Introducing gender into a regional agricultural development project in the Middle East: Professional and political challenges

This book is about the place of women and gender relations of production in agriculture in the Middle East. It contains detailed explorations of the position of women in the national economies of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority. Each country-based case study follows a similar pattern of exposition, moving from a more general review of existing research about women in the national economy and society to a more focused examination of data and research results documenting the role of women in the rural sectors of these national economies and, more specifically, in the agricultural production systems within each of these economies. The main goal is to provide an updated overview of the position of women in the agricultural production systems in these four Middle Eastern settings. The Egyptian case material was rich enough to necessitate two distinct chapters. The first offers a general review of data on gender and agriculture in Egypt, while the second presents a detailed annotated bibliography that documents the wealth of research carried out in Egypt on this topic.