Bozena Welborne, Ph.D.
Bwelborne@smith.edu
Associate Professor
Smith College
Year of PhD: 2011
Phone: 413-585-4024
Address: 10 Prospect Ave. Room 302, Smith College
City: Northampton, Massachusetts - 01060
Country: United States
About Me:
I teach courses on Middle East politics, women and politics, and political economy at Smith College. My 2022 book, Women, Money, and Political Participation in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan) explored how financial globalization and rentierism conditioned women's political and economic opportunities in the region with a special focus on the GCC states. I was also a principal investigator on the co-authored book, The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States, which showcased results from the largest academic survey of Muslim-American women inquiring into their Islamic practice and politicization (Cornell University Press). The over-arching theme animating my scholarship has been exploring the viability and substance of “women’s empowerment” through the state's social engineering of women’s agency.
Research Interests
Middle East & North African Politics
Political Economy
Gender and Politics
Development
Comparative Political Institutions
Political Participation
Gender Quotas
Women's Political Representation
State Development
Foreign Aid
Financial Globalization
Countries of Interest
Oman
Bahrain
United Arab Emirates
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
Qatar
Jordan
Morocco
United States
My Research:
My personal research has focused on the legacy of policy interventions such as gender quotas geared at gender empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and their consequences. A more recent article considers the high number of independent female MPs serving across regional parliaments. My recent book entitled, Women, Money, and Political Participation in the Middle East, investigates the broad impact of gendered rentierism on women's political and economic participation across the MENA region.
I was also a principal author of the book, The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States. We used original survey data from 2000+ American Muslim women across 49 states to explore their religious and political practices, and how those intersected with their personal and social identity. The insights gleaned from our survey were further supplemented by 13 focus group interviews in 8 major cities, which use the practice of headcovering as a lens to shed light on the experiences of the Muslim-American community post-September 11th. We hope this book helps nuance current debates on the health of democratic pluralism and the threat Islamophobia poses to the U.S.' core values and institutions. We also published earlier scholarship on the role of social networks in encouraging American Muslim women to vote and join political parties, as well as on the diversity of motivations behind their choice to wear the headscarf in the U.S.
Finally, I collaborate with an international research team on topics related to women's labor force participation in the GCC. We have published a number of short policy briefs investigating the undercounting of citizen labor, the impact of rentierism on women's work opportunities, and how "wasta" (a specific brand of clientelist social network) conditions women's full participation in the public realm. We also have an article out on how labor nationalization policies created incentives for women to enter the GCC workforce in a special edition of the Journal of Arabian Studies. Our current research focuses on the gendering of the social contract in the GCC states post-COVID 19.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
This article aims to survey the state of the literature on gender quotas in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), explicitly focusing on where it stands in terms of their institutional, political, and societal impact after two decades of implementation. In addition, it considers how MENA scholarship on the topic compares with the global literature and includes insights into how region‐specific work contributes to our understanding of gender quotas as an electoral and legislative institution overall.
This paper considers examples of women successfully running as independents at the national level in the Middle East, investigating how existing electoral systems impacted their ability to contest political office. Women in the region face a host of challenges when it comes to launching political campaigns outside of sociocultural norms. Most extant literature on political participation focuses on parties as the primary vector for female participation in the Global North and South. However, women in the Middle East often cannot rely on this mechanism due to the absence of political parties or existing parties’ unwillingness to back women for cultural reasons. Yet, the region hosts many female independents holding office at the national level. Through the cases of Jordan, Egypt, and Oman, I unpack this phenomenon using an institutional argument and assess what the emergence of such candidates bodes for the future of women in the Middle East.
Recent scholarship posits that the resource curse has gendered as well as economic effects on oil-rich economies, like those in the Middle East and North Africa, entrenching paternalistic relationships that disadvantage women’s entry into the labor force. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that oil may not be the most compelling argument to explain Arab women’s low presence in the workforce –– especially since women’s labor-force participation within the oil rich Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states is generally higher than the regional average. We contend that this is, in part, a byproduct of the countries’ labor nationalization policies. Our analysis suggests that oil-driven development can in fact boost female labor force participation, revealing that rentierism as experienced in the GCC can actually have positive externalities for women.
