Patriarchy, Male Domination, or Sexism

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The Global Persecution of Women
Glossary

Editor's Note: All the reports in this section ("The Global Persecution of Women") could be said to be about patriarchy or male domination. But the ones included in this file focus on gender inequality.

Human Rights

UDHR

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. ...

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

CEDAW

Discrimination against women violates the principles of equality of rights and respect for human dignity, is an obstacle to the participation of women, on equal terms with men, in the political, social, economic and cultural life of their countries, hampers the growth of the prosperity of society and the family and makes more difficult the full development of the potentialities of women in the service of their countries and of humanity.

The full and complete development of a country, the welfare of the world and the cause of peace require the maximum participation of women on equal terms with men in all fields.

A change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality between men and women. (CEDAW)

Article 2

States Parties condemn discrimination against women in all its forms, agree to pursue by all appropriate means and without delay a policy of eliminating discrimination against women.

Article 5

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:

(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.

For the Hunger Project's report on gender dimensions of hunger, see here.

Nora Boustany, “U.N. Cites Arab World's 'Empty Gestures' on Women,” Washington Post, 8 Dec. 2006.

Arab countries have made some advances in their treatment of women in recent years but have failed to significantly improve conditions for them, according to a report carried out under the aegis of the U.N. Development Program.

The report, released yesterday in Yemen, urges Arab leaders to make genuine changes and to reinterpret Islamic laws as a means to empower women.

Arab governments have "announced a host of reforms targeting freedom and good governance," the report says. But "reforms often seemed empty gestures to cover up the continuation of an oppressive status quo."

"Women are making gains, but they are not realizing their full potential yet in contributing to the prosperity and strength of their societies," Amat al-Alim Alsoswa, director of the U.N. Development Program's Arab bureau, said in a telephone interview from Sanaa, Yemen's capital. "There is only partial progress. Women in the Arab world are moving closer to legal equality, but this is not enough."

The report notes that political and military crises such as the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are part of the broader context of development in the region. Arab leaders often blame such conflicts for delays in implementing reforms. But such crises do not absolve governments of their failures, according to Alsoswa.

"We do not accept these issues as an excuse for not taking care of other problems," she said.

Alsoswa also said that although women's participation in politics has grown in such countries as Morocco, Bahrain and Iraq, it is "still below what it is outside the Arab world."

After 40 years, women in Kuwait won the right last year to vote and run for office, yet no woman has been elected to parliament. In Yemen, women have voted and run for elective office since 1993, but there is one female lawmaker in an assembly of 301. Female cabinet ministers remain rare in the Arab world.

The report recommends using affirmative action or quotas, at least temporarily, to put women in decision-making positions, as was done in Iraq and Jordan. Quotas are especially important in countries where "discriminatory clauses are embedded in their legal structure," it says.

The U.N.-sponsored report was crafted mostly by Arab experts in various fields, including authors, researchers, academics and Islamic jurists. They were selected in an effort to give Arab societies a sense of ownership of the report.

"This particular report will be very controversial," said Alsoswa, who became Yemen's first minister for human rights in 2003. "As an ordinary reader, I am going to be vocal in my criticism. This report is the property of the people."

The report is the latest installment of a project launched in 2002 to identify the social, educational, political and cultural reasons why the Arab world has fallen behind other regions. Although certain legal advances had been made against gender discrimination, the report says, they were insufficient in a context of conservative social norms. The report also chided governments for not living up to declared reforms.

In Jordan, significant strides were made in passing labor laws affecting women, the report notes, though it also says women remain subjugated and underemployed because of entrenched traditions. Meanwhile, Tunisia and Morocco are described as reinterpreting Islamic law to enhance women's rights relating to inheritance, divorce, custody and other issues.

At an event to launch the report yesterday, according to Alsoswa, some participants said Arab countries have undertaken reforms that are secular in nature, rather than anchored in Islam. But the authors of the study cite modern interpretations of Islamic law that guarantee equality for women.

Even when Arab countries create legislation that protects women's rights, Alsoswa said, women can still face oppression.

"Judges really read those laws in a personal way, based on their own experience and not the law, and this is one of the obstacles," she argued.

The report also notes that health conditions for women in the Arab world are poor and that men receive better care. "Women in Arab countries, especially the least developed countries, suffer . . . high rates of risk of morbidity and mortality connected with pregnancy and reproductive functions," the report says.

Education proved a bright spot, in some ways. Female enrollment in colleges has risen, and girls outranked boys in humanities and sciences in a dozen countries.

Despite such achievements, Alsoswa said, a sense remains that improvements are not being made quickly enough.

"We are still talking about issues we started talking about in the last century," she said.

Gilles Tremlett, “Muslim Women Launch International 'Gender Jihad,'” Guardian UK, 31 October 2005.

Barcelona - Marching under the banner of a new "gender jihad", Islamic feminists from around the world this weekend launched what they hope will become a global movement to liberate Muslim women.

The meeting, which drew women from as far apart as Malaysia, Mali, Egypt and Iran, set itself the task of squaring Islam with feminism. That meant not just combating 14 centuries of sexism in the Muslim world, participants said, but also dealing with the animosity to Islam of many western or secular feminists. They insisted that many of the fundamental concepts of equality embraced by feminism could also be found in the Qur'an.

"Gender jihad is the struggle against male chauvinistic, homophobic or sexist readings of the Islamic sacred texts," said Abdennur Prado, one of the meeting's Spanish organisers.

Those readings had been provided by Muslim scholars who, over the centuries, have been almost exclusively male. "Male chauvinism is the destruction of Islam as a well-balanced way of life," Mr Prado said.

One of the leading voices was that of Amina Wadud, an African-American theology professor who provoked outrage in parts of the Muslim world when she led a mixed-sex congregation for Friday prayers in New York earlier this year. She said her commitment to change was born from her faith, two decades studying the Qur'an and the realisation that "horrific things were being done in the name of religion."

With issues to address such as the stoning to death of women, polygamy and the legal inferiority of women in some countries, progressives at the meeting admitted there was a long climb ahead.

The greatest danger was the spread of the radically conservative, Saudi-backed schools of Islam. "They don't want to go forward, they want to go back," said Prof Wadud, who also led mixed prayers at the Barcelona meeting.

Raheel Raza, a Canadian of Pakistani origin who has followed Prof Wadud's example and led mixed-sex prayers in Canada, said it was not easy to break the mould. "I already have a fatwa against me. I don't want to be murdered on the street," she said.

British Muslims were strikingly absent from the conference, which was led by western converts and emigrant families. Ghettoisation and the influence of Saudi-trained preachers were blamed for driving some second-generation immigrants in western countries into the hands of fundamentalists.

Olympio Barbanti, Jr., Development, Gender, and Conflict," BeyondIntractability.org, Aug. 2004.

Conflict researchers typically separate out different kinds of conflict: school conflicts, family conflicts, gender conflicts, development conflicts, etc. While this may be useful for clarity and academic inquiry, it may have negative side effects for those working in the practical end of the conflict resolution field where all these types of conflicts intersect. This becomes especially clear in developing countries, because those societies are undergoing change in so many domains. So development issues have to do with public policies issues, which mix with a variety of sources of social conflict.

Gender conflicts are typically a crosscutting theme. They require action at various levels and in different domains, from structural change to family dynamics. In an ideal situation, disparities should be addressed on various fronts simultaneously. When such unified action is not possible, priorities should be defined through careful analysis.

What is astonishing is that the 2003 UNDP report on this goal has recognized that the issue of gender inequality is not taken into account in the other Millennium Development Goals. Only those goals that relate to women specifically, such as maternal heath and HIV/AIDS, consider gender issues. Until this dimension is factored into all issues, progress will be hampered.

”Possible Return of Taliban’s Religious Police Threatens Afghan Women's Rights,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 20 July 2006.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his cabinet have approved the reestablishment of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The Afghan Parliament will consider the proposal when it reconvenes later this summer. Initiated by the Taliban, the Vice and Virtue Department sent religious police to patrol the streets where they brutally punished Afghan citizens for disobeying the Taliban's interpretation of Sharia law.

Women were particularly affected by the religious police as they were publicly beaten for such arbitrary offenses as wearing white shoes, showing their wrists or ankles, or going outside their home without a male relative. Women were also prevented from attending school, working, or being seen by a male physician, while women doctors and nurses were banned from working.

It is not clear what powers the proposed Vice and Virtue Department would have. Nader Nadery of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission told The Independent, "It will remind people of the Taliban. We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body." The Minister for Haj and Religious Affairs, Nematullah Shahrani denied that the Department would have police powers, instead claiming that it's duty would be to "tell people what is allowable and what is forbidden in Islam…through radio, television and special gatherings," reports The Independent.

This proposal comes at an especially critical time for Afghan women and girls as the burning and bombing of girls' schools has reached crisis proportions. Ahmed Rashid, a well known author and expert on the Taliban recently wrote in the Washington Post that "...every single day somewhere in Afghanistan a girls' school is burned down or a female teacher killed by the Taliban." Many districts have closed all of their schools according to a recent Human Rights Watch Report

"Afghan women and girls face increasing insecurity, and it's more important for the government to address how to improve their access to public life rather than limit it further," said Coursen-Neff of Human Rights Watch, "Reinstatement of this controversial department risks moving the discussion away from the vital security and human rights problems now engulfing the country."

Christina Lamb, “Women Back Under Wraps With Taliban Vice Squad,” Sunday Times, Australia, 24 July 2006.

Kabul - Afghanistan's notorious Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which was set up by the Taliban to enforce bans on women doing anything from working to wearing nail varnish or laughing out loud, is to be recreated by the Government in Kabul.

The decision has provoked an outcry among women and human rights activists who fear a return to the days when religious police patrolled the streets, beating or arresting any woman who was not properly covered by a burka or accompanied by a male relative.

"This is a very bad idea at a bad time," said Sam Zia-Zarifi, the Asia research director of Human Rights Watch. "We're close to the edge in Afghanistan. It really could all go wrong and it is alarming that the United Nations and Western governments are not speaking out on this issue.”

President Hamid Karzai's cabinet has approved the proposal to re-establish the department, and the measure will go to Afghanistan's parliament when it reconvenes. The conservative complexion of the assembly makes it likely to be passed.

"When we talk of 'vice and virtue' ... the one introduced by the Taliban comes to our minds. But it won't be like that," insisted Mohammad Karim Rahimi, a spokesman for the president. "It will be an organisation which will work on promoting morality in society as it exists in any other Islamic country."

Nematullah Shahrani, the religious affairs minister who will oversee the department, claims it will focus on alcohol, drugs, crime and corruption. But critics say that Afghanistan's criminal laws already address these issues and claim that once the department has been re-established, it will be easy to misuse.

"We are worried that there are no clear terms of reference for this body," said Nader Nadery, of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. "It will remind people of the Taliban."

"They haven't even bothered to change the name," said Malalai Joya, a courageous female MP whose outspokenness means she has to travel with bodyguards and move every day because of threats to her life.

Joya, 27, was physically attacked in parliament in May after she criticised warlords.

"The situation for women in Afghanistan has not improved," she said. "People in the outside world say Afghan women don't have to wear burkas any more and yes, it's true that in some provinces like Kabul, Jalalabad and Herat, women can go outside without a burka."

"They can go and work in offices, and we have 68 women MPs. But more and more women are wearing burkas because of the lack of security. Look at the high rate of suicide among our women - Afghan women prefer to die than live. "What we have in power under the mask of democracy are the brothers of Taliban - fundamentalists, warlords and drug lords."

