WUNRN
ARAB WOMEN CHALLENGED TO KEEP GAINS
OF REVOLUTIONS
The revolutions freed millions from dictatorship but are
delivering only limited gains in the struggle for women's equality – and in
some cases are threatening to set back the advances already made.
Chris
McGreal in
Egyptians celebrate the end of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. But
now women are attacked in
When Yemen's long-term dictator Ali
Abdullah Saleh tried to silence Tawakkul Karman, he called in her brother.
Karman was in prison for her part
at the forefront of the popular revolution against Saleh's rule, a role that
earned her the Nobel peace prize. The president's warning to Karman's brother
was blunt. "Saleh told him a clear message: if you don't restrain your
sister, whoever disobeys me will be killed," she said. "My brother
told me the day I was released from prison. The next morning I went
protesting."
The threat says much about Saleh,
who was finally toppled in February. But his attempt to use Karman's brother to
silence her says something about Yemeni society and other countries across the
Arab world where women were in the vanguard of revolutions – joining protests
en masse, facing bullets and being killed – looking for more than solely
political emancipation.
"The most important thing
the Arab spring brought us was to give women leadership roles," said
Karman. "When women become leaders of men, and men are following, when
women sacrifice themselves and get killed in front of men, when they get
detained for political issues and men don't feel ashamed of women who are
arrested, this is a change. But is it enough to change the situation of women?
The answer is: not yet."
Karman was
among several women who played leading roles in uprisings across the Arab world
who gathered in
This week Clinton, who is now US
secretary of state, said women's rights in newly liberated Arab countries were
a test of whether the revolutions were living up to their promise.
"One of the important
indicators as to how the whole process of democratisation, political reform,
economic reform is going is the way that the newly formed governments and their
allies in the various countries treat women," said
The
challenge was demonstrated at the weekend in
"During the 18 days against
Mubarak there were no women and men. It was just Egyptians in danger. I was in
the square almost daily and I didn't witness a single case of sexual harassment.
"But that changed after
Mubarak stepped down. We were back to face the reality of where we are as
Egyptian women," she said. "We're not a priority even with fellow
revolutionaries. They're just thinking of the political change but no one is
thinking of setting the rules for basic rights including women's rights. I
think because even the activists don't really consider women's rights part of
the larger concept of human rights, which is a huge issue."
The setbacks
are not only on the street. Some members of Egypt's first freely elected
parliament, in which the Muslim Brotherhood
is the largest party, are pressing to scrap laws that protect women on the
grounds that they were introduced by the Mubarak regime and are therefore
illegitimate.
"We're going years backwards
when it comes to women's issues. One MP wanted to discuss cancelling the ban on
female genital mutilation. Another proposed reducing the age of marriage to 12
for girls. Another wanted to cancel the law giving the right to Muslim women to
initiate divorce. If this is how the Egyptian parliament is after the
revolution we have a serious problem," Ibrahim said. "We know the
Muslim Brotherhood agenda. We're not worried that they're likely to force us to
wear veils. I'm thinking more on the deeper level because they consider women
as second class. You can see it from their speeches and statements on
television. They're always talking about morals, virtues, family. They want to
keep us in the home. This is how they see women. Not as an equal citizen."
In the early
days of the Libyan revolution, when victory was far from assured, Salwa
Bugaighis was to be found sitting with her gun in her lap in
Bugaighis, a human rights lawyer,
has campaigned to get as many women as possible on the ballot for next month's
elections to a national conference that will appoint a government to draw up a
new constitution.
"There are many women
candidates. We know they will not win but we want to send a message that we are
here; even if we lose this time, there will be the next time," she said.
"It's culture and
psychological too. For decades, men and women both didn't see any women in power
so automatically they thought this is the role of the man. During the Gaddafi
years, there were 132 ministers. Just three of them were women. Those three are
not the kind of women people like." Those ministers included Huda Ben
Amer, who rose to become one of the former Libyan dictator's most trusted
lieutenants after a stomach-churning incident in which she was an enthusiastic
participant in a public hanging in
Bugaighis is
looking beyond the immediate challenges of the armed factions that still hold
sway in parts of Libya to the writing of a new
constitution to guarantee equality. But she says practice will matter more than
declarations.
"I want to be able to feel
it. I'm not worried about the law and the constitution, I'm worried about the
awareness of the people. In
There is common agreement that
the revolution has changed the game. But, says Ibrahim: "When it comes to
women, it has failed. The biggest powers in the country at the moment are the
military and the Muslim Brotherhood and both are women-free by default.
"But the revolution has also
changed the situation. You can see it in the young women. We are more
persistent in claiming our rights. More women are talking about sexual
harassment than before. We are open about it and we are clear about our
demands. The social change that is taking place – it's gradual but it's still
there.
"The hope I'm still holding
on to is that during the 18 days we were on the frontlines as women, and women
lost their lives, they were injured, and they were fighting shoulder to
shoulder next to men. No one can take this from us because we were there."
Karman agrees. "The revolution is still continuing. Now women are taking
the role of being the saviour and not the victim waiting for a solution to
rescue her from those who took her rights," she said. "We will not
stand for the fact that women would be involved in fighting for the revolution
but post-revolution they will disappear. We've passed that time when women can
be used that way."