Is the new boss the same as the old boss?
As protest rolls through the public squares of the Middle East one of more unusual sights is women standing shoulder to shoulder with men, risking their freedom and their lives.
They were there from Tunisia to Egypt to Iran to Libya. Said Egyptian author and activist Nawal El Saadaw of her days making history in Tahrir Square: "I felt for the first time that women were equal to men."
Somewhere between hope and belief, this season of freedom could also be a new day for the Middle East's women. There are good arguments that the revolutions would have never happened without women -- they were the slogan makers, the march organizers, the activists.
Revolutions, however, are unpredictable by nature -- especially when they collide with centuries of misogyny in a country that ranks 125th in the World Economic Forum's global gender gap rankings, where large majorities of women report being harassed and molested, where genital mutilation is still common, and where not one woman was named to the committee that is reforming the constitution.
Will the women who risked all to bring down a government find that all they got for their bravery and sacrifice was a shuffling of oppressors?
The early signs are not encouraging.
Even as 1,000 women marked the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day -- chanting "Egyptians for Egyptians" -- male hecklers were shouting at them to go home -- "where you belong." Some 200 hundred of the men eventually attacked the women, with police largely standing by. It was the same square where men celebrated their newfound freedom by repeatedly sexually assaulting a reporter.
A necessary step to oppression is exclusion. In Iraq, women had high hopes that last year's election would elevate their political power, given a new constitution that mandates that a quarter of the country's parliament seats go to women. But the women filling those seats are largely relatives of male party members. Six years after the constitution -- and despite promises from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki -- there is only one female minister, and she heads a barely funded and powerless backwater focused on women's affairs.
In a New York Times article, Michael S. Schmidt reported that the fear of many Iraqi women is that the loss of parliamentary power was a step toward a loss of rights in general.
Women in Tunisia have similar fears. They helped bring down the Ben-Ali regime, but are already seeing conservative elements fill the vacuum, with the possibility they will replace some of the region's more progressive family law with more restrictive laws based on religion.
It's a threat in any country where the collapsed regimes tend to have been secular, and the governments that take their place likely to be influenced by the religious factions that will be part of new coalitions.
There is also the barrier thrown up by women themselves. They have lived under a centuries-old bargain: inferiority in society in return for protection of relatives. Many women fear the loss of that protection because they have no idea what would replace it.
Still, there is hope in the determination of many women that, having helped liberate their countries, they will not be pushed back into the shadows, without rights, and subject the restrictions of strict family law and sometimes violent whims of men. For the first time they have a powerful leveler on their side -- Web sites that allow them to organize and spread their ideas and, as in the recent revolutions, their outrage.
Activist Nawaal el Saadawi, who felt the stirrings of equality in Tahrir Square also added: "Women's rights cannot be given." They can only be taken "by the political power..."
In Tunisia and Egypt, and possibly more countries to come, women helped win freedom from autocracy. But the next battle may be just beginning.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
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According to the World Development Indicators, in 1980 the literacy rate among adult females in the Middle East North Africa region was just 28%. In 2008 it was 67%. Female participation in the labor force has climbed slowly but surely from 21% to 26% during the same time period. In Tunisia and even Saudi Arabia, which is often viewed as the epicenter of female repression, there are now more women in tertiary education than men. Women’s access to education as well as increased choice regarding family planning have both contributed to a decline in the total fertility rate from six births per woman in 1980 to just three in 2008.
Women should not be satisfied with these gains. There is still a long way to go. However, it’s encouraging to know that women can achieve incremental progress under any boss, and that women in the Middle East today are more educated and better prepared to fight for their rights than at any other point in their history.
I would issue some platitude about this not happening in our country, except it was. Holding on to tradition, I know, but strange to see.
Probably. That's what happened in Iran in the 1970's.
As an American women who fights against her own governments illegal invasions that set women shoulder to shoulder with men in the ME, the answer is yes
Perhaps this is a scandalous notion but think about it for a moment. In our culture we tend to see a married heterosexual couple with children as the cultural norm and ideal even if this represnts only a fraction of the households existing today.
What would happen if the normal structure was a small tribe of affliated adults of both genders, some of whom had children? Aldus Huxley proposes an interesting variant on this in his book Island in which individual families are participants in small tribal groups who together enter into mutaul adoption relationships where all parnets are responsible for the care of all children and the village has a separate children's house.
Marx and many many feminists have suggested this for years. Hardly a scandalous notion.
Democracy has enabled women to advance and the Republicans are the the greatest threat to American democracy. And the greatest threat to a woman's rights. They are going to extremes to take away a woman's reproductive rights.
They say they believe in the sanctity of life, but only when it's in the womb. After that, the mother and child are on their own, and do not expect any assistance. You can tell a lot about how Republican men feel about women by the women they choose to represent their party - unintelligent, uneducated and unnecessary i.e., Bachman, Donahue and Palin.
Women are the more evolved gender because they've had to overcome more environmental and cultural challenges than men. Of course there are still many women who are not evolved, and they seem to also be Republican. But it really isn't limited to Republicans.
Men who want to keep women submissive are primitive, and are driven by primitive desires, namely, copulation. They would screw the back of a train if they could catch up to it. Once one becomes aware of this fact, one can exercise her power.
LOCK YOUR LEGS, LADIES.
And don't open them until women all over the world are treated equally.
I find it incredible that my first answer to this post saying the same thing in the previous paragraph was censored by HuPo (wasn't even approved) even though I didn't use any personal attacks, swear words or something remotely similar. It's even more surprising that a comment that claims that a portion of humanity, namely men, are "less evolved" than other humans is accepted by HuPo. That's beyond misandry. Would a comment stating the (obviosuly absurd) claim that women are less evolved than men be accepted? I don't think so.
We were to be their bedmates, cooks, listen to their brilliance. All they did was piss us off.
Those men in Egypt better watch out, this is how a wimmin's revolution starts. The more they catcall, the more determined we become.
And we American wimmin need to get our groove back or the war on wimmin the republicans a re waging will put us right back to where we were before and never think any man wants us to have our freedom form their desires for us to be their slaves...not even the "progressive" men.
"Beyond Power" should be required reading for every female on the planet. And every male on the planet, too.
I applaud those who want to help women in other cultures but I don't suggest exporting the American female culture abroad because we are having a hard time stabilizing our families and need to figure out our own mess telling others exactly how to live. The gender wars need to end, the women who persist in male bashing in America are no better than sexist of the past. Misandry is a real problem. If the post feminist , feminist don't acknowledge the changed landscape then expect a backlash from men and women.
Please give examples...I hear this often on threads about outrageous acts against women.
THAT'S what has to change and it may take a long time.
For one thing, get rid of that male god which men say gives them rights over us that they do not have.