Chapter 11: “The Role of Women”Author: Lisa Pollard

Source: Jillian Schwedler (ed.), Understanding the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers), 5th edition, 2020.

❖ Introduce background information/current context for challenges facing the human development of women in the MENA region

❖ Pollard Section 1: “The Middle East and the Woman Question” (pp. 325-329)➢ Key Takeaways

❖ Pollard Section 2: “Building the Nation Through Women” (pp. 329-341)➢ Key Takeaways/Case Studies (Turkey, Iran, Iraq)

❖ Current context for successes for the advancement of women in the MENA region in recent years

Presentation Outline

Sources:

❖ Adel Abdellatif, Paola Pagliani, and Ellen Hsu. “Leaving No One Behind: Towards Inclusive Citizenship in Arab Countries.” New York: UNDP Arab Human Development Report Research Paper, 2019. Available at: http://arab-hdr.org/UNDP_Citizenship_and_SDGs_report_web.pdf .

❖ OECD, “Women in Public Life: Gender, Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa.” Paris: OECD, 2015.

Current Context: Challenges

UNDP Arab Human Development Report 2019 (Abdellatif, Pagliani, Hsu)

OECD, “Women in Public Life: Gender, Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa.” Paris: OECD, 2015.

❖ Women’s economic and public participation remains the lowest in the world. While South America, Central Asia and Southern Asia reduced their gaps by 13.4%, 12.2% and 9.2% respectively between 1990 and 2010, the MENA region only improved by 7.4% over the same period. (Page 1)

❖ While most MENA countries have ratified the The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), many of them have made reservations to main articles. In addition, legal gaps in women’s rights still exist despite the inclusion of gender equality principles into constitutions across the MENA countries. (Page 1)

❖ In the MENA region, more than half of participating countries report having a mainstreaming strategy (Figure 4). Although

many countries employ some form of gender mainstreaming, only a few MENA countries (e.g. the Palestinian Authority) report taking steps to systematically integrate gender equality considerations in the design, implementation and monitoring of policies, programmes and laws. (Page 7)

❖ In the MENA region, country representatives report low availability of data on gender discrimination, data on gender-based violence, data on reconciliation of professional and private life, data on women’s economic empowerment and data on representation in the public service. (Page 10)

The Middle East and the Woman Question

01

Key Takeaways❖ By the 18th century, as European readers increasingly consumed literature that encouraged European women to be

exemplars of domestic practices, “harem women” became central figures in travel accounts. By the end of the century, “harem women” had become stand-ins for Middle Eastern women in general

❖ Two main and false conclusions about women emerged:

➢ 1. That Islam required women to live in sequestration, indolence, and depravity

➢ 2. That idle and childish “harem women” ruined their sons and made those men incapable of governing. Such writing thus positioned women as the source of the region’s alleged political decay

❖ Local reformers attach women’s education to the modernization of their societies

❖ Idea that emerging nations embodied the qualities of reformed women

❖ Nations depicted as women became rallying symbols for the aspirations of a growing number of nationalists who linked allegedly feminine virtues with emerging national prospects

❖ Debates about women become incorporated into state-building projects, women whose objectives were different from those of male nationalists would frequently find themselves in conflict not only with men but with symbolic “ladies” who male reformers had constructed to represent them

02Building the Nation Through Women

Key Takeaways/Case Studies❖ Debates about the relationship between women and the success of the nation were translated by

politicians into state-building platforms in the decades following World War I

❖ Case Studies: Turkey & Iran

➢ In post-WWI Turkey, under Atatürk (r. 1923-1948), and Iran, under Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1926-1941) inaugurated increased educational opportunities for women

➢ Turkey and Iran’s platforms aimed to advance state agendas and not necessarily to improve women’s lives

➢ Campaigns to marginalize the role of Islam in their countries, cultivate nationalism

■ Women encouraged to abandon veiling or forbidden to wear it altogether

■ Unveiled women in both countries symbolized a dramatic rupture from the past

➢ 1926 Atatürk adopts Swiss Legal Code giving women greater access to divorce and custody of their children, but also reduced women’s rights with regard to inheritance and cemented husband as the head of the household

❖ Women were useful vehicles for advancing the cause of secular Arabism and pan-Arabism

❖ In the late 1940s, the coauthors of Baathist ideology, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, dedicated the Baath Party to “eradicating backward thinking about women to liberate Arabs from the feudalism and tribalism from which Baathists sought to distance their followers (Pollard 330).”