Afghan women recall with horror the department's religious police who ruthlessly enforced religious restrictions through public beatings and imprisonment under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001.

Women were publicly beaten for wearing white shoes or heels that clicked, using lipstick or going outside unaccompanied by a close male relative.

The department banned women from educating their daughters in home-based schools as well as working or begging, leaving thousands of widows with no means of supporting their families. They also beat men for trimming their beards, which had to be at least the length of a fist.

The repression of women was often cited in the West as a reason to intervene and oust the Taliban. Both the US First Lady and the wife of the British Prime Minister made passionate speeches on the subject.

Laura Bush took over her husband's weekly radio address in November 2001 to boast that "because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment.”

Yet almost five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghan women are far from achieving these aims. There have already been more attacks in the first half of this year than all of last year and according to a UN official, barely a day goes by without a school being burnt or teacher killed.

”Women Still Living in Misery,” Aviva, 12 Jan. 2006.

Contrary to what the world seems to believe, lifting the burqa has not eliminated the oppression, said Mariam Rawi of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).

She was speaking at last week's Kwangju Forum for Asian Human Rights in South Korea.

"There was lots of discussion in the media about women not wearing the burqa and going to schools and universities, but this [is] only happening in Kabul, which is where all the foreign aid agencies, journalists and peacekeeping forces were," she said.

"The foreigners were not allowed to go outside of Kabul - if it is not safe for them to go, how unsafe the situation must be for the locals?"

”With the burqa removed, everybody seemed to believe all the issues Afghan women were facing were suddenly finished. But the depth of the tragedy and misery of the women remains intact."

Ms Rawi said women in Afghanistan continue to be plagued by discrimination in every facet of life. Many are still not allowed to leave home or talk to men outside the family and are targeted by Islamic fundamentalist warlords who dominate many provinces.

Forced marriages of young girls to elderly men continue. Violence against women remains a serious problem, and victims of domestic violence dare not seek police assistance for fear they will be raped or beaten by officers, she said.

"People of the world should know that in the so-called 'liberated' Afghanistan, Afghan women are still suffering harshly," she said, citing the case of Amina, an Afghan woman stoned to death under a local court decree in northern Afghanistan in April this year.

"One elderly government official wanted to take a nine-year-old schoolgirl as his third wife, because his other two wives were uneducated and he wanted a literate wife."

In August, an 18-year-old girl was reportedly arrested in Herat province for running away with her boyfriend and was gang raped by officers at the police station.

None of the cases documented by RAWA have been taken to court. "The majority of women in Afghanistan are not happy - statistics show more than 95% of the women have depression problems. Every 30 minutes, a woman dies in pregnancy, childbirth or from other gynaecological problems."

Ms Rawi said RAWA's main weapon against Islamic fundamentalist oppression was education. About 86% of women in Afghanistan are illiterate. "The men and women, particularly in rural areas, are ignorant and do not know the value of education.” “Women truly believe they were born only to serve their fathers, husbands and sons. Afghanistan has gone from one hell to another, from the Soviet repression to the dark period under the mujahedeen to the Taleban. The same fundamentalist leaders responsible for crimes under the mujahedeen have changed their clothes and their talk and are now in government." Source: South China Morning Post, 12.1.06.

“They will Kill Me but They will not Kill My Voice,” Asian Pacific Post, 9-22 February 2006.

Malalai Joya is one of the most popular members of Parliament in Afghanistan and has many a time taken stand against the ex-Mujahideen fighters who dominate the country’s new assembly.

But Joya and many of her supporters fear she will be assassinated.

As she describes what she believes is going to happen, it is with apparent fear and what sounds at times like a romantically conceived vision of martyrdom.

"They will kill me but they will not kill my voice," she says, "because it will be the voice of all Afghan women. You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of spring."

The 27-year-old MP is the most famous woman in Afghanistan.

She has made her name as a woman’s rights activist who has attacked Afghanistan’s most powerful institution, the Mujahideen.

They are the fighters who defeated the Soviet invasion of the 1980s but who, in many cases, became leading participants in the destruction of the civil war that erupted in the 1990s.

Many of the leading MPs elected to the new parliament were factional commanders during the civil war period.

Some have also been implicated in human rights abuses.

But with their status underpinned by the religious justification of jihad against the Soviets, Joya’s public criticisms of the Mujahideen risk an extreme reaction from some.

On Dec 20, 2005, the day of the parliament’s first session in more than 30 years, she did what many of her friends feared she would.

Rising from her seat she launched into a denunciation of many of those seated around her, condemning the presence in the parliament of "criminal warlords" whose hands are stained with the "blood of the people."

Many MPs beat their fists on their desks and furiously shouted her down.

As she left the parliament, she received death threats.

"As her close friend we have tried several times to persuade Malalai to be less openly critical, but she says no she will not stop," said Toor Pekai, one of a number of female MPs who circle protectively around Joya in the parliament, reported the BBC.

Many of her enemies accuse her of membership of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan).

It is a secretive feminist organisation founded in 1977 with Maoist roots by another female activist called Meena. She was killed in 1987 by unknown assassins.

Joya denies any involvement with RAWA.

"I am an independent," she said, "though RAWA support my views and I am grateful for that."

Privately, several of those who know her well say she is quite prepared for what she would see as her own martyrdom, and even talks of the need for martyrs to galvanise the cause of Afghan women.

In the course of the interview with BBC she mentioned Nadia Anjuman, an Afghan poetess killed in November 2005, and Amina of Badakhshan, a young woman reportedly stoned to death for having an extra-marital affair in April 2005.

The man implicated received one hundred lashes.

She is also inspired, she says, by her namesake Malalai of Maiwand - one of the greatest Afghan heroines, who ran onto the battlefield at Maiwand in 1880 and rallied the Afghan forces to defeat the British.

"Every democrat must be ready to die for truth and freedom," said Ms Joya.

"I am not better than any of the others, but I am young and energetic and the women of Afghanistan need me."

Other women MPs are too afraid to speak to her openly.

Many of Malalai’s supporters felt that the timing of her outburst, amid a first day atmosphere of good will, was ill-judged - offending even those MPs who might otherwise have sympathy for her views.

"The threat against her life is very real," said Pekai. "All the rumours in the parliament are that people are preparing to kill her."

Joya says that she continues to receive a constant stream of messages of support from ordinary Afghans.

"It gives me strength to keep telling the truth," she said.

Popular disquiet at the makeup of the new parliament is widespread.

A poll conducted by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in January 2005 found that 90% of Afghans wanted human rights abusers excluded from public office.

War crime trials were more than twice as popular as any other form of censure for those implicated in such abuses.

A low turnout in the parliamentary elections, only 33% of those registered in Kabul, was seen by many analysts as further proof of popular disillusionment at some of the figures who were allowed to stand.

Born in the remote south-western province of Farah, Joya spent most of her youth in refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.

She returned to Afghanistan during the Taleban period and ran a school for women.

At the time all female education was banned, so the classes were conducted in secret.

She continues to work for an NGO called the Organisation for Promoting Afghan Women’s Capabilities (OPAWC).

"How can a country improve when 50% of its population are silenced?" she said. "It is like a bird with only one wing."

She rose from obscurity three years ago with her first and most famous outburst against the Mujahideen, as a delegate at the Loya Jirga (grand council), convened in Kabul to formulate a draft constitution for Afghanistan.

On that occasion several ex-Mujahideen delegates tried to attack her after she described them as "criminals" who had "destroyed the country."

Her stance appeared to be endorsed when she was elected an MP for Farah in October, coming second overall in the province.

Such support for a woman candidate was an astonishing result from one of the most conservative regions of the country.

"AFGHANISTAN: Pervasive gender gaps need urgent addressing, says World Bank," IRNnews.org, 26 Jan. 2006.

KABUL, 26 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - A new World Bank report has warned that reconstruction and development in post-conflict Afghanistan will be severely affected unless pervasive gender gaps are addressed.

In the report, National Reconstruction and Poverty Reduction (NRPR): The Role of Women in Afghanistan's Future, issued on Wednesday, the bank called for legal reforms to remove gender inequities within family law in the country.

It said that opportunities available to Afghan women in the areas of health, education, employment, legal and political rights were extremely low by world standards.

"With around 36 percent of women participating in the labour force, Afghan women contribute in large measure to the economic development of Afghanistan," said Jean Mazurelle, the World Bank's Country Manager for Afghanistan. "But a lot needs to be done to reduce maternal mortality, to increase literacy, to provide livelihood and employment possibilities, to protect rights and to ensure women have influence over their own lives."

Wednesday's report says two decades of conflict have not only led to a breakdown of infrastructure and delivery of services in Afghanistan, but have also contributed to the downward trend of women's rights. According to the United Nations' National Human Development Report (2004), only Niger and Burkina Faso are placed lower on the Gender Development Index.

Health indicators for women are among the worst in the world, particularly in the areas of child health and women's reproductive health. Almost half of all deaths among women of reproductive age are a result of pregnancy and childbirth; more than 75 percent of these deaths are preventable, the report said.

On education, Afghanistan has achieved a significant leap in school enrollment over the last couple of years. Half of all school-age children in the country now go to school and one-third of them are girls. However, these figures hide dramatic disparities, with girls representing less than 15 percent of the total enrollment in nine provinces in the east and south, according to the report.

The traditional role of women in Afghanistan is a constraint to more equitable participation in economic activities, the report suggests. The wage rates of the women who do work are normally half those of men. Their involvement in the formal sector is mainly in the health and education sectors. Currently, close to only one-third of all teachers are female. An estimated 40 percent of all basic health facilities lack female staff. Although women play an important role in many aspects of handicraft, agricultural, livestock and dairy production, most of their labour is non-monetised.

The report has suggested legal reforms to remove gender inequities within family Law, in terms of marriage, marriage age, divorce and inheritance.

It calls for a series of actions, including creation of an appropriate institutional framework to support women's training; market linkages; access to credit and childcare facilities; schooling infrastructure, including incentives designed to reduce the dropout rate for girls; and maternal healthcare facilities to be spread out into remote rural areas.

"Given the magnitude of gender disparities, the direct and indirect benefits of policy actions to address these priority areas are much greater than the costs," said Asta Olesen, Senior Social Development Specialist and lead author of the report. "The challenge now is to formulate policies, develop and implement reforms, in partnership between the government of Afghanistan and donors, to provide practical and effective programmes that will enable women to participate fully in the rebuilding of Afghanistan."

Despite some progress following the collapse of hardline Taliban regime in 2001, women are still suffering from an array of problems. In a survey carried out by the NGO Terre des Hommes (TDH) in 2003 through their Maternal and Child Health (MCH) programme, covering around 400 mothers, domestic violence occurred in 95 percent of all surveyed households in post-conflict Afghanistan.

”Editor of Afghan Women's Rights Magazine Convicted,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 24 Oct. 2005

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the male editor of a women's rights magazine in Afghanistan, has been sentenced to two years in jail by for criticizing punishments doled out because of interpretations of Sharia (Islamic) law. Nasab was convicted by the Primary Court in Kabul for blasphemy resulting from two articles published in the magazine critical of these severe punishments, including 100 lashes for adultery and death by stoning for conversion to another religion, reported the Associated Press. The case will automatically be appealed.

