Editor's introduction

This issue of the Digest of Middle East Studies is the second of two special issues in this year's volume of the journal. In January, we were pleased to bring out a special issue on sectarianism featuring critical and highly original scholarship on the topic. This October issue has as its focus the scholarship on gender issues in the region. Like sectarianism, gender is a topic that has long been of interest to scholars and policymakers alike, but (again like sectarianism) has also been subject to culturalist and essentializing assumptions. The scholarship of the past two decades, however, has increasingly begun to correct this earlier trend, and the works featured in this issue are at the very leading edge of critical approaches to understanding the relationship between gender and political institutions, social movements, and political economy. Furthermore, the articles of this issue ably demonstrate not only advances in the scholarship on gender and politics, but the essential contributions that the study of gender makes to the understanding of political actors, institutions, and processes generally. We are, one hopes, well past the years when gender was considered a minor or niche topic in both scholarship and policy environments.

This issue is honored to have as guest coeditor the political scientist and gender scholar Gamze Çavdar, whose adept framing of the scholarship is presented in the first article, placing these works in the broader context of their relationship and contributions to existing academic literatures. After this framing article, we present six research articles on political economy, institutions, and social movements; these studies are richly interdisciplinary and timely, and I am confident that they will be deeply interesting to a wide audience. Each article is an excellent piece of scholarship on its particular topic, but the issue as a whole serves as a representation of developments in the scholarship of gender issues in the region more broadly. Those looking for both a bird's-eye view of this broad topic and a substantive examination of its particular complexities should find this a useful collection.

As always, I wish to thank the peer reviewers whose assessments and feedback have contributed to the quality of the work presented here. I am also grateful for the skilled assistance of the journal's editorial assistant, Misha Datskovsky. Most of all, I must thank the authors for their outstanding contributions to this issue, and we hope that you find these articles engaging and stimulating.