Legal Reform in Women's Rights. A Comparative Study between Jordan and Bahrain Concerning Citizenship and Political Participation

Liberal Feminism has made a strong point that women¿s equality with men can be achieved best through the establishment of civil and political rights through legal reform and liberal legislation. This offers a political agenda that can work in existing democratic systems and effect change from within, and as such is closer to practice and women¿s immediate needs than the more radical approaches of feminism. This study sets out to put the premise of liberal feminism to develop an argument about the cases I want to study because of applications need. This is first operationalised through a concept of liberal citizenship, which is then compared to the legal and real situation in two Arab countries, which have established liberal women¿s rights.

Both, Jordan and Bahrain grant complete political and economic rights to women in their liberal constitutions. Both countries have made legislation efforts and reforms to bring women¿s equality in the countries¿ laws and to end discrimination against women as agreed to in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), to which both countries are party. The two countries share several political features, both are Arab countries with the political system of monarchy; both have Islam as the main religion and both endorse Shari¿a law as part of the legal system. A key difference is that Bahrain has a Sunni-Shi¿ite split, whereas in Jordan there are only Sunni.