According to the New York Times, before the sentencing was agreed to, there was a “strenuous battle” between conservative judges on the Supreme Court and the more liberal Minister of Information and Culture, Sayed Makhdum Raheen. The prosecutor had initially called for the death penalty. Nasab, who was reportedly arrested at the urging of Mohaiuddin Baluch, a religious advisor to President Hamid Karzai, is the first journalist convicted for blasphemy by a Kabul court since the fall of the Taliban regime.

“This is damaging to the development of democracy and women’s rights in Afghanistan,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “Success of the impending appeal is of paramount importance.”

The Feminist Majority is calling on women’s rights supporters in the United States to email Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Under Secretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky to aid the appeal seeking reversal of the decision imprisoning Ali Mohaqiq Nasab and to urge the global community to join them in their efforts.

” Women's Rights Editor Jailed in Afghanistan Faces Increasing Threats,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 13 December 2005.

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of an Afghan women's rights magazine who was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to two years in prison, is facing increasing calls for harsher punishments, including a recent fatwa demanding that Nasab repent or be executed. Nasab was arrested and jailed after publishing articles questioning harsh punishments doled out under some interpretations of sharia (Islamic) law, including 100 lashes for adultery and death by stoning for conversion to another religion, as well as articles arguing for women's equality. Muhammed Aref Rahmani, a member of the national Shiite Council of Ulema (Islamic scholars), explaining his concern over the articles published in Nasab's women's rights magazine, told the Washington Post, "Sometimes the whole religion and the rules of the religion were attacked ... For instance, he says one woman should be equal to one man, as a witness in a case, which is completely against our religion."

In addition to the fatwa calling for Nasab's execution, the Supreme Court in Afghanistan issued a fatwa saying Nasab "should be given the harshest punishment, so he will be a lesson to others," according to the Post.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, which has been working for Nasab's release since he was arrested in October, sent a letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai on December 9 calling for him to intervene in the case. According to the US-based organization, the state prosecutor said that arrest warrants have been issued for individuals in Afghanistan who have defended Nasab. The Chicago Tribune reports that between Nasab's arrest and his sentencing three weeks later, local media outspokenly supported Nasab, including running an open letter signed by Afghan intellectuals, but since then there has not been much public support.

Nasab's case is currently being appealed. The Feminist Majority is calling on women’s rights supporters in the United States to email Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Under Secretary for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky to actively support the appeal seeking reversal of the decision imprisoning Ali Mohaqiq Nasab and to urge the global community to join them in their efforts.

”Afghan Women's Rights Editor Released From Prison,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 3 January 2006

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of a women's rights magazine in Afghanistan, has been released from prison. Nasab was originally sentenced to two years in prison for publishing articles criticizing execution and other severe punishments for adultery, thievery, and murder under sharia (Islamic) law, but an appeals court reduced his sentence to six months on December 21 and released Nasab on probation for his remaining sentence after he apologized for writing the articles, according to Agence France Presse. In addition, Afghanistan’s Media Monitoring Commission removed Nasab from the position of chief editor of the magazine, AFP reports.

The Feminist Majority and international media organizations, including the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, have been working to free Nasab since he was arrested in October.

ALB101495.E, "Albania: Prevalence of domestic abuse of women... (2005 - 2006)," 25 September 2006. Ottawa: IRB, 2006.

Human Rights NGOs have noted that Albanian society is generally patriarchal and follows customary traditions (ibid.; OMCT Apr. 2005, 68). Society generally accepts family violence, viewing it as a private matter (ibid.; AI 30 Mar. 2006, Sec. 4; GADC 13 June 2006). In the April 2006 joint report, GADC and the Albanian Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities state that despite important efforts to raise public awareness of domestic violence since the mid-1990s, these attitudes have changed little over time (Apr. 2006, 5). According to a Professor of History who has written several books on Albania and travels to Albania regularly, Albanian society does not view domestic abuse as an issue of concern (Professor of History 14 June 2006). ...

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, HRDC wrote that the Albanian government does not have special policies and programs for the treatment and protection of victims of violence (26 June 2006). AI reported that senior officials within the government, police and judiciary tend to excuse domestic violence against women as tradition or as a certain "mentality" (30 Mar. 2006, Sec. 1) and that in practice, the police and prosecutors do not protect women from family violence (AI Apr. 2006). In a December 2005 report on Albania, USAID wrote that the Albanian government "has taken few meaningful steps to address discrimination and other obstacles that women encounter" (US Dec. 2005, Introduction).

"Albania," DOS Report 2005.

Many communities, particularly those from the northeastern part of the country, still followed the traditional code—the kanun—under which, according to some interpretations, women are considered to be, and were treated as, chattel. Some interpretations of the kanun dictate that a woman's duty is to serve her husband and to be subordinate to him in all matters.

Brazil

Olympio Barbanti, Jr., "Development, Gender and Conflict," BeyondIntractibility.org, Aug. 2004.

According to the World Bank, educational books in Brazil reinforce segregation and gender stereotypes. (2002) These books usually portray men as businessmen, active in public life and exercising decision-making power. Women, on the other hand, are usually pictured doing housework or being subservient to men. Even though this problem is well known by teachers and other professionals in the educational sector, nothing has been done about it. This is probably due, at least in part, to the sexist culture prevalent in Brazil. In contrast, the same problem was recognized in Argentina, where the problem was tackled and educational books were subject to evaluation and change.

Canada

Marina Jiminez, “Women's rights trump cultural habits, poll finds,” Globe and Mail, 14 Nov. 2006.

A majority of Canadians accept multiculturalism in principle, but that support evaporates when immigrant religious and cultural practices threaten gender equality, according to a new poll examining Canadians' views of Muslims.

The vast majority -- 81 per cent -- of 2,021 Canadians surveyed said immigrants should adapt to mainstream Canadian beliefs about the rights and role of women, an opinion that was shared almost equally across demographic, income, education, age and gender lines.

Half the respondents said immigrants and minority ethnic groups should be free to maintain their religious and cultural practices in Canada, while 40 per cent said immigrants should blend into Canadian society and not form separate communities.

The study revealed, however, that the majority of Canadians welcome the Muslim community as a vital part of the Canadian fabric, with 75 per cent saying that Muslim immigrants make a positive contribution to Canada. As well, half of Canadians say they have a positive impression of Islam, an increase of four percentage points from 2003.

China

Audra Ang, “China Communist Party Lacks Women,” Associated Press, 4 Nov. 2002.

BEIJING (AP) — It was a notion that embraced the improbable, even the impossible: Women hold up half the sky.

The slogan trumpeted by Mao Zedong in the 1960s and '70s was supposed to elevate women to equal standing in society and create opportunities for sisters, wives and mothers to slip into the same roles as men in China's great socialist future.

A generation later, as China's communists convene their 16th congress this week and prepare for a sweeping leadership change, true party equality remains a distant dream. The primary culprits are lack of education and enduring stereotypes.

“Becoming a government official is the dream of most parents for their sons. But finding a good husband is the only wish for the girls,'' said Ding Juan, a researcher for the Women's Research Institute of the All-China Women's Federation.

On the surface, the numbers hint at improvement.

A 2000-2001 survey by the federation and the State Statistics Bureau shows at least one woman holds an official position in all provincial and city-level governments and Communist Party committees. Female officials fill 8 percent of leadership posts in provincial and ministerial authorities, a 1.8 percent rise from 1990.

Those surveyed, however, thought at least a third of top officials should be women.

In the party's main ranks, the numbers dwindle further. Just eight women belong to the 193-member Central Committee. Only one, the highly regarded state councilor Wu Yi, sits on the Politburo — as an alternate. There has never been a woman on the seven-member Standing Committee, the innermost sanctum of party power.

``Authoritarian regimes are historically very patriarchal. They thrive on egoism, aggression and intolerance. There's a fundamental disconnect between authoritarian regimes and women's rights,'' said Bruce Gilley, co-author of ``China's New Rulers,'' a new book about the leadership change.

``The Communist Party will be thrown out of office before there is a woman on the standing committee,'' he said.

In the years before the communists took power in China in 1949, many female party members worked among peasant women, teaching them to read and work outside the home. Others were radio operators, couriers, labor organizers or spies.

But there was one catch.

``They were always excluded from the top leadership positions,'' said historian Patricia Stranahan.

``Even those women ... who played important roles in the revolution were assigned secondary roles after 1950,'' she said. ``Women were, and remain, second-class citizens.''

Gilley and his co-author, Andrew Nathan, a Chinese politics specialist at Columbia University, based their book on a publication by a Chinese author with access to secret official documents.

It predicts that two women, Wu and Education Minister Chen Zhili, will be promoted to full members of the Politburo — a move the authors deem ``remarkable.'' Several more will ascend to ministerial or provincial posts, Gilley predicted.

But women remain second-tier choices, the authors say.

``Women are classified with ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and youths as groups for whom quotas have been established for lower-level positions,'' says the book's chapter on women, which Gilley wrote.

Moreover, many Chinese think women who aspire to high positions are ruthless in the tradition of Ci Xi, the ambitious ``Dowager Empress'' of the late Qing Dynasty. Such a perception, Ding says, discourages women.

``If a woman becomes a top official, the first question in people's mind is not how you would do in the future, but what you have done in the past,'' Ding said. ``If you ask, many women would answer politics is their last choice.''

In Taiwan and Hong Kong, women hold higher positions in government — Taiwanese Vice President Annette Lu and Hong Kong Security Secretary Regina Ip, for example. Even so, only three of Hong Kong's 20 executive council members are women.

``It's still a minority,'' said Hong Kong's justice secretary, Elsie Leung. ``The higher you go, the more difficult it is for women because of tradition, opportunity. We may have come a long way, but it's not so easy to get rid of tradition.''

Ding doesn't expect a big change after the party congress ends later this month. She says the situation can only improve gradually.

``The economy can be opened overnight,'' she said, ``but people's minds are hard to change.''

"China tackles adultery," BBC News, 11 March 2000.

A senior parliamentary official, Hu Kangsheng … said family violence, such as wife beating, was also rising "as a result of resurgent male chauvinism."

Joya Jennings, "Women in China: A Long March," Vancouver Sun, 25 January 2000, A13.

Chinese relationships were dominated by a hierarchy in which the old dominated the young, and the male dominated the female. Women, with the promotion of mothers-in-law, wives of eldest sons, favourite concubines or wives of an official elite were at the bottom of an elaborate pecking order. The birth of a daughter was greeted with sorrow. "How sad it is to be a woman! Nothing is held so cheap," was the poet Fu Hsuan's refrain.

Dr. Graham Johnson, The Chinese State, Families and Filial Piety. An Opinion, 25 Nov. 1999, 3.

The relationship between parents and children in a Chinese family is most importantly regulated by the concept of "filial piety" (xiao). … Filial piety … implies respect [and] obedience. ….

The links that a Chinese individual has to the family are intense. … The system of kinship in traditional China was based on male predominance and was strictly patrilineal.

IRB, Human Rights Briefs: Women in China. Ottawa: IRB, September 1993.

Traditional biases against women are still evident in Chinese society today. Deeply entrenched social habits and customs that mitigate against gender equality are the major cause of the continuing violence against women in China, especially in the rural areas (Potter 11 May 1993). The roots of this discrimination against women lie in Chinese philosophy, religion and popular culture. In Confucianism, for example, a woman is judged by her performance as daughter, wife and mother. A Chinese scholar, who argues that the traditional view of the family and society has not significantly changed over the past 2,500 years, notes that [t]hese roles carry very specific moral prescriptions: the virtue of the wife is "obedience" to her husband, who in return is to provide for her and protect her. When different roles are properly performed, society as a whole will be harmonious, with each assuming his/her role and all carrying out the mandate of heaven (Human Rights Tribune Sept. 1991a, 5).