Key Takeaways (Continued)

❖ Case Study: Iraq➢ Iraq Abd-al Karim Qasim (r. 1958-1963) introduces Penal Status Code in 1959, which granted women equal inheritance rights,

worked against polygamy and unilateral divorce, and made women’s consent to marry a necessity➢ For many women in Iraq, the first decade of Baath Party rule was a golden age: economic reform and expansion, women-friendly

laws, and a flourishing middle class. ➢ The Iraqi state co-opted many women’s associations into a Baath party apparatus called the General Federation of Iraqi Women,

which party officials used to supervise women’s behaviors➢ Many Iraqi women resented the increased state role in their public and private lives➢ Hussein regime encouraged women’s education and participation in an economy that was increasingly buoyed by oil. His “new

Iraqi woman” policy increased women’s salaries➢ As a result of the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War (1991) and subsequent United Nations sanctions, state discourse shifted from

favoring women’s participation in the workforce to promoting conservative traditional roles for women➢ Hussein’s state promoted a discourse in which women were expected to resign their jobs, return home, and allow men to take

over scarce jobs➢ After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 during which time the occupying power insisted that Iraqi women be visible in the political

realm, the nascent Iraqi government implemented a quota system for female members of parliament.■ Has not translated into state interest in women’s issues; of the 400 laws voted on in the Iraqi parliament between 2005

and 2010, only one directly concerned women➢ 2004 Ministry of Women’s Affairs - remains without allocated budget➢ Women continue to be used by Islamists and others to articulate anti-Baath, anti Western, and anti-imperialist platforms➢ In May 2018, women ran for parliament in Iraq’s first national elections since the defeat of ISIS; harassment and violence by men

angry about women in public life forced a number of women to withdraw; Women who appeared secular had the best chance of winning

Case Studies (Continued)

Sources:

❖ Moghadam, V.M. 2017. “Explaining Divergent Outcomes of the Arab Spring: The Significance of Gender and Women’s Mobilizations.” Politics, Groups, and Identities.

❖ OECD, “Women in Public Life: Gender, Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa.” Paris: OECD, 2015.

Current Context: Successes

❖ “On the eve of the Arab Spring protests, Moroccan and Tunisian women were active in both civil society and political society, family law was more egalitarian than in other Arab countries, and women’s organizations were semi-institutionalized… The legacy of state feminism in Tunisia and the capacity of Moroccan feminists to influence policy changes and legal reforms had a positive effect on the gender dynamics of the Arab Spring protests in those two countries and on the gendered political outcomes (Moghadam 12).”

Valentine M. Moghadam (2017): Explaining divergent outcomes of the Arab Spring: the significance of gender and women’s

mobilizations, Politics, Groups, and Identities,

Women shout slogans during demonstrations on the seventh anniversary of the toppling of president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, in Tunis, Tunisia, on Jan. 14, 2018.

(Youssef Boudlal/Reuters)

OECD, “Women in Public Life: Gender, Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa.” Paris: OECD, 2015.

❖ “Since the 1970s, many MENA countries have recorded the fastest rates of global progress in human development, including improvements in infant mortality and life expectancy. Literacy rates in the MENA region for females jumped from 61% in 2000 to 72% in 2011. There are also positive trends in women’s participation in the economic life, in politics and decision-making (from 3.8% in 2000 to 12.8% in 2013).” (Page 1)

❖ Over the past decade many countries in the MENA region have developed national gender equality strategies (Table 2), thus reflecting a political commitment to advancing the status of women across the region. (Page 4)

❖ These strategies focus mainly on preventing gender-based discrimination, combating gender-based violence, and strengthening the economic empowerment of women. (Page 4)

Contact Information

Maegan CrossBSc Politics, Philosophy, and EconomicsNortheastern University College of Social Sciences and HumanitiesMaeganCross.com

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