Surprise surprise!
By Souheila al-Jadda
An elderly woman stopped me in the mall the other day to ask what I was wearing. I told her a head scarf, or hijab, and overdress, or abaya. I said my Islamic religion requires me to dress modestly and hide the contours of my body so as not to attract the opposite sex.
“You people are oppressed and submissive,” she replied, questioning why God would want a woman to hide her beauty. She added that my clothes were just plain “ugly.” So according to her, if women are seen as persecuted based on what they wear, then many of the world’s women from Africa to the Middle East to Southeast Asia would be considered oppressed.
The head scarf continues to be perceived in the West as a symbol of religious cruelty. A survey last year by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that more than half of the 1,000 U.S. respondents believe that Islam encourages the oppression of women.
Actually, many women in Middle East and Islamic countries are free; others are working to bring about more change. That’s probably news to many Americans. Next week, for instance, Kuwaiti women will participate in parliamentary elections for the first time in the country’s history.
Iqbal al-Ahmed, a women’s rights activist, sees this as an opportunity for Kuwaiti women. “In their first two elections, they will make little difference,” Ahmed told The Associated Press. “But when the society absorbs (the idea), they will become a force and they will acquire more confidence that they can bring about change.”
While progress in these regions might not measure up to Western standards of freedom, an examination of education, political participation and social reforms shows that women in Muslim countries have made considerable strides. Attitudes, too, are shifting.
**Education **
In 1970, according to the World Bank, women made up 16.6% of literate adults in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2000, they accounted for more than 50% of literate adults in those regions, a substantial improvement. The years of schooling for girls and women older than 15 in the region rose from six months in 1960 to 4? years in 1999 ? the largest regional increase in the world. Female students are a majority at the United Arab Emirates University and the UAE’s Higher Colleges of Technology. In Tunisia, 57% of university-age women are enrolled in higher education. Even in Saudi Arabia, known for its bias against women, about 55% of college graduates are women. Higher education is one thing, but workplace gains often are decades in the making. Even so, progress is notable. In Syria, women make up about 15% of lawyers, 13% of judges, 57% of elementary and high school teachers and 20% of university professors. Equality? No. Progress? Absolutely.
Despite these encouraging signs, others in the region still lag. Yemen, with a population similar to Syria’s 18 million, has only a few dozen female judges and lawyers. Further, only about one in five teachers are women, and one in six university-age women enroll in higher education. Clearly, there’s still a ways to go.
**Politics **
Western stereotypes are upended by the political clout of some women in the Islamic world. While Americans have yet to elect a female president, Indonesia and Pakistan have had women as heads of state. Women are also state ministers and members of parliament in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. In the Palestinian territories, Fathiyya Rimawi, whose head scarf frames her middle-age face, is the first female mayor of a village. “Representing women in official positions is the key to achieving modernity and democracy, especially in Palestine,” she told Iran’s Al-Alam TV.
People across the Middle East seem to agree with Rimawi. A recent Gallup Poll of eight mostly Islamic countries revealed that a majority of respondents agreed that women should be allowed in leadership positions. The ranges were as high as 92% in Lebanon and as low as 40% in Saudi Arabia.
**Social reform **
Any meaningful political movements must be buttressed by social and cultural changes as well. Thankfully, such shifts are taking root in the Middle East. Last year in Algeria, women prodded the government to change the family code to allow adult women to marry independently without obtaining a male guardian’s consent. A few years earlier, Egyptian women helped pass legislation making it easier for them to divorce.
In Morocco, women established the Center of Listening & Orientation for Women Victims of Violence, which provides a safe haven for women abused by their husbands. “We guide these women by giving them solutions relevant to their cases,” attorney Al Sa’diya Wadah told Morocco’s 2M TV. “We also inform them of their rights as women.”
But as with any such historical movements, there is an ebb and flow of progress. Such is the case in Iran this past year. For the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the state gave women the right to attend soccer matches, but it was a short-lived victory: Muslim clerics objected, and the order was rescinded.
**Culture vs. religion **
So why don’t the floodgates open, allowing women equal rights throughout the region? Frankly, many men (and women) still oppose granting more rights to women. Something as seemingly innocuous as allowing women to drive provokes an impassioned debate about culture and religion. Just such a discussion (about a legislative proposal in Saudi Arabia) played out on a TV talk show.
“Saudi society is not ready to accept women driving,” said Shalimar Hassan Tharbanli, a prominent Saudi artist. Her arguments were based not on religion, though, but on the approval of her male-dominated culture. Similarly, when asked why women were not better represented in Jordanian politics, feminist Hazad Altel told Jordan TV, “We have a male-dominated society. Men have dominated women based on tribal or agricultural society values.”
Unfortunately, some men often refer to distorted or false interpretations of Islam to prevent women from getting behind the wheel of change. Islam does not prohibit women from seeking education, public office or employment. But culturally, many men view educated or working women as a threat. If a wife seeks employment, her husband is viewed as not fully providing for his family. If a single woman attends a co-educational institution, she might be considered “loose” for mixing with the opposite sex.
For these cultural reasons, don’t expect a radical feminist revolution in the Middle East. Reforms will be gradual. With more than 44 million women still illiterate in the region, access to education remains a top priority. Employment among women in the Arab region is among the lowest in the world, 33.3%. Further, many women still live with discriminatory laws.
But the recent changes in the region are significant because they are coming from within these societies. Debates about women’s rights take place on local TV programs, in books, newspapers and parliamentary chambers. Muslim and Arab women, veiled and unveiled, are using their minds, not foreign armies, to gain freedoms. These increasingly public debates point to a reawakening in the Arab and Islamic worlds, where societies are examining their own religion, culture and prejudices to better understand how to address injustices against women.
It took American women more than 130 years after the signing of the Constitution to gain the right to vote. It took more than two decades after that before the women’s rights movement truly blossomed. American women, perhaps more than most, understand that what a woman wears has nothing to do with having the same opportunities and rights as men. And as U.S. history shows, a revolution doesn’t happen overnight.
*Souheila al-Jadda is a journalist and associate producer of a Peabody award-winning program, Mosaic: World News from the Middle East, on Link TV. She also is a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-06-21-muslim-women-edit_x.htm
