Arab women’s rights take big leap forward in 2017
But some female freedoms are ‘going backward’
LONDON: A slew of reforms across the Arab world this year represented a major leap forward for women.
In July, Tunisia passed a landmark law criminalizing violence against women and soon afterward governments in Jordan and Lebanon abolished legal loopholes enabling rapists to escape punishment by marrying their victims.
In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia’s decisions to lift a longstanding ban on female drivers marked a turning point for women’s emancipation in one of the region’s most conservative countries.
“It’s an indication that governments are changing their position toward women’s rights, albeit at a very moderate pace,” said Layla Naffa, director of projects at the Arab Women’s Organization in Jordan.
“After six years of closing the doors, a window of hope has opened and we will continue to fight the battle,” she said.
In patriarchal societies where gender inequality is ingrained across all aspects of social, economic and political life, the greatest challenge comes with confronting cultural conceptions of women’s roles and responsibilities.
“The law has an important part to play in changing behaviors and attitudes, however, the law is not enough,” Elie Kayrouz, a Lebanese MP said.
The legal environment may criminalize certain forms of violence against women, but it does not eliminate these practices from people’s mindsets, he explained.
Even with the necessary laws in place, women face hurdles at every level when it comes to reporting violence. Fear of bringing shame on their family and community — potentially inciting further violence — is compounded by the frequent failure of authorities to take complaints of gender-based violence seriously.
“Shame culture and stigmatizing the victim is a very widely spread phenomenon which is preventing most victims from reporting or seeking help,” said Asma Khader, former minister of culture in Jordan and president of SIGI, a women’s rights NGO.
While women may be gaining ground legally, older generations say that over time, their liberties have been chipped away.
Pictures of Levantine women in the sixties and seventies hint at fewer restrictions — their coiffured hair, short sleeves and mini skirts portraying modes of dress that would be unthinkable in modernday Syria or Iraq.
Layla Naffa, director of projects at the Arab Women’s Organization in Jordan, started university in the late sixties when women were moving more and more into the public sphere.
“We seemed to gain so many liberties back then — women were in education, attending university and able to work.”
“You can see the difference in the way they dressed and presented themselves.”
In 1974, Jordanian women received the right to vote. Prior to this, Syria was among the earliest Arab countries to take the step in 1949, followed by Lebanon in 1952 and Egypt in 1956.
Progress started to sputter in the mid-seventies, Naffa said, with the rise of Islamic extremism, which has been gaining momentum ever since.
Since then, attitudes in conservative communities have hardened against women’s rights, with many who may once have enjoyed more freedoms, shut out of public life and consigned to the domestic sphere.
Detailed report — P3