In the past, the organization of the society along Confucian principles also meant that women were barred from the civil service and the artistic and mercantile professions. Important values, such as honour and status, could only be achieved by men.

Other specialists on China argue that ideology and philosophy do not by themselves provide satisfactory answers to the question of continued discrimination against women in China. One suggests that the social organization of rural society, which views women as temporary residents in their natal families until they move to their husband's residence, is equally important (Human Rights Tribune Sept. 1991b, 10). Another notes that, in traditional rural society, daughters were viewed as liabilities because, in economic terms, they required a far greater investment of scarce resources than they would return to their parents (UCLA Pacific Basin Law Journal Spring 1990, 54). Sons, on the other hand, could be expected to contribute to the family economy throughout their lives and eventually support parents in their old age.

Still others suggest that the economic reform policies under Deng Xiaoping had a major impact on gender inequalities, particularly in the countryside (Human Rights Tribune Winter 1992b, 11; The China Quarterly June 1992, 318). The Household Responsibility System, which is a fundamental aspect of the agrarian reform policies, calls for individual farmers or groups of households to turn over a fixed quota of their production to the state. Any surplus, however, belongs to the peasants who are free to sell it on the markets. This system had an effect on "the demand for children, especially sons, as valuable labour power and as providers of old age social security" (Columbia Human Rights Law Review Summer 1992, 270).

Egypt

Amnesty International, "Women’s Status in Egypt," Divorced from Justice: Women’s Unequal Access to Divorce in Egypt. Dec. 2004.

The State shall guarantee coordination between a woman’s duties toward her family and her work in the society, considering her equal to man in the political, social, cultural and economic spheres without detriment to the rules of Islamic jurisprudence (Shari’a).

—Article 11, Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt

Despite some improvements in their status over the past few decades, women remain worse off than men in Egypt by just about any measure. In 2000, the last year for which statistics are available, an estimated 56 percent of adult Egyptian women were illiterate as compared to 33 percent of adult men. Women’s health and lives continue to be jeopardized in Egypt by harmful customary practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), which is practiced on an estimated 97 percent of ever-married women in Egypt. Women constitute only 21 percent of the labor force. On average, women are paid only 76 percent of men’s wages in the private sector and 86 percent in the public sector. An estimated 19 percent of women are unemployed compared to 5 percent of men. The share of women members in the Egyptian parliament does not exceed 3 percent in the lower house and 6 percent in the upper house. Rural women in Egypt are even worse off than their urban counterparts. In rural areas, although 20 percent of agricultural workers are women, they own only 6 percent of the land. They are also often prevented from exerting meaningful control over the little land they own since they are routinely coerced into surrendering control of land to their husbands or male relatives.

Women’s second-class status translates into a lack of decision-making power in the family, even on the most intimate aspects of their lives. Many Egyptian women are forced into marriages by a male relative (usually their fathers), often before adulthood. As many as 20 percent of Egyptian women aged twenty to twenty-four were married by the age of eighteen. Among adolescents, as many as 9 percent of those aged fifteen to nineteen and as many as 20 percent of those age nineteen had already given birth to at least one child. Early marriage and childbearing does not only jeopardize a girl’s education, but can also puts her life at risk; early marriages increase the risk of maternal and infant mortality and make girls more vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. Forced marriage, a slavery-like practice, violates a number of international human rights norms, including the right to freely enter into marriage, the right to personal liberty and security, and the right to bodily integrity. Forced and early marriages are particularly acute in rural areas.

A number of Egypt’s laws and certain provisions in its constitution maintain and perpetuate women’s unequal status. Article 40 of the constitution states: “all citizens are equal before the law. They have equal public rights and duties without discrimination due to sex, ethnic origin, language, religion or creed.” Yet, article 11 of the constitution places certain limitations on women’s enjoyment of their rights. While article 11 explicitly refers to women’s equality in the “political, social, cultural, and economic spheres,” it leaves room for the denial of these rights if they are interpreted to be at odds with Islamic jurisprudence.

Although women have nominal equality under article 40 of Egypt’s constitution, gender inequality persists in Egyptian society and numerous laws directly violate these constitutional guarantees. Under article 4 of ministerial decree No. 864 (1974), an Egyptian woman may not be issued a passport without the prior written consent of her husband or his legal representative. The law also allows the husband to reverse this consent at any time. Under this decree, a husband can prevent his wife from traveling, even if he had given his consent to her obtaining a passport or making previous trips. Although there was a proposal to change this law in 2000, the Egyptian government decided to drop this provision from the draft law just before passage, reportedly as a concession to religious conservatives, despite the fact that Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the Shaikh of al-Azhar University, had supported the new law even with this provision. Despite a 2003 reform to the citizenship law, Egyptian women still have an unequal right to pass on their nationality to their children if they marry foreigners.

Provisions of the penal code also discriminate against women. Egyptian law imposes harsher penalties for women committing adultery. A wife is penalized for two years, whereas a husband is penalized for no more than six months. For adultery, the evidentiary standards are different for women and men. While a wife is penalized for committing adultery anywhere, a husband must do so in the marital home in order for such an act to be considered adulterous. The murder of a wife (but not a husband) in the act of committing adultery is categorized as an extenuating circumstance, thereby commuting the crime of murder to the level of a misdemeanor.

Eritrea

Emily Wax, “Respected In Battle, Overlooked At Home,” Washington Post, 4 Apr. 2004.

April 4, 2004 – (Washington Post) Lounging in his easy chair as coffee roasted over a charcoal heater and knots of underwear soaked in a bucket, Yemane Abreah watched his wife pour him a glass of homemade alcoholic juice, serve him some spongy injera bread and ready their son for school.

Mileta Abreah, 45, rollers in her puff of mocha-colored hair, is a housewife now. But she used to be a spy for the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, infiltrating Ethiopian lines during the 30-year war for Eritrean independence. She was a fighter for about 15 years. Her favorite weapon was her Kalashnikov. Her favorite memory is securing the town of Afabet, where she and her comrades wiped out Ethiopia's largest ammunition depot in 48 hours.

"Past life," she shrugged.

With sleek Afro hairstyles and tight-fitting camouflage uniforms, Eritrean women were once icons of female power, featured in posters like the one in government offices picturing a woman with a baby on her back and an AK-47 slung over her arm, under the words "Mother Eritrea: Fighter." By the early 1990s, women made up 30 percent of the rebel army's estimated 100,000 soldiers.

But today, Eritrean women are facing what they are calling the second struggle -- to change attitudes toward their role in a peaceful society.

After independence from Ethiopia in 1993, women were rewarded with legal rights unheard of across most of sub-Saharan Africa, including rights of property ownership, divorce and custody of children. Thirty percent of the seats in parliament were reserved for women. International Women's Day was made an official holiday. Eritrea became a showcase, and women's studies classes in Europe and the United States added its example to their curriculum.

But female veterans soon found that, in practice, they were respected more on the battle field than they were in civilian life.

"You can't legislate attitudes," said Luul Gebreab, a former platoon leader and now president of the National Union of Eritrean Women. The stakes are high, she said. Women "have to fight attitudes that, for example, don't see rape as a crime or don't find it necessary for women to pick who they marry. For anything to move forward, men need to be a centerpiece of this fight."

Women have been ushered into the least desired jobs -- sweeping the streets, working as meter maids or in fish markets. Few obtained the higher-paying government posts or lucrative taxi driver or construction jobs that male veterans did.

When the war ended and Abreah asked Mileta, a former classmate to marry, she argued with him for months over the conditions. She should be allowed to work, he would take an HIV test, and she would not endure circumcision, or the removal of her clitoris, a procedure that 89 percent of women here still undergo, according to the National Union of Eritrean Women.

"When you ask a woman to marry you in Africa -- even a female fighter -- they cannot say no like European or American women," said Abreah, a taxi driver who is described by Mileta as a gentle and caring husband. "I always thought they had to agree. 'Submit,' we say here."

"Men have forgotten everything," said Ghirmay Hadgu, 44, a male ex-fighter. "Our previous life was to work together. Now women carry the burden. It's shameful but true. There is so much existing cultural pressure on men. The pressure just engulfs you."

Hadgu, who works for the government buying equipment, says there is a joke among Eritrean men that they are digging their own graves by allowing women to go to school and learn things that they might use to overthrow husbands. He has attended workshops focusing on the role of Eritrean women run by ex-fighters, including his sister, Terhas Iyassu, 40, a respected commander and artist during the liberation struggle.

After the workshops, he said, he "noticed many things." Fighters like his sister who had suffered, sometimes even more than men, giving birth to children in the fields during the war, were now being forced into circumcision and into marriages they didn't want.

A woman's bravery during war was one thing. But Hadgu said that men returning from the war thought it was their right to get better pay, better jobs and more power. Many women headed households alone -- sometimes they were widows of men who died during the war -- and thought they also had a right to earn good salaries.

He also noticed smaller things.

"I saw that my wife, well, she worked all day and then when I came home I was able to relax and she wasn't," he said. "I also noticed that men during the war were taught how to cook for themselves, and my son today is not taught this. His mother serves him."

When women first went off to fight Ethiopia, there was a double aim: freedom for Eritrea and liberation for African women, said Fawzia Hashim, an ex-fighter who as a government minister is one of the most powerful women in the country. For years during the war, men had to be convinced that women could fight.

"Women proved their worth, running up and down mountains, fighting in trenches for months. The male egos broke," she said. "We were the backbone of the liberation movement. The rights we earned weren't a gift. Now, we always have to say, 'Don't forget the sweat and the blood we gave.' That's why focusing on male attitudes is essential. Attitudes do and can change."

On a Sunday morning thick with heat, Mileta Abreah prepared coffee for her husband. She burned triangles of incense over charcoal. Then she roasted coffee beans over her small metal stove. The aroma drifted through their small home. Abreah commented that it was the time of year when women in the villages dotting Eritrea's rocky mountainsides underwent circumcision in ceremonies marked by dancing and celebration.

When Mileta was fighting, she refused to submit to the procedure, which often causes infections and makes sexual relations painful. A boyfriend wanted to marry her, but wanted the procedure done so she wouldn't be "out of control and want to have a lot of sex," she said.

She refused. He said he would leave her. She said no, again. The relationship ended.

When the war was over and Yemane came calling, he also asked her to undergo the procedure. Again, she refused.

He relented. "I said okay, don't do it," he recalled. "And everything has been fine. I love my wife. She has been good to me."

For the first few years of her marriage she did not work. "I didn't want it," said Yemane, a compact man with mustache. "It wasn't safe for her."

But after dozens of arguments, he changed his mind. She now works as a secretary at the defense ministry. "I wanted her to be happy, " he said.

Today she is starting to resemble the women she sees on American television. She has too much to do.

"My wife is a real modern woman, she does everything," Yemane smiled, as Mileta poured his coffee. "Just like a man. But sometimes even more and even better."

Fiji

Fiji

"Fiji," DOS Report 2005.

Traditional practices of reconciliation [i.e., bulubulu, where an apology is given] between aggrieved parties were sometimes taken into account to mitigate sentences in domestic violence cases, particularly in cases of incest.

"Violence Against Women in the Pacific," Fiji Women's Crisis Centre, 24 Aug. 2005.

Violence against women [is] a real demonstration of the gender inequalities that exist and to bring about positive changes for women and work towards the elimination of violence against women, one has to challenge the basic structures that exist in our society and in particular that which is reinforced by religious and cultural beliefs. Violence against women stems from the patriarchal structures which grant power to men to dominate women and keep them in place should they "step out of line". ...

Cultural and religious fundamentalism is on the rise in Fiji and in the Pacific. This promotes conservative ideas and myths about women and their rights. Many chiefs are reinforcing the traditional role of women as primary caregivers and homemakers. The assertion of rights by women is often blamed for family breakdowns, sexual abuse within the family and also for violence against women. Sexual assault and violence against women is condoned, reporting of violence is discouraged and women are counselled that it is a sin to divorce or separate by many religious leaders. Discrimination against single mothers is common.

Traditional institutions and practices such as the traditional customary courts in Vanuatu and PNG favour reconciliation between couples without due concern for women’s rights, and decisions regarding compensation also tend to favour men. Many religious and traditional customs reinforce beliefs of the ownership of women. In Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu the practice of 'bride-price' reinforces the view that women are men's property. Women in abusive relationships are unable to leave if they are not able to pay back the bride price to their husbands’ family.

”Fiji,” DOS Report 2001.

Women generally are paid less than men, a discrepancy that is especially notable in the garment industry. Garment workers, most of whom are Indo-Fijian, ethnic Fijian, and Chinese females, receive wages that are considerably lower than in other sectors. During the year, the garment industry saw the closing of several factories and the layoff of hundreds of seamstresses. A significant number of garment workers reside at their places of work. According to press reports, some garment workers supplement their low income through prostitution.

Gaza

Alan Johnston, “Women ponder future under Hamas,” BBC News, 3 March 2006.

The great majority of Palestinians are Muslims, and many will be comfortable with talk of enhancing the influence of Islam. And particularly in more conservative Gaza, Hamas is moving very much with the prevailing social grain.

Secular concern

But of course there are significant numbers of women who have watched the party's rise with concern.

Among them is a young civil servant called Hayeh, who is one of the tiny minority of women who go unveiled in Gaza.

"Where do I fit in this society as a Palestinian who comes from a liberal background?" she asks.

"Hamas people say that they're not going to harass anyone - that they're not going to impose anything, that they're not going to impose a certain dress code or veils or whatever.

"But it will come indirectly. Discrimination doesn't have to be direct - it can be indirect.

"For instance if I'm working in a ministry where my boss is from a conservative background he might not allow me to be promoted.

"At university I might be discriminated against because I'm not wearing the cover."

Male consent

Lama Hourani campaigns for the rights of working women in Gaza. She agrees that Hamas won't resort to law to impose its ideas.

But she says that an atmosphere will be created under Hamas that will undermine the freedoms currently enjoyed by more secular women.

She says she has already noticed that in the street young men seem to feel freer now to tell her that she should have her head covered.

Mrs Hourani says that no matter how much Hamas may talk of plans to draw more women into employment and wider society, there is, in her view, a fundamental problem.

She says that, in the way Hamas presents Islam, the liberties of a woman are always subject to the consent of a male relative.

"This is the main issue. They don't look at men and women as equal. When they educate women they always say that she has to obey the male in the family," she says.

"When she wants to get married one of things they teach her is to obey her husband. If she wants to go to work she has to take his permission."

Great Britain

Lucy Ward, “Muslim women angry at views being ignored, study shows,” Guardian, 7 Dec. 2006.

Muslim women in Britain feel their views are being ignored because community leaders and male-dominated national Muslim organisations are failing to represent them, according to a government report published today.

The study, the most comprehensive attempt to represent the views of British Muslim women, found that women believe they are also widely misrepresented in the media, and end up as "pawns" in national debates on issues such as dress codes.

While the media is guilty of stereotyping women as oppressed and submissive, fuelling Islamophobia and even violence, the Muslim community itself silences women at national and local level, according to those joining a national "listening exercise" run by the Muslim Women's Network and Women's National Commission, both of which advise the government.

They also accuse the government of consulting the community only through groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain, in which women's voices are "either absent or extremely marginalised".

Women speaking at a series of five roadshows that contributed to the five-month study were united in their view that, despite a strong desire to have their voices heard, women are also excluded from debate in their local communities. Men within the communities use Islam as "a way to control women", they said, even though this is driven by cultural practice rather than true Islam. Women questioned wanted acceptance of their rights under Islam, and called for their local mosques to be opened up to more women and greater representation on their governing bodies.

Islamist terrorist attacks and increased debate over Muslim women's dress have heightened levels of Islamophobia and racism to the extent that daily experiences of verbal and even physical abuse are now unremarkable, says the report, titled She Who Disputes after the story of a woman who successfully challenged the prophet Muhammad over the unfairness of divorce customs.

The study says the problem "critically curtails the lives of women and children", who do not feel safe on the streets.

Muslim women also raised concerns at levels of violence against women within their community, and stressed that services should not accept "culture" as a reason for failing to protect them.

A large majority of those attending the roadshows knew someone who had been forced into marriage, though the issue has always been dismissed as rare by community leaders. Women were concerned that appropriate help was not always available for those who needed it, and did not regard mainstream domestic violence refuges as able to cater to the religious and cultural needs of Muslim women.

”'Tensions' as women earn more.” BBC News, 30 Nov. 2006.

Women are now the main breadwinners in one in five relationships and some are not happy about it, a survey suggests.

The Skipton Building Society survey said that many women in the UK resent the fact that their husband or partner does not earn more money.

Just over a fifth of women surveyed said that the financial imbalance within their relationship sparked rows.

Amongst men who earn less than their female partners, one in seven felt "stripped" of financial independence.

Changing economics

Quarrels over cash tend to arise when it is time to pay household bills.

More than a quarter of those who admit to arguing over cash said that rows often took place when household bills arrived.

Just under a quarter of those who quarrel said the main reason for arguing was a lack of financial responsibility shown by their partner.

"Now that women's earning power has changed, deeply held beliefs about male - female roles and financial responsibility, which could be wholly outdated, can cause anger and resentment," said Christine Northam, spokeswoman for relationship guidance charity Relate.

"This can often lead to rows," she added.

Just over 1,200 adults were questioned for the survey.

Guatemala

GTM42338.E, "Guatemala: Information on domestic violence...," 31 March 2004. Ottawa: IRB, 2004.

In July 2002, an analysis of state protection available to victims of domestic violence in Guatemala was provided by the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM) in its Report for the United Nations' Special Reporter on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences:

A long patriarchal tradition persists in the administration of justice, expressed in the discriminatory treatment towards women, the use of gender stereotypes (marianism), the non-observance of international human rights standards, and the breaking of the internal law norms related to equality between men and women.

India

Shaminder Takhar, "South Asian Women, the ‘Community’ and Multicultural (Mis)Understandings," CRONEM Conference, Roehampton University, 14 – 15 June 2005.

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to highlight gender relations within the ‘South Asian community’, and to explore two associated concepts, oppression and patriarchy in their universal application. The extent and variation of patriarchal control, the role of family and the ‘community’ is shown through an examination of cultural interpretations and the experiences of the female participants in this research. ...

Patriarchy and Cultural Interpretations

The role of patriarchal control, the family and ‘the community’ in South Asian women’s lives cannot be underestimated. It is captured in the following statement based on Vijay’s experiences of working closely with women fleeing domestic violence:

‘You can live the way you want to as long as you don’t break the laws of this country. We’ve all got a right to do that, to practice our religion, our culture and that’s not taken into account, when it comes to all the major decisions in family life.’ (Vijay, Asian Women’s Project)

The role of culture and religion is featured frequently in connection with women’s experiences. Although Vijay recognizes the need for personal freedom with respect to religion and culture, it is precisely these factors which have prevented some women from participating in family decisions. Neesha expressed the lack of human rights for women within the family unit and society in general:

‘While a girl is growing up, she is never a person in her own right, so the first thing we do is to teach them that they have rights, basic human rights to self respect, to dignity and that they are entitled to protection from their families, and from society.’ (Neesha, Asian Women’s Project)

Neesha’s role as a refuge worker reveals a familiar feature of her work: human rights abuse against women within the family unit, ranging from domestic violence, forced marriage and denial of education. Protection from the family is provided by refuges, which operate on the basis of providing shelter for women who leave the family unit. The evidence from refuges indicates that some women are prevented from making decisions and from playing an active role in society. However the relationship that women have with their families remains an ambivalent one, as Avtar Brah comments:

The psychic investment in relationships with family mark the person even as she may challenge patriarchal discourses and practices. Given the power of the emotional bond […] it is perhaps not surprising that ‘family’ remains an area of acute ambivalence for women. Moreover, the desire for intimacy and a sense of belonging, as well as the lack of many viable alternatives for the majority of women, means the ‘family’ remains an important unit of organisation. For Asian women, family support may also become necessary in the struggles against the onslaughts of racism. (Brah, 1996:76)

...

Many of the women in my research had witnessed the effects of violence on women. They are concerned about the representation of women as victims of male violence in popular Hindi films that serves to reinforce the opinion that women are considered disposable. The stereotypical roles played by women is not limited to popular Hindi films, it is apparent in television and film in the Britain and the United States (Young, 1996; Meehan, 1983). The film medium offers few alternatives for women but it is the continuity of such roles by filmmakers which depict women as ‘good’/‘idealised’ (without agency) or ‘bad’/‘deviant’ (with agency) on a global level (Krishnan and Dighe, 1990). The ‘good’/’idealised’ women are those who demonstrate modesty and conformity through behaviour and traditional attire. The ‘bad’/’deviant’ women are those who refuse to conform and display behaviour contrary to acceptable forms of femininity. They are usually women who hold ‘modern’ views as opposed to the acceptable ‘traditional’ roles of wife, mother or daughter assigned to them by society. The ‘bad’/’deviant women who transgress the mores of society are punished, usually by men.

Patriarchy is a social structure and this is a particularly important point with reference to the value placed on women’s lives, as they only become respectable and acceptable when they have been ‘tamed’ by a man and the family. This is a familiar story line in Indian films and television that present to their viewers, acceptable forms of femininity and behaviour. The acceptable forms of behaviour in turn reflect and affirm society’s ‘rules’ (ibid.).

The underlying problem, as one worker commented (Vimochana, India), is very similar to the comments made by the women I interviewed in my research. In Le Monde diplomatique one of the workers put it this way:

The main concern is respect for tradition and the social order, women count for little and men are rarely criticised. If anything happens, the husband will say his wife was over-sensitive or flirtatious. (Le Monde diplomatique, May, 2001:3)

This statement exemplifies how men are able to justify murder on the basis of the unacceptable behaviour of their wives. They are able to claim that it is the transgression of their morality and traditional roles which led to the fatality. Similarly in Britain, it is men’s claim to privacy (within a multiculturalist understanding) for acts such as domestic violence, wife murder, and forced marriage in Britain that needs to be resisted. Indeed South Asian women’s groups have highlighted inequalities within the domestic sphere and have managed to place issues relevant to women’s lives onto the political agenda (P. Patel, 1997). Regarded as ‘washing your dirty linen in public’, women’s groups have been targeted as ‘homewreckers’; responsible for tearing the fabric of the community. The fabric of the community refers to traditions and cultural practices that are being disrupted through women’s involvement in various projects. Asserting their right to equality and freedom, South Asian women reject certain cultural practices that are oppressive.

John Lancaster, “Women on the Rise in India Feel the Riptide of Tradition. Course on How to Be a Dutiful Housewife Has Strong Resonance,” Washington Post, 8 November 2004.

BHOPAL, India -- By some measures, Meena Mangtani was a model of emancipated Indian womanhood, with a college degree in business, a working knowledge of computers and English and a desire to land a job in a bank. She even harbored the notion, as she put it recently, "that men and women are equal, that we can do anything."

But Mangtani, 23, said she had come to see the error of her ways.

In preparation for her imminent marriage, the slender, dark-eyed grocer's daughter is nearing completion of a popular three-month course on how to be the ideal Indian wife. Among other things, the course emphasizes the importance of household chores, suggests keeping sex to a minimum and advises that the key to blissful relations with a new husband is to "think of him as your god." It also recommends extreme deference to mothers-in-law, who typically live under the same roof as the new brides.

At a time when Indian women are struggling to shuck off centuries of oppression and are entering the workplace in record numbers, the teachings of the Manju Institute of Values serve as a reminder of the enduring power of tradition in Indian marriage -- and, some say, its continuing role in holding women back.

"Even if they say something mean to us, our first instinct should not be to retort back, but to stay silent," said Mangtani, who now maintains that her new husband and his parents will decide whether she pursues a career. "The 'I' in me was very strong. Now I have learned that we are newcomers in that family and we have to adjust. We have to reduce the ego."

Such lessons might seem redundant in this nation of more than 1 billion people, where traditional views of marriage are deeply entrenched. In most cases, for example, parents still arrange their children's marriages and -- if they are parents of the groom -- expect substantial dowries, even though the practice supposedly has been outlawed since the 1980s.

Even Indian marriage, however, is not immune to the pressures of globalization and rapid urban growth. The newsmagazine India Today recently published a story on marriage that cited the role of Internet matchmaking services in empowering young Indians to play a more active role in choosing their mates. Although India still has one of the world's lowest rates of divorce -- largely because of the stigma it confers on women -- the percentage of marriages that end that way has risen steadily over the last decade, especially in urban areas, according to Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research in New Delhi.

To social conservatives, such trends represent a dire threat to India's family-oriented culture and values -- a threat that the Manju Institute, among others, aims to combat by reminding women of their customary domestic role.

"Women make house," Aildas Hemnani, a retired civil servant who founded the institute in 1987, told his students the other morning as they sat cross-legged on the floor of the Hindu prayer hall that serves as his classroom. "Men make society. But where does the society come from? Because a woman, when she is making the home, she brings up model citizens."

Such attitudes infuriate development experts in India, for whom there is no bigger or more urgent challenge than lifting the status of women, who continue to lag behind men on key social indicators such as literacy and access to education. Every year, more than 6,000 Indian women are murdered by their husbands and in-laws -- sometimes doused with kerosene and burned to death in purported kitchen accidents -- for failing to yield to demands for bigger dowries, according to national crime statistics.

By encouraging women to remain subservient to their husbands and in-laws, the Manju Institute and others like it are "reinforcing patriarchal norms and values," said Kumari of the New Delhi research group. "When there is some empowerment happening, I think this is absolutely pulling them back."

A dulcet-voiced guru with swept-back white hair, Hemnani, 62, denied any desire to thwart women's progress. "We don't want her to always bow down -- that would be wrong," he said, noting that the course textbook, which he wrote, advises women to seek police protection from abusive husbands and in-laws and reminds husbands to treat their wives with tenderness and respect.

But he cautioned that women should not regard themselves as equal partners with their husbands. "The moment you say partner, that's where the clashes come," he said, adding in reference to the husband, "He's not God, but he's like God."

Hemnani's training center occupies a three-story concrete building next to a private school in a quiet neighborhood of Bhopal, a pleasant central Indian city known for its man-made lakes and also as the site of the world's worst industrial accident, the 1984 gas leak from a Union Carbide plant that killed at least 2,000 people within hours and injured tens of thousands more.

Funded by a wealthy Bombay family and a distant guru who serves as Hemnani's mentor, the institute charges no tuition for its marriage classes, which meet six mornings a week, although Hemnani is happy to accept donations from students and other followers. About 3,000 young women have taken the course; he said he offers a compressed version in other cities several times a year.

At one recent session, Hemnani began with lessons in Sikhism -- an offshoot of the Hindu faith from which his teachings borrow heavily -- and natural healing, including advice on good sleeping habits. Then he directed Mangtani, the business graduate, to read from his textbook on surviving the rigors of the Indian joint family. (Though patterns are changing, a new bride is normally expected to join her husband -- especially if he is the eldest son -- in the home of his parents, who are supposed to adopt her as their own.)

"After marriage, the bride should not think she's going to the in-laws' family to throw her weight around," Mangtani read. "Instead, she's going there to serve the family and perform her duties, in order to turn that home into a heaven."

Hemnani's textbook is filled with such advice. "The bride should do everything according to the wishes and orders of the mother-in-law and father-in-law," it says. "The mother-in-law and father-in-law are never wrong."

It also offers plenty of tips for getting along with a new husband. "For a woman, her husband is everything," the textbook says. "The wife should sleep after her husband and wake up before him. . . . When he returns home, welcome him with a smile, help him in taking off his shoes and socks, and ask him to sit down. Bring him water and biscuits, and with a smile, ask him about his day. A husband's happiness alone is your life's goal. . . . Do not go without your husband's permission anywhere."

In addition, the textbook includes a section on how a husband should treat his wife. Among other advice, it suggests: "If there is anything missing or inadequate in her cooking, do not get angry, but explain to her with love"; "never raise your hand to hit your wife"; and "sometimes praise her good qualities."

As for sex, the less the better: "You can be celibate even when you're married," Hemnani advises, citing a Hindu saint's recommendation that couples have sex only once in their marriage. "If they are not happy with that, then once a year," he writes, warning that more frequent sex "reduces your lifespan."

Mangtani said she saw nothing wrong with Hemnani's recipe for harmonious marriage. "These are our duties -- not to go on insisting on our rights, but do our duties," she said. "If we perform our duties well first, our rights will come."

Notwithstanding her college education and career aspirations, Mangtani became engaged to her fiance -- whose family owns a license-plate factory in a town about five hours from Bhopal by train -- as part of a deal brokered by the two families.

After the families agreed on a dowry of 300,000 rupees -- about $6,400 -- the young man and his grandfather traveled to Bhopal, where Mangtani met her fiance for the first time. "He was happy to hear that I prefer a joint family," she recalled.

Her parents hosted an engagement party the next day.

Mangtani has seen her husband-to-be only twice since that day seven months ago, once to go to a movie and another time to take a boat ride on a lake. But she does not seem worried about getting married to a virtual stranger, in part, she said, because of the lessons she has learned at the Manju Institute.

"The whole idea is to surrender yourself to your husband and new family," she said. "If they let me have a career I will have a career, and if they don't that's okay. My prime goal is to serve."

Iran

”Iran clergy angry over women watching football games,” Women in the Middle East, No. 43, May and June 2006.

Iran's clergy is voicing growing opposition to a decision to let women to watch football matches for the first time since the 1979 revolution. Four grand ayatollahs and several MPs have protested against the move, saying it violates Islamic law for a woman to look at the body of a male stranger.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that stadiums would reserve special areas for women and families. The move was welcomed by women's rights groups which long contested the ban.

Members of the clergy say it is wrong for men and women to look at each other's bodies, even if they have no intention of taking pleasure from it.

Elaine Sciolino with Nazila Fathi, “Girls Find Safety Posing as Boys on Tehran's Mean Streets,” New York Times, 19 Feb. 2003.

TEHRAN — For four years, from the age of 12, Hooman belonged to a tough gang of teenage boys who worked the streets of Tehran. They robbed passers-by, broke into cars and slept wherever they could find a bed.

Perhaps to compensate for his small frame, Hooman shaved off his hair and eyebrows, a fashion statement that sent a clear message: don't mess with me.

It was only when the police arrested him recently for trying to steal a car stereo that they discovered that Hooman was not Hooman at all, but Tahereh.

The boy was a girl.

In a country where girls and women are required to cover their heads and conceal the shape of their bodies from the age of puberty, some girls have taken to disguising themselves as boys. They cut their hair short, wear loose-fitting clothes and speak as little as possible.

It is not an act of rebellion by Westernized feminists determined to buck the system and cast off the headscarf. Rather, it is a growing phenomenon mainly among lower-class runaways who believe that the disguise gives them a degree of freedom and protection they could not enjoy as girls. Posing as boys on the streets makes it easier to avoid rape and falling victim to prostitution rings.

In one sense, their very existence is stark testimony to the failure of the Islamic Republic to create a generation of humble, obedient, modest women dedicated to motherhood and Islam. But in another sense, it is remarkable that the government has admitted the problem and is beginning to take steps to resolve it.

"All the girls we have seen who have disguised themselves as boys have done it to protect themselves," said Mojgan Shirazi, the director of a shelter for runaway girls in central Tehran. "When they're on the streets as girls, men cause problems. We had one girl here who said that when she was on the streets at night even the street sweeper preyed on her. As a boy, she was left alone."

The patriarchal nature of Iranian society men also makes the disguise attractive. Many of these girls have cast off the traditional roles that society defines for them as women, according to psychiatrists who have treated them.

"They reject more than the obligatory veiling," said Mahdis Kamkar, a psychiatrist who has treated such girls when she worked at a state-run welfare center. "They not want to accept the traditional role of homemaker and mother which they feel makes them subordinate to men. This generation is confused and feels the need to defy what it believes has been imposed on it."

In the process, some girls turn to crime. "They are not only dressing like men," Ms. Kamkar said, "but also sometimes acting like men, and getting involved in the kind of crimes only committed in the past by men." ...

Dressing and acting like a boy can bring other benefits, like jobs. One runaway who dressed as a boy easily got a job as an apprentice at a car repair shop in Tehran, something that would never happen if she were a girl.

"When I asked her why she cross-dressed she said she was able to be successful in the workplace as a boy," Ms. Shirazi said. "This is the way our society thinks about boys."

Runaway girls — whether they dress as girls or boys — often come from dysfunctional families crippled by divorce, parental abandonment, drug or alcohol addiction, child abuse and unemployment. Understandably, the girls often suffer an acute lack of self-esteem.

Iraq

Natasha Walter, "No One Knows What We Are Going Through" Guardian UK, 8 May 2006.

Women in Iraq are living a nightmare that is hidden from the west. Now one has turned filmmaker to give us a window on to what they endure. She tells Natasha Walter what she saw.

It is unusual to see at close quarters what is going on for women in cities like Qaim, which last year came under heavy attack from American troops. Access for the western media is severely restricted. Now, though, we have a window on to Qaim thanks to another Iraqi woman, a film-maker who has travelled through the country speaking to widows and children, to doctors and students, in pursuit of the reality of her fellow country-women's lives.

The film-maker, who lives in Baghdad, wants to keep her identity secret because she fears reprisals, so I'll call her Zeina. When I spoke to her by telephone, the first first thing I asked her was why it is that she feels she has to hide her identity, and in her answer she does not distinguish between the government and the insurgents, in the way that we are taught to do here. "I feel the threat from the government and from the sectarian militias," she says. "The danger in Iraq comes from the Americans, from the sectarian militias - and, of course, it also comes from the crime, the gangs, the random kidnappings."

