Review of Alice Kang, Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy

Authors

Jaimie Bleck, University of Notre DameFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2016

Citation

Jaimie Bleck (2016) Alice Kang. Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 18:3, 511-512, DOI: 10.1080/14616742.2016.1191284

Comments

Copyright © 2016, Jaimie Bleck Published by Taylor & Francis.

Abstract

In Alice Kang’s Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy, readers are introduced to the contentious debates about the inclusion of women’s rights policy in Niger. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork, the author provides a vivid exploration of domestic politics as the Muslim-majority state negotiates its transition to democracy. Kang shows that political actors adopt some women’s rights policy, while simultaneously rejecting comparable legislation on women’s rights.

This book offers an important step forward for research trajectories that seriously consider domestic determinants of policy outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa, but also Muslim-majority democracies more broadly.