paths of emancipation of women and their movement in difficult contexts, but also on the hybridizations that they operate by appropriating international models and reinterpreting them within their societies. The paper is structured in three sections. In the first section, the authors retrace the history of the women’s issue, analysing the reasons for the advances and setbacks. In the second section, they focus on women’s rights and their struggles to maintain and advance them in the face of patriarchal and conservative thinking based on a rigorous interpretation of Islam. Finally, in the third section, the authors focus their reflection on the factors currently influencing the evolution/regression of the women’s movement.

To Quote:  Nora Semmoud, Gülçin Erdi Lelandais, Safaa Monqid. “ Femmes, droits et participation citoyenne au Machrek, au Maghreb et en Turquie ”. Chairman Levy; Andrea Martinez. Genre, féminisme et développement. Une trilogie en construction, Les presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2019. halshs-02165161.