… Zeina … shows, in a way that will surely give pause for thought even to those people in Britain who supported the war, how women's lives are being curtailed by the rise of religious fundamentalists who have stepped into the power vacuum. "All the time in the television and the newspapers there is propaganda concerning women. It is really disgusting, it is nothing to do with Islam, but everything to do with taking women back into the home and depriving them of rights."

To show the negative effects of these developments on women, Zeina travels to Basra. It will not come as news to those who have followed developments in southern Iraq that women are being forced to wear the hijab and prevented from living their lives freely. But it brings these developments home when we see young women and their families talking about being sent bullets and death threats because they played sport or did not wear a headscarf. As Zeina emphasises, this kind of experience is new to most women in Iraq, who enjoyed economic and social freedom before the occupation. "A while ago, I was looking at photographs of my aunt in college in the 60s, wearing pants and sleeveless tops, playing sports in the college yard; and then I looked at the photographs of the women in college today, and they are covered in black from head to toe, their faces also covered."

Zeina says the responsibility for these developments squarely at the feet of the occupation - it has given sectarianism the opportunity to flourish. She simply laughs when I ask her whether she feels grateful for the democracy that America has given Iraq. "Democracy? What democracy? We do not have democracy. This democracy that Bush talks about - it is a completely empty structure, based on sectarian and ethnic interests. How can you have democracy when you are afraid that your life will be threatened, or your husband will be killed if you express yourself freely? It is a bad joke."

Not all women in Iraq are against the occupation - women are as divided as the men, and we in the west have heard Iraqi women speak in support of the US war. But it is hard to resist the force of Zeina's passion as she describes the chaos that the war has brought to Iraq. She longs to go on documenting the situation of women, despite the very narrow limits within which she has to work. "I feel very restricted. I really want to report on the families who are being arrested, on the bodies that are being found, on torture. But either you are a journalist who is working with the Americans - embedded with them - or you jeopardise your life to cover these stories."

Despite the dangers, she is eager to communicate the reality as she sees it, and she would like us to listen: "I do want people in Britain to understand that the occupation of Iraq is not in the interests of Iraq or Britain. Your soldiers are getting killed and nothing is better for the Iraqi people. On the contrary, the situation is going from bad to worse every day, especially for women."

Neil McFarquhar, "In Najaf, Justice can be Blind but Not Female," New York Times, 31 July 2003.

NAJAF, Iraq, July 30 — The United States Marine colonel supervising the reconstruction of this Shiite holy city's government indefinitely postponed the swearing in of its first-ever female judge today after her appointment provoked a wave of resentment, including fatwas from senior Islamic clerics and heated protests by the city's lawyers. The sudden firestorm was emblematic of the tension between the American desire to leave an imprint on the levers of government in Iraq versus a conservative religious establishment determined to fight what its sees as a military invasion dragging Western cultural norms in behind the tanks.

Some of the Iraqis protesting the appointment were women, leaving the Americans even more surprised and confounded.

"There is a woman on the Governing Council and nobody batted an eye," said Lt. Col. Christopher C. Conlin, the senior commanding officer here. "Sometimes you just don't know until you hit a point of sensitivity."

The swearing-in ceremony was scheduled for today for Nidal Nasser Hussein, a 45-year-old lawyer with a history of breaking precedent in Najaf. She was the first female lawyer to begin working here when she started 16 years ago. There are now 50.

A huge white cake decorated with multicolored flowers surrounded by dozens of cans of chilled Pepsi sat at one end of the chief judge's somewhat battered chambers when Colonel Conlin arrived for the ceremony.

Outside, a group of about 30 male and female lawyers were chanting in English: "No No Women" and "Out Out Roe," referring to Specialist Rachel Roe, a Wisconsin lawyer serving as the adviser to the court system in Najaf. A lone Marine gunnery sergeant prevented them from storming the chambers.

"We refuse the appointment of a woman judge, because it contradicts Islamic law," said Rajiha al-Amidi, one of the women in the group protesting the appointment. "This is what the Americans wanted to achieve in the first place with their invasion, to undermine Islam."

A woman cannot be a judge, she explained, because "women are always ruled by their emotions."

Colonel Conlin huddled with the Najaf's chief justice, who showed him at least three fatwas — religious fiats by senior clergy. One was dated June 5, well before the current controversy, but it carried extra weight because it was issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq.

A follower had asked the grand ayatollah two written questions — whether perfume was permissible to wear, given its alcohol content, and whether women could be judges. Although Islam forbids drinking alcohol, wearing perfume is fine, the grand ayatollah ruled, and as for judges, they had to be mature, sane and masculine.

Another fatwa was issued by Sheik Moktada al-Sadr, whose decisions carry virtually no theocratic weight because he is a 30-year-old seminary student. But he commands a mass popular following because of love for his late father, an ayatollah who opposed Saddam Hussein and was assassinated.

The young sheik wrote that filing a case before the female judge was forbidden.

"This will cause big, big problems in all governorates, in all cities," said Iltifad Abdul Sadeh, one of the female lawyers opposed to the idea. "It will lead to confrontations."

She then got into a brief spat with Ms. Hussein about the basis on which Islam bars women from being judges. It is not in the Koran, religious officials say, but it is mentioned among the sayings of Muhammad, which some consider open to interpretation.

"I have an angry crowd, and there are indications that some of the senior clerics have some serious issues," Colonel Conlin told Ms. Hussein. "It is my goal to make you a judge, but I need to do better research."

The colonel said he viewed the appointment of a judge a civil matter, something that would have been taken care of by a simple election back home in Falls Church, Va., so he had not even considered consulting the religious authorities.

Ms. Hussein, a smiling woman wearing a head scarf — liberal clothing in a town where women drape themselves in black head-to-toe abayas — tried to argue.

"There were demonstrations against the first elementary schools for women, too, but everything needs a beginning," she said to the colonel. "Don't just talk to the people who are shouting, talk to sensible people."

The chief judge's chambers were crowded with other judges, and a few supported the idea of a woman on the bench. They said nothing in Iraq's legal code barred women from serving as judges and the religious establishment would just have to learn to live with it.

But while one judge was making such remarks, others in the room were shouting him down. "Not even Saddam Hussein appointed women judges!" cried one opponent.

Indeed, under the previous government all judicial appointments were made by the president himself. At the secular height of Baath Party rule, around 1979, a half-dozen female lawyers graduated from the Judicial Institute and were appointed to the bench, the Najaf judges said. But Mr. Hussein then banned women from the institute.

The institute has yet to reopen since Mr. Hussein's overthrow. In that time, one woman prosecutor has been appointed in a provincial capital without protest and one woman to the new Federal Criminal Court in Baghdad, Ms. Roe said.

The idea of appointing a woman to the bench in Najaf evolved during a discussion about how to fill 12 empty positions previously filled by Baath appointees.

When Ms. Hussein put her name forward, Ms. Roe embraced the idea. Ms. Hussein was expected to be a family court judge, with two male colleagues who could be assigned the cases in which anyone objected to a female judge.

Ms. Roe expressed disappointment at the outcome, although conceding that she had to accept what the town wanted.

"I don't think that government institutions should be controlled by religious organizations," she said. "I was under the impression that Iraq was going to have a secular government. I might have been wrong."

Italy

"Italian Supreme Court: Sex Abuse of Non-Virgins a Less Severe Crime," Feminist Daily News Wire, 24 February 2006.

In a decision condemned by women's groups, Italian MPs, and UNICEF, Italy's Supreme Court ruled last week that sexual abuse is less serious if the victim is not a virgin. The court ruled in favor of a middle-aged man who forced his 14-year-old stepdaughter to have oral sex with him, a crime for which he was sentenced to three years and four months in jail. The man appealed the decision, arguing that he should have a lighter sentence because the girl had had prior sexual experience, according to Reuters. The court agreed, reports the Italian news agency ANSA, ruling that the psychological damage of sexual abuse was less serious for the girl because her previous sexual activity made her "personality…much more developed than one would normally expect in a girl her age."

The decision shocked the country. "I feel like I'd been kicked in the stomach, as if we'd gone back 50 years," said Maria Gabriella Carnieri, the head of the 'Telefono Rosa,' a helpline for sexually abused women, reports ANSA. Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, called it a "shameful, devastating ruling," and said that "the real problem is that there are no women on the supreme court," Reuters reports.

The Italian court has issued several other controversial decisions in recent history, according to ANSA. In one case, the court ruled that a woman was not raped because she was wearing jeans that were too tight to have been removed without her help. In another ruling, judges said a "sudden and isolated" pat on a woman employee's behind in the workplace was legally permissible.

Jordan

Dale Gavlak, “UN examines Jordan women's status,” BBC News, 15 March 2004. The United Nations has released a major report in Amman on the status of women in Jordan.

It examines how much involvement they have in the political and economic arenas, and statistically analyses violence against women, the first time this has been done in the Hashemite Kingdom.

The UN's goodwill ambassador in Jordan, Princess Basma Bint Talal, said while women here had achieved a great deal, much more work needed to be done to promote their participation in society and protect them from harm.

She said that violence against women was one issue for example, that had not been fully addressed either by the government or by non governmental organisations.

"This is now changing and we need to really capture this momentum because it is a subject, it is an issue that none of us can accept or allow for whether it is at the highest decision-making levels, whether it is government-level or the work of activists and NGOs," she said.

"We need to look extremely, extremely seriously at this issue so that both support and services are better geared to women who are suffering."

While more women are entering the job market in Jordan, some reported that they face discrimination in the workplace and may also lack the necessary qualifications to compete against men.

Unemployment is running high for both women and men at 14 and 22% respectively.

Political ambitions

The study also found that more Jordanian women are stepping forward to run for the country's parliamentary elections than in the past.

But the UN's ambassador said much more had to be done to encourage women to seek public office.

She said that it would be better for women to seek office at local and municipal levels to gain the necessary political experience before entering national politics.

Kenya

"All-Female African Village Still Thriving After 10 Years," Feminist Daily News Wire July 14, 2005.

The all-female village of Umoja, Kenya is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year as a prosperous community after ten years of struggle and opposition. Umoja, meaning “unity” in Swahili, was founded ten years ago by a group of homeless women who had been left by their husbands because they were raped. The husbands claimed that their wives had shamed them and their villages. Umoja has served and continues to serve as a safe haven for young women escaping violence, female genital mutilation, and forced marriage., according to the Washington Post.

Approximately 36 women live in the village, running their own cultural center and a tourist campsite for the nearby Samburu National Reserve. At the cultural center, the women sell crafts and the traditional Samburu beaded necklaces. This has been such a successful project that the women have enough money to send their children to school for the first time. In their previous village lives, many husbands would insist that the children help with the livestock, but these women have the money and decision-making power to choose education for their children. Some men attempted to start an all-male village close by, but the endeavor was unsuccessful.

Rebecca Lolosoli, the matriarch and chief of Umoja, was recently invited to speak before the United Nations in New York at a world conference on gender empowerment. When commenting on the achievements of the village, Lolosoli said, “We’ve seen so many changes in these women. They’re healthier and happier. They dress well. They used to have to beg. Now, they’re the ones giving out food to others,” reports The New York Times.

