Perez, and Hasnaa Mokhtar. Abstract: To explore feminism s in Kuwait and give a perspective of how social justice movements look in the Arab Gulf region, a group of students from Douglass Residential College, Rutgers University, participated in a year-long service learning project.
On the research trip, the students networked with feminist organizations in Kuwait and journaled about their experiences abroad. As a result of this study abroad experience, the students reported acquiring transformative experiences and an extremely overwhelming feeling of a desire to decolonize their westernized perspectives. Some of these themes draw on Orientalist discursive traditions that reify a divide between West and East, modern and traditional, liberal and illiberal, progressive and savage.
Among the people welcoming the group was board member and founder of the Girls for Girls G4G chapter in Kuwait. After settling in our seats at the spacious meeting room, we started introducing ourselves to the crowd. We are a conservative society here in Kuwait and the Middle East. As she continued to voice her disgust, other members of the WCSS board tried to shush her telling her to show respect to the students as their guests and mentioned that they are welcoming to all people.
Meanwhile, Jane Doe and others felt unsafe and wanted to leave. To soften the tension in the room, board members started explaining the history of WCSS. But we decided to interrupt the speaker and excuse ourselves outside the room. Stereotypical and orientalist discourses surrounding the Arab Gulf region would have thrived on such uncomfortable and contradictory encounters to paint the country as backward and unsafe.
However, the intention of this trip, and an academic semester of coursework that preceded it reading about and studying different issues in Kuwait through a decolonial lens, have prepared us to engage deeply and critically with this. For us, these experiences in Kuwait conveyed the way feminism is understood, embodied, and practiced by different socioeconomic groups in contrasting parts of the world.
