Women in the Middle East

I thought it apt that I initiate this blog with a topic that is so vital to women in the Middle East and all over. The women's movement is still in its infancy on a global scale. Women continue to play second fiddle to men in Western countries as well. The sex industry and the commercialization of sexuality have continued the negative images of women in the 20th century and beyond. In the East, the issues are as old as Adam and Eve; religion and culture have contributed to the subjugation of women through a patriarchal system. Western colonialism has prevented many women from reaching independence due to its support for friendly tyrannical regimes.

1) How are women and the cultures they live in to transcend the old paradigms of control to ones of power sharing and economic independence?

2) How are they to engage in conflict matters in areas dominiated by men?

3) How do we shed the sensual yet oppressed orienatalist image of Muslim and Middle Eastern women that is used to romanticise the region on the one had, yet provide justification for racism?

Marilyn

From: Foreign Policy in Focus
Volume 5, Number 30
September 2000

by: As'ad Abu Khalil

Key Points

Although there is no gender equality in the Middle East (including in Israel), the phenomena of sexism and misogyny are global—not peculiar to Islam, or to the Middle East.

The status of women varies widely in the Middle East, and one should not project the norms in Saudi Arabia—one of the most sexist and oppressive states in the region—onto the larger Muslim world. Many of the causes for the inferior status of Middle Eastern women are indigenous, but the West—especially the U.S.—has exacerbated this oppression.

In discussions of general issues facing women in the Middle East, the diversity of female lifestyles and conditions is often lost. Accustomed to stereotypical depictions, Westerners are told that Middle Eastern women are passive, weak, and always veiled. It is often assumed that the severe conditions in Saudi Arabia—where women are not even allowed to drive cars—represent the norm for women throughout the Middle East and in the larger Muslim world. In reality, Saudi Arabia’s versions of both Islam and sexism are rather unique in their severities, although the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan is now emulating the sexist Saudi model. Women enjoy political and social rights in many Muslim countries, and Egypt has recently granted women the right to divorce their husbands. In Tunisia, abortion is legal, and polygamy is prohibited. Women have served as ministers in the Syrian, Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi, and Tunisian governments, and as Vice President in Iran. (read more.......) Women in the Middle East

http://www.fpif.org/pdf/vol5/30ifwomen.pdf

As`ad AbuKhalil is an
associate professor of political science at California
State University, Stanislaus, and a research fellow at
the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley.