Articles for DWF
Reviews for DWF
Translations for DWF
Articles for DWF
Woman and Islam, 1976, Year I, n. 3, pp. 55-77
The passage from an archaic type of religion to a monotheistic culture and religion, with the consequent profound changes in the pre-existing order of things, is of great importance to the position of woman. Under Islam, man and woman are theoretically equal before God, but they are not equal before each other. The spiritual values of the Islamic world play their role in justifying male privilege and in persuading woman that her role as a second class creature is a positive one. As for sexuality, although in Muslim thinking sexual pleasure is a good thing, for the man it is but a restorative, an oasis of recuperation, in no way a fulfilment of himself.
Hence sex comes to be considered as woman's sphere of action. Here, too, she appears in a lower category, socially useless, tied to this destiny by her menstrual cycles. (menstrual impurity). The various political attempts in different Islamic countries to solve the problem of Muslim women have so far had few practical results. The number of women working in various political institutions and organisations in the different countries is continually on the increase, but the task of transforming the value set upon and the meaning given to woman as a human being still remains to be undertaken.
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Debate [Who, for whom, how. Scientific research carried out by women], 1976,
n. 1, pp. 3-22
The subject under discussion was scientific research as carried out by women. The participants were the Editorial board of "nuova dwf", Annarita Buttafuoco, Tilde Capomazza, Maria Teresa Morreale, Maria Grazia Paolini, Biancamaria Scarcia, Dora Stiefelmeier, Flo Westoby, and Luciana Di Lello, an Italian feminist engaged in research, was also present.
Leaving aside epistemological consideration, discussion concentrated on the political importance of scientific work - differences arose immediately on the definition of "scientific" - carried out by women; the fact that they are a socially oppressed group working within a set of disciplines almost exclusively elaborated by men, with all the distortions which this involves; on the consequent need to critically examine and often call into question not only the methodologies but even the basic concepts. Underlying the various disciplines. As the participants are all working in the social sciences, the special problems of women working in the "hard" sciences were not discussed.
There was special emphasis on the categorical necessity for a continuing check on sociological researches on women or on the supposed condition of women, both on the aims and on the subjects of these researches. Each speaker described her own special work problems, and spoke of her personal experiences, either in the university or in her field of research. The second part of the discussion was given over to the aims and problems of the journal, to political strategy, to the type of readership, to the appropriate forms and language.
Tilde Capomazza, communications expert, summed up, indicating the links between the journal and the feminist movement, and the journal and all those women who, aware of their oppression, are ready to unite and to struggle.
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The Political Acceptance of the Private Role: Palestinian Woman, 1976, n.
1, pp. 66-76
The article falls into two parts. The first part concerns the historio-graphical and critical material on the role of women in wars of liberation. It emphasises the one-sidedness and the rigidity of the model chosen in order to express women's emancipation within the revolutionary process. The second part discusses the use for which the documents concerning the women's role in the revolutionary struggle are destined within the revolutionary movements themselves.
The author has chosen Palestine as her example, given the urgency of the problem there. A brief overview of the Palestinian feminist movement furnishes the factual background, but the argument is concerned rather with problems. The declared aim of the article is to attempt to formulate the function and the political role of women within the revolutionary process, as for example in people's wars.
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Debate [Thousand faces of Eve], 1978, n. 8, pp. 121-136
"Nuova dwf" has organised a round table with the three realisations of a Television program on the image of woman in the different epochs of history of cinema. This meeting has made clear the enormous difficulties created by an institution as Italian Television that with its bureau critical mechanism and hierarchies prejudices all prefixed aims.
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Some notes on Iranian Revolution: a Church against women?, 1981, n. 16, pp.
108-117
The writer, a scholar of Islam - specifically of Iran - criticises in this paper the approach of Western feminist movement to Iranian politics since the revolution as regards to women. Solidarity between Western and Third World women - she argues - can by no means imply the imposition on the latter of western cultural models; the case of Iran seems to be an example of cultural imperialism exerted - though not consciously, by feminism in a way which contradicts one of the basic assumptions of feminism itself: i.e. not only equal rights but a right to "otherness" as well, for all women, not withstanding the different societies to which they may belong.
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In front of the palestinian problem: a methodological question, 1982, n.
22, pp. 43-56
The Israeli-palestinian problem is seen from the point of view of the role that women play objectively in the situation. Demographical factors are considered fundamental in the definition of the problem itself. But their definition is not to be assumed according to the traditional categories of political analysis, but through a new approach determined by the feminist engagement of the author.
It follows a critical survey of the ways in which the West speaks and represents the Third World's peoples, with particular reference to peoples participating in the struggle for national independence.
