CAIRO, 29 June 2004 — Just as European women and American women cannot be pigeonholed, there is no such thing as the stereotypical Arab woman. Not only do they vary from country to country, so do they within their own. Although if we listen to some Western commentators we may be forgiven for believing they are all downtrodden, submissive, ill educated and envious of the political and social freedoms enjoyed by their Western sisters. In my experience this is far from being the case.
Take the women of the United Arab Emirates, for example. These days, many attend university and work, often in top managerial positions. They are doctors, lawyers, journalists, television directors, interior designers and even engineers. Some run their own businesses. Whereas until the 70s, their mothers stayed at home, they drive, travel several times a year and can be seen dining out with their friends or sipping cappuccino with their husbands in one of the country’s many malls. Most are wealthy enough to have help with looking after the children and, therefore, are blessed with free time, put at a premium in Western capitals.
Ask an overworked waitress in a Ohio diner with a large brood whether she’d like to trade places or a London shop assistant exhausted from the daily commute, and you might be surprised at their response.
Lebanese women, too, are often dynamic, articulate and fashionable. Spend an hour or so people watching in Caspar and Gambini, an alfresco downtown Beirut coffee shop and ‘downtrodden’ as applied to Lebanese ladies would soon become an obsolete term. They often have homes to die for decorated with superb taste and spend their summers between mountain top resorts and the beach. They work in television or advertising, own boutiques or galleries and many can be found employed in government ministries, the airport and the police force.
The women of Morocco and Algeria are feisty. They have long fought for their rights with much success. In Egypt, over the years, the laws have changed in favor of women. Nowadays, an Egyptian man cannot marry a second wife without written permission from his first spouse. Furthermore, a woman in Egypt can initiate a fast-track divorce for no reason other than she would like one — provided she is prepared to repay her dowry.
Five years ago I was introduced to an Egyptian engaged couple. He was a travel agent and she had just finished university having gained a degree in archaeology. I asked her whether she had managed to find a job and was surprised when she shook her head, saying she didn’t want to work. She wanted a home and children more than anything, she said, adding, “We Egyptians care about pleasing our husbands more than having a career”.. At the time I thought ‘what a waste of an education!’ before realizing that I was guilty of applying Western logic and aspirations to a different culture. Today Samer and Shireen are happily married with two children. Shireen’s dream came true and, whereas it mightn’t be mine, it was her choice and it was right for her. She believes that her own education equips her to educate her children, giving them a head start before they begin school.
At the same time, there are horror stories. I’ll never forget the man in Annaba, Algeria who preferred to let his wife die rather than allow her to be seen by a male doctor or the two wives of an Algerian man who in their 40s had lost the ability to walk after being virtually imprisoned in a tiny house throughout their entire married lives. But we often forget that there are horror stories of a different nature in the West.
For example, the US Justice Department estimated that every nine seconds a woman is battered, while a report by E. Stark and A. Filtcraft suggests that wife-beating results in more injuries that require medical treatment than rape, auto accidents and muggings combined. Another paper suggests that violence will occur in two-thirds of all marriages in the US. The California Hospital Emergency Departments’ “Response to Domestic Violence Survey Report” indicates that 20 to 30 percent of women in emergency rooms are there due to abuse. Further, an average of 140,000 American women are raped each year.
In Eastern Europe hundreds of thousands of women are the victims of human traffickers. Just last week activist groups in Greece reported that 15,000 women have been forced to work as prostitutes in the country, many kept locked up and beaten or raped into submission.
In Thailand, teenaged girls are sold to gangs for the price of a motorbike, while Vietnamese girls are being kidnapped and taken to China to provide farmers in remote areas and old men with brides. In India, almost 25,000 brides are burned each year because their in-laws are dissatisfied with their dowries. In some rural areas of India, girls don’t count, and until the 1980s were killed by their parents shortly after birth according to veteran award-winning journalist Asha Krishnakumar, an expert on infanticide.
In a world where women often get a raw deal no matter where they live, it has become fashionable to espouse the cause of ‘the Arab woman’ while ignoring the plight of women everywhere. Worse, critics of the Arab world often use “the poor Arab woman” as a political truncheon to bash the region’s culture, traditions and religion. Prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, Mesdames Bush and Blair bemoaned the fact in a patently orchestrated fashion that Afghan women were forced to wear the burqah as though that was the worst punishment that could happen to anyone. The surprise for the two first ladies was that they still do, not because they have to but because they want to.
In the final analysis, change must come from within the society spurred on by the women themselves. It’s a process of evolution and one that cannot be imposed. In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, the wheels of change may be moving slowly but they are moving. Soon nothing will be allowed to turn back the tide.
(Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Mideast affairs and welcomes feedback at [email protected])
