Since 2014, the international community has seen Kurdish women fighters taking an active role in the military battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Kurdish women fighters frequently assert in interviews with the mainstream media that their organization's structure was developed in accordance with Kurdish society. However, this study argues that Kurdish women in democratic confederalist society in general, and these warriors in particular, have restructured Kurdish women's identity in ways that are distinct from its historical antecedents by creating new horizons for female personification in a globalized society. This paper argues that the dispositions of these women have engendered a new epistemic social ecology and new cultural spaces. They embody self-ownership in the form of freeing themselves from the paternal-patriarchal society of the Middle East, and also from “the patriarchy of the Western liberalism” (Pateman, 2002). This article demonstrates how democratic confederalist society women (DCSWs) created a new and impactful model of democracy by increasing women’s social and symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1992, 1989, 1977) within Kurdish society—a unique socio-political model in the world.

Authors:
Kaziwa Salih, Jagiellonian University, Poland

About the Presenter(s)
Assistant Professor / researcher on the project "Activism and Its Moral and Cultural Foundation:" (ALCITfem),Norway Grants. She holds a PhD from Queen’s University, Canada and a multiple award-winning author of over 10 fiction and non-fiction books.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaziwa-salih-b7459b126/?originalSubdomain=ca

Connect on ResearchGate
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xsRbJJcAAAAJ&hl=en

Additional website of interest
https://twitter.com/KaziwaSalih?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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