Why Arab women are still in the slow lane of reform

Analysis

BEIRUT: Kuwait's move to appoint two women to its municipal council is the latest in a series of timid but sure steps toward granting women more say in the country's decision-making process. Yesterday's move comes a month after Parliament gave women the right to vote and run for elections, despite opposition by hard-line Islamist MPs.

But while Kuwait's move is welcome, it also serves to highlight the discrimination women still suffer in the Arab world. Timid as it is, what Kuwait has done represents a major leap. For women in other parts of the Middle East, most notably Saudi Arabia, the journey to even Kuwait's proposal, is a long way off.

Saudi Arabia held municipal elections this year for the first time. Women were banned from voting, ostensibly because separate polling booths could not be erected in time to make polls in line with Sharia law.

Last week Saudi Arabia offered us a more striking example of the long path women still have to cross. The Shura Council vetoed a proposal to allow women in the kingdom to drive. But if we give Saudi Arabia the benefit of the doubt, it at least showed the Saudi community is capable of addressing topics that were once taboo. But ultimately it delivered nothing.

In a telephone interview with The Daily Star, Saudi female activist Maha al-Fitaihi, said: "we have now broken the circle of taboos and are now in the process of assessing the readiness of our community for more openness." She added:  "This by itself is a quantum leap."

But if  lifting a ban on women driving is seen as controversial, and has caused a furious debate, it also underlines how far countries like Saudi Arabia have to go before more radical changes, like women voting for instance, can take place.

The resistance to the driving law also shows that the kingdom must adopt a step-by-step strategy to prepare its citizens for the possibility of change before the actual implementation.

Fitaihi believes the progress of women's rights took a turn for the worse on November 20, 1979, when 500 fundamentalist dissidents seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca, one of the holiest sites in Islam. The rebels said Saudi rulers lost their legitimacy due to corruption and close ties to the West. The standoff lasted several weeks before the Saudi military succeeded in removing the dissidents.

"Although the leaders of the rebellion were executed, the authorities could not eliminate all of their supporters, who were able to spread and infiltrate into some institutions especially the education sector," thus promoting extremist ideas, Fitaihi said.

Fitaihi goes as far as saying the end journey of that event was the apocalyptic events of September 11, 2001.

According to Fitaihi, the Saudi government eventually took a more hard-line stance on issues concerning women and social development, in order to "avoid another confrontation with fundamentalists. Before the Grand Mosque raid, media programs were oriented toward promoting social development, music, culture and education for girls. Women were also public figures." But after that, a media blackout was enforced and the role of women was diminished, she said.

Commenting on U.S. calls for reform in the region, Fitaihi insisted Saudi women are not seeking  Western-oriented liberties. "We aspire to gain rights that conform to what Sharia allows and to the nature of our Arab and Muslim traditions."

While Saudi women are seeking to attain basic rights, women in other countries, such as Egypt, are still looking for protection against violence.

In an incident that caused uproar in the conservative community, supporters of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party beat and kicked activists and journalists, particularly women, who were protesting or covering the May 25 referendum on a new system for electing the president. The women were beaten, groped and sometimes stripped of their clothes.

"What happened caused outrage because it was a precedent," said Seham Negm, chairwoman of the Egyptian Women and Society Association.

Negm charged that Egypt's security forces did not "arrest or punish the perpetrators," who she insists "were supporters of the ruling party."

In its annual report, Human Rights Watch said that women and girls in Egypt still "face systematic discrimination under personal status and other laws, and violence directed at women and girls frequently goes unpunished."

Negm described Egypt's judiciary as "the people's only hope for real reform and change." The public prosecutor has already launched an investigation into the violence, but on Saturday Parliament rejected a request by 22 lawmakers to form a an independent commission to investigate the role of police and NDP supporters in the attacks.

Compared to most of the region, the Egyptian government has made serious efforts toward granting women more rights. In 2000 Parliament approved a new divorce law, which allowed women to divorce their husbands so long as they repaid the dowry and gave up their right to alimony. In 2003, Egypt's first female judge was appointed by presidential decree and later that year women were allowed to grant citizenship to the children of Egyptian mothers and non-Egyptian fathers.

Fitaihi remains optimistic. "The still water has been stirred. But how serious and true the will for change is, only time can tell." Until then, women in the region, like men, will have to wait for  our governments to take on the issue of wider reform.