In this perspective the Palestinian people are taken as a paradigmatic example of inadequacy of usual analysis, as a peculiar expression of subjective autodefinition as a people and a revolutionary movement and as a case in which the objective difficulties dues to their subordination and their oppression in the international and regional context are of a particular relevance.
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Debate [About us and beyond…] , 1982, n. 22, pp. 147-153
Different sectors of the editorial board exchange
letters in a moment of crisis of the review's project and of its editing group.
Annarita Buttafuoco and Maricla Tagliaferri underline
the need to reflect on the review's format and its meaning in the present situation
of the women's movement, on its fluctuating between being a scientific journal
and a militant magazine, on its scarcely reactive public, on the failed turnover
both of its editors and of its buyers. The project's stalemate and the growing
hardship of the organization burden are at the same time cause and effect of
a break in the relationships between editors which hinders reflection and reduces
everything to a question of personal relations. In front of all this the writers
propose to find other references for the quarterly's future.
Rosanna De Longis, Donata Lodi and Gabriella
Turnaturi declare they cannot and will not continue to be part of the editorial
board, considering the existing contradictions with the quarterly's direction
and property.
Biancamaria Amoretti Scarcia, Tilde Capomazza, Gemma Luzzi, Maria Teresa Morreale, Dora Stiefelmeier point out that "the quarterly's property" is made up of the group of women who founded the review in 1976 pouring on it ideas, work and energy; some years later they have entrusted the new board with the review's heritage, "without expecting profits, without demanding financial control, without intervening in any way on the review's political line". Involved in the editorial board's crisis which threatened the review's continuity, the quarterly's property met the editors and emphasized its will to grant the above mentioned continuity. It also began a series of encounters with women willing to express a new project, collectively reconsidering the review's political function and the production structure necessary to secure its existence.
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Inside the boundaries, along the edges, 1986, n. 4, pp. 54-64
Analysis of an emancipation process - and of the growing awareness of one's condition as a woman - through the stages of a professional success-story as a scholar in the field of oriental studies.
The turning points in the history of the discipline, and the author's personal development, are looked at as parallel and interrelated; the de-colonising process; third-world centrality, the institutional crisis of the Western world, and the gradual loss of meaning of traditional political and social groupings, are re-viewed in the light of her move towards feminism.
Feminism, also for what it has signified and still signifies in the author's working life, opens up possible answers to the problematic area of a woman's belonging to (being a part of) something, and of something belonging to (being a part of, pertaining to) a woman.
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Reviews for DWF
GORDON D. C., Women of Algeria. An essay on change, Cambridge Mass, Harvard,
Middle East Monograph Series, 1972
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, Y. I, 1976, n. 3, pp. 173-175
MAHER Vanessa, Women and property in Morocco: their changing relation to
the process of social stratification in the Middle Atlas, Cambridge University
Press, 1974
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, Y. I, 1976, n. 4, pp. 172-176
RAVAIOLI C., La questione femminile: intervista col PCI, Milano Bompiani
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1977, n. 2, pp. 146-148
PORTER Cathy, Father and Daughters: Russian Women in Revolution, London,
Virago, 1976
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1977, n. 4, pp. 141-143
REINTJENS Hortense, Die Soziale Stellung der Frau bei den nordarabischen
Beduinen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Ehe - und Familien- verhältmisse,
Selbstverlag des Orientalischen Seminars der Universitat Nobb, 1975
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1978, n. 6-7, pp. 217-218
Woman and National Development: the complexities of change, ed. by the Wellesley
Editorial Committee, The University of Chicago press, Chicago-London, 1977
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1978, n. 9, pp. 163-166
"Peuples méditerranéens", 1988, n. 44-45 (luglio-dicembre)
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia, 1989, n. 8, pp. 121-122
Donne a Gerusalemme. Incontri tra italiane, palestinesi e israeliane,
Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1989
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1989, n. 10-11, pp. 157-158
A proposito della collana Astrea, Firenze, Giunti, 1986/89
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1989, n. 10-11, pp. 158-161
MAHER Vanessa, Il potere della complicità. Conflitti e legami delle donne
nordafricane, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1989
rev. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1991, n. 13-14, p. 108
Translations for DWF
KANDIYOTI Deniz, Islam and national politics: the case of Turkey
tran. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1982, n. 22, pp. 7-22
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SOURIAU Christiane, The Libyan experiment
tran. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1982, n. 22, pp. 91-108
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AIT SABBAH Fatma, Female sex between order and subversion in the Muslim male
subconscious
tran. by Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti, 1989, n. 10-11, pp. 137-144