Our speaker, Sahar Alnouri, has studied Middle Eastern women extensively and is presently working on a master’s degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University. She holds dual citizenship in Kuwait and the USA and has lived in both countries. Her topic was: Everyday Lives and Activism of Women in the Middle East.
She started her presentation by having us break into small groups and write down words that we thought of when we thought of Mideastern women and then words for American women. The lists included many similar words for both groups. Sahar said that she believed that, in general, the two groups of women were not that different. It was very difficult to describe both groups because within each, women are so different, depending on their country (for Middle Eastern women) and their educational and economic status for both groups. Since Sahar has lived mostly in the US, she comes to the subject of Middle Eastern women from a western perspective.
She focused on the women from three different countries: Egypt, since it is North African, there is much information available, and she had spent the summer there; Kuwait, since she visits her father there fairly often and it is a small, wealthy Gulf state; and Iraq, because it is in the news and affecting our lives. Even though there are Christian, Jewish and other minorities in all three countries, her research focus was on Muslim women.
One of the common themes in the Middle East is women as the battleground. Women have been pushed to veil or not veil, depending upon who was in power. Likewise in some western nations, wearing the hijab has become a political issue, such as in France. One of the justifications of the war in Afghanistan was based on the treatment of women in that country. It is also important to consider the way that Muslim women are portrayed in the western media. Sahar spoke of two images. One is of the exotic woman of the harem, a belly-dancer; the other is of the veiled woman. The veil is seen by the west as an object representing submission and domination, which is not necessarily its meaning to the women who choose to wear it.
One scholar has characterized Middle Eastern women as being caught in the battleground between universal rights guaranteed in constitutions and family status laws which burden them with being the personal bearers of national authenticity. According to the original constitutions in all three countries, women have equal rights, the right to vote and are encouraged to work outside the home. However, when constitutions were adopted, family status laws were left intact so as not to anger conservatives. While the Kuwaiti constitution gave women the right to vote, a later amendment gave the vote only to men. Studies show that in all three countries, female children are less well-nourished and are the first ones pulled out of school if there is economic hardship in the family.
While it is easy for western nations to point the finger at the inequities between men and women in the Middle East, they need to remember that inequities also exist in the West. In Muslim countries, men and women have complementary roles; one is not better than the other. When women become the heads of households, however, they often find themselves without access to the things that they need, and they find themselves pushed to edge of society. This is true even for women in the wealthy country of Kuwait, when they don’t have a male representative to push for their rights.
In countries that have been colonized, the native people have a desire to go back to their traditions before they were taken over. Often women bear the responsibility to dress in the traditional manner and to live in the traditional way, whether it is something that they want to do or not. There are cases now where women are being stoned for not wearing the traditional head scarf, the hijab. Some Muslim extremists are breaking into schools in Iraq and threatening to kill girls who are not wearing hijabs. While some women are pressured into wearing the hijab, some wear it as a sign of their relationship to God. Others wear it as an outward sign of their respectability; still others wear it in public to make it easier to move about without being harrassed, or to show that they do not want to be westernized.
One of the positive common themes in all three countries is that education has increased dramatically. In Kuwait, there is a 97% literacy rate for women. In Iraq, under Saddam Hussain, 43% of people enrolled in higher education were women. In Egypt also, there has been great improvement in women’s literacy. This means that many Middle Eastern women are working outside their homes.
Family values play a huge part in what it means to be a woman in the Middle East today. The family is the main social and survival unit. One depends on the family, not the government, when a problem arises. A very important part of the family is family honor, and in many Middle Eastern countries it is based on the women’s honor. If a woman is disgraced or acts disgracefully, the whole family is disgraced. One member of the audience said that if a man acts disgracefully, the family is also disgraced. However, Sahar said, the practice of honor killings falls mainly on women. In Kuwait, many women who were raped by soldiers in the Gulf War were either killed by their families or told to kill themselves. Honor killings are on the rise in Iraq today. In the first four months of the Iraq war, there were 400 abductions and rapes of Iraqi women.
The concerns of women in the three countries are different. While women in Kuwait are working to be able to vote, the women in Iraq are concerned most about their family’s safety. In Egypt, female genital mutilation is a concern with around 50% of the women being circumcised.
Sahar highlighted six organizations that are working on some of the problems that Middle Eastern women face. The Arab Women’s Solidarity Society is working against honor killings. The Women’s Living Under Muslim Laws organization was founded by Muslim women for Muslim women to educate them about the role that culture plays in how Muslim laws are interpreted. The Women’s Court is seeking to change laws to protect women from violence, making such acts public issues as opposed to private ones. The Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women, based in Egypt, gives credit to women, helps them to start businesses, teaches them to read and works to give women rights and self-esteem. The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq works for women’s safety and against honor killings. It operates two shelters for women. The Women’s Cultural and Social Society, founded in Kuwait in the 1970s, works for women’s rights. The only organization, not controlled by the government, it holds sit-ins in Parliament and demonstrations at polling places.
During the lively question/discussion period that followed, Kafi Ahmad, an Iraqi attendee, thanked the Americans for helping Iraq and described what happened to Iraqi women who aided Americans. Other points that came out were that Middle Eastern women do not see themselves as dominated and that many countries are ahead of the U.S., which has yet to elect a female president. Most Middle Eastern marriages are arranged; couples do not fall in love before marriage, but love develops after the marriage. Mixed marriages are accepted in varying degrees. In Sahar’s case, her Muslim relatives in Kuwait did not accept her father’s marrying outside his faith. Part of this was caused by the Middle Eastern stereotype that all western women are immoral. In many Muslim countries, polygamy is allowed, but only under certain conditions, and homosexuality is not acknowledged.