Beyond Feminism? Jineoloji and the Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement

Jineoloji, the women's science proposed and developed by the Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement, has become central to its transnational organizing both in the Middle East and in Europe and the Americas. Activists in the Kurdish women's movement critique positivist and androcentric forms of knowledge production as well as liberal feminism. They instead propose Jineoloji, which aims to rediscover women's histories and restore women's central place in society. Based on a series of interviews with Kurdish women involved in developing Jineoloji, this article first situates Jineoloji within wider transnational and decolonial feminist approaches and then draws out the main ideas constituting Jineoloji. We focus on the ways Jineoloji speaks to ongoing discussions within transnational feminist knowledge production. Our article critically assesses the claim of Kurdish women activists who present Jineoloji as a new science and paradigm that goes beyond feminism while developing our argument that Jineoloji represents an important continuation of critical interventions made by marginalized women activists and academics transnationally. Moreover, our article illustrates that Jineoloji provides a helpful ideological underpinning for and epistemology of Kurdish women's political struggle for gender-based equality and justice.