I remember 20 years ago a friend was reading a newspaper article which he suddenly put aside, asking why there was so much talk about women’s rights.

“Every time I open a paper, I find articles about women’s rights. A week hardly passes without a conference, symposium or meeting dealing with women’s rights. I am fed up with all this talk about women’s rights and will start looking for a woman without rights.”

He was told by those who heard his complaints not to worry and to take things easy. They said that if people talked too much about women’s rights, that would mean there weren’t any. My friend was told the same thing about democracy — if people talk about it all the time, it is because they don’t have it. He was further told to be optimistic since our women had no rights, it would not be difficult for him to find one.

All this was 20 years ago. Where, I wonder, do we stand today? As far as I can see, there has been no change whatsoever. We continue to talk and hold conferences dealing with women’s rights and all the while, women are systematically marginalized and treated as weak, helpless creatures who need someone — obviously a male — to lead and guide them. Thus it is common here to see a young boy exercising what passes for his masculine authority and influence in the market over a group of women who must listen to, and obey, him.

The most recent discussion of women’s rights was at the just-concluded Third National Dialogue Forum in Madinah. The purpose of the conference was to discuss women’s rights and obligations. So, we may wonder, what kind of recommendations did the conference adopt? Going through the recommendations one would think the meeting was the very first ever to discuss the issues. The delegates called for a national charter outlining women’s legal rights and obligations according to Islam. Don’t the honorable delegates know that volumes have already been written on this very subject? Even more puzzling was their recommendation for a national plan to educate the public on women’s rights.

The problem with these recommendations is that even the delegates could not define the rights they were talking about. In still another meaningless move, the delegates called for a national body on women and family affairs — evidently unaware that several months ago our own Council of Ministers endorsed the formation of such a body.

One of our main disadvantages is that when we fail to address our problems head-on, we resort to high-sounding recommendations, calling for strategies and plans, supreme councils and specialized bodies to address whatever issue has engaged our attention. What we in fact do is to shift responsibility to imaginary bodies or dream of fancy ideas that, even if they did exist, would bring about no change at all. Just another waste of time. Just more words without actions.