This article explores the relationship between headcovering and women's political participation through an original online survey of 1,917 Muslim-American women. As a visible marker of religious group identity, wearing the headscarf can orient the integration of Muslim women into the American political system via its impact on the openness of their associational life. Our survey respondents who cover are more likely to form insular, strong ties with predominantly Muslim friend networks, which decreased their likelihood of voting and affiliating with a political party. Interestingly, frequency of mosque attendance across both covered and uncovered respondents is associated with a higher probability of political participation, an effect noted in other religious institutions in the United States. Yet, mosque attendance can simultaneously decrease the political engagement of congregants if they are steered into exclusively religious friend groups. This discovery reveals a tension within American Muslim religious life and elaborates on the role of religious institutions vs. social networks in politically mobilizing Muslim-Americans.
Objective Mainstream American perception often views Islamic headcovering as a controversial practice indicative of gender repression and norms violating individual rights. Practicing Muslims counter that headcovering expresses piety, modesty, and protection. Recent scholarship affirms the complexity of the practice, and reveals that the motivations behind donning the headscarf span the religious, social, and political realms for Muslim women. Methods We explore the motivations for the practice among American Muslims, examining the way religious, social, and political life interact and reinforce one another, using data from an online survey of 1,847 Muslim‐American women from 49 states. Results Our findings demonstrate that religiosity is not a monolithic factor, and religious practices interact with and enforce headcovering in complex ways. We illustrate that conventionally understood indicators of Islamic religiosity align along three dimensions: religious lifestyle, religious abstinence, and religious socialization. Elements of a religious lifestyle, such as praying and attending mosque as well as fostering connections with Islamic social networks, are more strongly associated with covering than practices related to abstinence or socialization. Conclusions Ultimately, our research demonstrates a more nuanced understanding of how different aspects of Muslim religiosity condition covering among Muslim‐American women.
This article tests two competing theories of the relationship between piety and redistributive preferences in the Muslim world. The first, drawn from the new political economy of religion, holds that more pious individuals of any faith should oppose redistributive economic policies. The second, drawn from Islamic scripture, holds that pious Muslims should favor more redistributive economic policies. Employing survey data from twenty-five countries, the authors find that there is no clear relationship between piety and redistributive preferences among Muslims. The authors find that more pious Muslims are less likely to favor government efforts to eliminate income inequality, but they find only inconsistent evidence that more pious Muslims support governments taking responsibility for the well-being of the poor. The findings offer little evidence to suggest that either scriptural or organizational factors unique to Islam create distinct economic policy preferences.
Books Written:
This book examines women, money, and political participation in the Middle East and North Africa focusing on women’s capacity to engage local political systems. In particular, it considers whether and how this engagement is facilitated through specific types of financial flows from abroad. Arab countries are well-known rentier states, and so a prime destination for foreign aid, worker remittances, and oil-related investment. Alongside other factors these external monies have elicited dramatic shifts in gender-related social norms and expectations both from the state and the domestic population, affording certain women the opportunity to enter the political arena, while leaving others behind. The research presented here expands the discussion of women in rentier political economy and highlights their roles as participants and agents within regional templates for economic development.
The Politics of the Headscarf in the United States investigates the social and political effects of the practice of Muslim-American women wearing the headscarf (hijab) in a non-Muslim state. The authors find the act of head covering is not politically motivated in the U.S. setting, but rather it accentuates and engages Muslim identity in uniquely American ways.
Book Chapters:
Empowering Women after the Arab Spring pp 65-90|
Book Reviews:
By Nermin Allam. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
By Rachel Gillum. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018.
by Amy E. Eckert. Cornell University Press, New York, 2016.
2013. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 316 pp., $87.98 (hardback). ISBN: 978-0-7391-8432-5
by Doris Gray, London, I.B. Tauris, 2013.
Other:
Gail Buttorff, Ph.D., Contributing Expert, Baker Institute; Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Houston Bozena Welborne, Ph.D., Contributing Expert, Baker Institute; Assistant Professor, Smith College Nawra al-Lawati, Lecturer, Sultan Qaboos University
Gail Buttorff, Ph.D., Contributing Expert, Women's Rights in the Middle East Program Bozena Welborne, Ph.D., Contributing Expert, Women's Rights in the Middle East Program
Gail Buttorff, Ph.D., Contributing Expert, Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program Bozena Welborne, Ph.D., Contributing Expert, Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program
The 30th anniversary of the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) renewed debate on proposed mechanisms to increase women’s presence in the public sphere across the developing and developed world. One of the most controversial, yet important tools to promote women into the political arena has been the gender quota. This paper explores the mix of incentives seen in the variation in gender quota adoption within legislatures across the Middle East and North Africa. I use event history analysis to estimate which factors predict gender quota adoption across 22 Arab League countries from 1990 to 2009. This paper posits and finds that the increasingly economic nature of international influence exerted through development assistance consistently impacts the probability of adopting gender quotas in Arab legislatures.