revolutions like that of Iran’s in 1979, removing the Arab states still further from the ideals of a modern, secular and equal society, or will democracies in which there is a clear separation of church and state emerge? And even then – is Islam what’s stopping Arab societies from granting equal rights to both genders? As the new democracies stabilise, it’s important to pay attention to the broader social forces that may stand in the way of true equality. Before the Spring, Arab nations varied widely in their attitudes towards women’s rights. Tunisia’s 1956 Code of Personal Status made the state the most progressive in several respects, notably creating a judicial procedure
In spite of this, the country may yet prove to be the incubator of an Arab feminist revolution. Yemeni journalist Tawakul Karman, winner of part of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for her “nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work,” in the words of the Swedish Academy, has been one of the country’s premier human rights activists for over five years. She helped set up the international organisation Women Journalists Without Chains in 2005, and has been a key instigator of the non-violent protests for general democratic reform that have comprised her country’s uprisings. This mood may be catching; the Saudi Arabian government’s response to its
for divorce and introducing the requirement of mutual consent in order for a marriage to be legal. The country remains exemplary in terms of education; more women than men attend university, for example. As regards politics, women represented 23% of the deputies of the House elected in 2004, a remarkable figure in the absence of equity laws. In Egypt, the status of women has been steeply declining
neighbours’ political unrest was to implement electoral rights for women in municipal elections, an unprecedented decision in a country with an undeniably shocking record regarding both gender equality and human rights. With all of this in mind, it’s perhaps easy to imagine that a feminist revolution, or, even, a general social revolution of which feminism is one part, is an inevitable corollary of the political one.
I emailed Nour enquiring if she could answer one or two questions; she flatly told me she’d answer three, because “Arabs can’t bargain.” since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s drive to modernise the country ended with his death in 1970. Women are particularly underrepresented in the workforce and sexual abuse is widespread and rarely punished. There had, however, been some development in recent years: in 2009 Hosni Mubarak enacted gender quotas in the assembly, resulting in 68 of its 508 seats being occupied by women. The need for change is most urgent in Yemen, the next country due to hold elections– it is common in rural areas for pre-pubescent girls to be forced into marriage, genital mutilation still affects over a quarter of the female population and there has only been one woman in parliament in the last decade.
There are some reasons to be hopeful: Tunisian elections have drawn praise from international observers in part because, by law, 50% of candidates were women, resulting in 25% of Tunisia’s constituent assembly seats being held by women. Tunisia may be the exception once again, however – although two of Libya’s twenty-odd new ministers are women, its’ interim government declared polygamy legal in late 2011, and the country’s draft constitution is based on strict interpretations of Sharia law. In Egypt, the egalitarian spirit of Tahrir Square is fading. Whilst women had crucial roles in the revolutionary forces, they have yet to gain political ground in the new Egypt. The
Muslim Brotherhood has abolished Mubarak’s gender quotas, reducing the number of women in the assembly to 5 out of 500. In recent weeks, bands of extreme Islamists distantly associated with the popular Al-Nour Party have been patrolling rural Egypt, vandalising beauty salons for encouraging ‘un-Islamic’ activity. The military council has been particularly harsh in its treatment of women, subjecting female dissidents to ‘virginity tests’ to intimidate them. In December, videos and images of army members beating and ripping the clothes off of female demonstrators were shared all over the internet. One particularly horrifying image of a woman assaulted and stripped to her bra has become iconic, the anonymous woman in question now a symbol of the thwarted dreams of Arab feminists. Nour Ali Youssef lives in Cairo and contributes a regular column, ‘The Peculiar Arab Chronicles,’ to the online edition of Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s magazine. The column is funny and irreverent in the magazine’s house style, but Nour is unusually candid about life in an Arab society. She makes a particular effort to show that the younger generations of the Arab nations can be as jaded as those of the West towards their politicians, their parents’ generation, and, indeed, religion; she describes the Muslim feast Eid as a festival of consumption occasionally equal in crassness to the worst of Christmas excesses, and suggests Shaggy’s vaguely sexist “It Wasn’t Me” as an anthem for the military-led transitional government. Her tone vacillates between mock Arab self-hatred and ironic self-awareness. I emailed her asking if she could answer one or two questions; she told me she’d answer three, because “Arabs can’t bargain.” It’s tempting to quote at length from our correspondence, as opinions like hers aren’t frequently aired in the West. She isn’t certain what will happen to the status of women once things finally settle down, but is absolutely clear on one point: “The issue with women in the Middle East isn’t just men,” she stresses, “it’s themselves... I often say that the reason Arab men are so bad is because Arab
women are even worse.” She insists that the anachronistic values of Arab culture have made a feminist attitude culturally unpalatable. “There are two things Arabs value most: tradition and religion, and they both stand strongly against the development of women.” Religion helps romanticise sexism, Nour insists, for reasons that are primarily pragmatic: Women represent the relation of the state to its heritage (they are seen as Egypt’s “delicate flowers,” she snorts), religion is inextricable from this heritage, and it’s religion that helps to keep the tribal-based systems of much of Arab society together. The Muslim Brotherhood’s election program called for equality insofar as women’s “duties” towards the family unit and the state aren’t affected. Female members of the Brotherhood, ‘sisters,’ denounced the 3,000-woman strong protest in response to the ‘blue bra’ incident, pronouncing it “disrespectful for a woman’s dignity to be on the front line.” Nour’s tone is doleful, and with good reason; it’s not just Islam that stands between the Arab world and gender equality. There is a more fundamental discrepancy of power between the sexes, bound up in certain aspects of Arab culture. In 1950s Tunisia, a high degree of gender equality was achieved, and maintained, due to political pressure - Habib Bourguiba wanted the West’s financial support. The strong nationalism behind the Arab Spring uprisings, along with the baggage of cultural reform, have seen the Muslim Brotherhood describe as their goal a return to the ideals of Islam and the Arab heritage. The place of women in society is almost like an enabling metaphor for both of these endeavours, with the ideologies of modernisation and Islam respectively used as justification for political activity. Nour’s point of view may be tempered once life in Cairo settles down. The Arab Spring might not have been enough to significantly alter the place of women in society, but these revolutions may prove to be the first of many. The resurgence of Islamism is not the main issue, however, as Arab society needs to change in a fundamental way before real equality can come about.
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