Malaysia

<”Women should wear chastity belts to prevent sex crimes,” Khaleej Times, 16 February 2007.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Women should wear chastity belts to prevent rape, incest and other sex crimes, a prominent Islamic cleric in northern Malaysia was quoted as saying Friday.

Abu Hassan Din Al Hafiz, speaking in the northern state of Terengganu, said chastity belts could protect women from a growing number of sex crimes in Malaysia, The Star newspaper reported.

The best way to avert sex perpetrators is to wear protection,’ Abu Hassan told a crowd of followers. My intention is not to offend women but to safeguard them from sex maniacs.’

The cleric said sex crimes had increased in the region of late. We have even come across a number of unusual sex cases where even senior citizens and children are not spared,’ he said.

Figures on sexual assaults in the northern state were not immediately available.

Religious leaders in Malaysia’s conservative north have in the past blamed sexual attacks on women wearing provocative clothing and make up. Local Islamic women’s groups and other organizations have routinely criticized those views.

Abu Hassan was not immediately reachable for comment.

Muslims make up about 60 percent of Malaysia’s population. The remaining 40 percent are Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and a small minority of indigenous people who practice animism.

”Malaysia: Women's Work Clothing Restricted,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 9 Jan. 2004.

The Islamic government in Malaysia's city of Kuala Terengganu has banned non-Muslim women from wearing mini-skirts, tight fitting dresses, and even moderately revealing clothes such as short-sleeved shirts and tight jeans to work. Muslim women are being called to wear a headscarf known as the tudong, which has to be tightly drawn about the face.

According to Reuters, this new law is part of governments efforts to drive out what they call "indecency." It is unknown when the planned ban will go into effect, reports Reuters.

Non-Muslim Malaysians make up nearly half of the population of Malaysia. The Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) is the main opposition party in Malaysia. They have plans to make Malaysia an orthodox Islamic state, including having sharia (Islamic) law, reports Reuters. Elections will be held this year.

Mexico

Nick Wadhams, “U.N. Chides Mexico Over Unsolved Deaths,” Asscoiated Press, 28 Jan. 2005.

Mexico acknowledged [to the United Nations] "grave attacks" on women's rights and said widespread societal and cultural traditions were also to blame [for the Cuidad Juarez serial murders]. It said there was no deliberate policy of discrimination.

"It must be acknowledged that there are social situations, stereotypes, attitudes, values and age-old cultural traditions and customs that have been preserved throughout our history and restrict women's development potential," the government said in its response.

C. Diaz Olavarrieta; J. Sotelo, “Domestic violence in Mexico,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 26 June 1996.

Stereotypes are a simplistic way of understanding cultures, and the image of the macho/machismo is a commonly recognized and accepted stereotype. This stereotype has been reinforced by some ill-considered beliefs about wife battering that seem culturally determined, such as the instances in which domestic violence is not necessarily a hidden and shameful act. For example, acts of domestic violence may be boasted about among Mexican men as signs of prowess, with statement such as, “If I don’t hit her, she’ll think I don’t love her” – a common statement that may appear outlandish to outside observers. ...

The lives of poor women in Mexico [are] characterized by inadequate housing, insufficient services such as education and transportation, low-paying jobs, crime, sexual abuse against the young, and living conditions that make women more vulnerable to abuse.

In rural sectors of Mexico, a tradition of violence against the vulnerable has existed for centuries, first at the hands of the conquistadors and later at the hands of the landowners. For example, in a Jalisco prison record dating from 1895, a woman accused of abandoning her abusive husband writes: “Goodbye, I wish to God you marry again so that you can beat your wife and she will leave you as I have done.” ...

An anthropologist’s description of husbands and wives in a Mexican village in 1949 mentions how wife beating was a common occurrence, especially in instances when the woman questioned her traditional role and engaged in activities that kept her away from the home, a state of affairs not welcome by rural men then and now.

Consulting the registers of the local jail in a town in central Mexico between 1880 and 1910, Gonzales studied the historical roots of violence against peasant women in Mexico, comparing their status with that of contemporary rural women.

Several records from the registers described women who were severely beaten when they failed to serve meals in a quick and expeditious manner or young female servants who were raped by the heads of their households. The same results tend to be reproduced today, only with slight variations. Some reports have disclosed alarming figures, although the lack of adequate scientific research in the area of domestic violence makes actual prevalence difficult to determine. As with violence in other social groups, rural women are battered as a corrective measure geared towards imposing male authority and to discourage behaviors that question the tenet that women are possessions and are, therefore, subject to disciplinary measures in the form of physical force. ...

One hundred years ago, almost no options were open to women who wanted to escape violent relationships. A recent study found a similar environment for survivors of domestic violence in some contemporary rural areas. A commonly held belief in some rural areas is that marriage lasts forever,” so that when men die, “women will follow them to continue serving them in heaven.” Additional cultural factors to consider are that rural women tend to marry or live in common law marriage at an earlier age than women in the city, and their childbearing years start soon after menarche. The existence of economic dependence and the common practice of the newlywed woman moving in to live with her in-laws, increases the stress of newly married couples. Nevertheless, young rural women survivors of domestic violence have begun to challenge the concept that the marital bond is insoluble.

Joseph Carrier. De Los Otros: Intimacy and Homosexuality Among Mexican Men. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, p. 3-4.

The Mexican mestizo culture places a high value on “manliness.” A salient feature of the society is a sharp delimitation between the roles played by males and females. In general, men are expected to be dominant and independent and females to be submissive and dependent. The distinct boundary between male and female roles in Mexico appears to be due in part to a culturally defined hypermasculine ideal referred to as machismo.

Nicaragua

Roger Lancaster. Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, p. 236-237.

[Machismo] is not exclusively or primarily a means of structuring power relations between men and women. It is a means of structuring power among men. Like drinking, gambling, risk taking, asserting one’s opinions, and fighting, the conquest of women is a feat performed with two audiences in mind: first, other men, to whom one must constantly prove one’s masculinity and virility; and second, oneself, to whom one must also show all signs of masculinity. Machismo, then, is a matter of constantly asserting one’s masculinity by way of practices that show the self to be “active,” not “passive”...yesterday’s victories count for little tomorrow.

Nigeria

Nigeria: Islamic Province Segregates Public Transportation by Sex,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 25 Aug. 2005

The state of Kano, in northern Nigeria, has banned women from most motorcycle taxis and has instituted segregated seating on public buses. The ban is seen as a step in instituting sharia (Islamic) law in the province, as conservatives objected to close proximity to men necessary when women rode motorcycles or buses. IRIN News reports that a religious police force of 9,000 will enforce the ban, with drivers who violate it facing fines and possible suspension of their licenses. Kano is the first state to institute such a ban in the name of Islam, and Christians in the region are uneasy about how strictly the law will be applied to their behavior.

Many women are upset about the difficulty they will now face in going about their business in the city. “We don’t want this. Goodness, I’ll be frustrated” said Miriam Muhammed, 24, in the Washington Post. Another young woman expressed her resistance to Online Nigeria Daily News, saying “I love to go about on motorcycles but now the government is saying they will stop women… let me see who will prevent me from doing that.”

Pakistan

“Mukhtar Mai: 'So much responsibility,'” BBC News, 16 Nov. 2006.

Two women came to visit me. I knew one of them, but not the other one who was crying as she entered my door. She said her neighbours were pestering her day-in and day-out and had even threatened to kill her.

My advice to her was to report this to the police and ask for help. She agreed to ask the police to guarantee her personal safety. But she refused to report the harassment.

To my disappointment she kept arguing that it is not worthy of a "respectable woman" to be seen at a police station or in a court.

"Taking such a step would not reflect well on my honour," she told me.

After she left, I kept thinking about her for a long time. What mental slavery is this that women in my country do not ask for their rights, fearing that it is against their dignity to do so?

Most of my visitors are women who rely on their men for finances. That is why I want to establish a very good vocational centre in my village to develop their sewing skills, so that I can introduce their products to the rest of the world.

No doubt, injustice against women in Pakistan essentially emanates from their inability to earn their own money.

Agence France Presse, "Kashmir: Clerics Tell Aid Groups to Fire Women," New York Times, 25 August 2006.

Muslim clerics in Bagh, in the Pakistan-controlled region of Kashmir hit by an earthquake last October, have told aid agencies to fire all local women working for them or face protests, officials and religious leaders said. “If our demand is not met, then we will take direct action and extreme steps,’’ said Syed Atta Ullah Shah, prayer leader of the Bagh mosque. Tens of thousands made homeless by the quake remain in refugee camps.

Aid groups say female workers are vital to ensure that religious and social conventions are respected when dealing with women in the region. The United Nations, which has coordinated aid efforts after the quake, said that it was aware of the issue and that talks were under way with the government and clergy members.

Nadia Asjad, "High cost of Pakistani women's silence," BBC News, 29 Nov. 2004.

Najma is very upset. A man follows her wherever she goes in her home city of Rawalpindi.

He leers at her, says provocative or obscene things about her appearance or even touches and gropes her.

Najma feels helpless. She can't do anything except ignore him.

But now he's done something really spiteful. He's pulled up his trousers to show Najma her name written with blood on his leg. Najma is terrified.

Najma - not her real name - finally musters courage and contacts a women's rights lawyer, Naheeda Mehboob Elahi.

The lawyer tells her that she's done the right thing by contacting her.

However Najma refuses to act on any of the solutions suggested by the lawyer.

Najma says she's afraid to disclose this situation to others. She fears that any action taken against the man might trigger an even worse reaction from him. She's also afraid of the embarrassment and shame that it would bring to her.

She says her father and brothers are very strict and they would confine her to her house if they found out.

'Keep silent'

The lawyer says she deals with countless cases of sexual harassment but most of the victims refuse to pursue the cases any further because they share the same fears as Najma.

"Right from the moment a girl is born, she's taught to keep silent no matter what happens to her," says Shahnaz Bokhari, a psychologist and chief co-ordinator of a non-governmental organisation, the Progressive Women's Association in Islamabad.

"Girls are taught that it's a sin to speak up for yourself and contradict your father, brothers or husband.

"We have snatched away all the courage and confidence of our girls but when something happens to them, we say 'Why didn't she protest, why didn't she raise her voice?'"

No matter how badly women suffer in conservative Pakistani households, women activists argue that society forces them to believe that it's in their best interest to be silent.

A study conducted by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) suggests that incidents of sexual harassment against women are on the rise, while the data collected officially shows a different, less serious picture.

"It's considered a sin to use the word 'rape' in many social circles. Some years back, even the English newspapers, which are considered quite liberal in their approach, preferred other words to refer to incidents of rape," says Shahnaz Bokhari.

She questions why people hesitate to use the word when this crime is so prevalent?

A major concern for sexually-harassed women is their self-image.

If others find out what is happening to them, they will often suffer shame and embarrassment.

There are certain myths in Pakistani society. Almost every woman who has been harassed sexually feels guilty to some extent.

The "if only" list is endless - "If only I had locked the door, if only I had dressed differently, if only I hadn't gone there alone."

And that, it seems, adds to the pressure not to speak up.

Marina Jiminez, “Change slow to come for Pakistani women,” Globe and Mail,. 2 Aug. 2004.

In Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, the ruling coalition of religious parties introduced sharia law last year, further restricting the rights of women. Plans are under way to build a women-only university. All females over the age of 12 (Muslims and non-Muslims alike) have been forced into purdah (head-to-toe veiling in public places) and male doctors have been told not to treat female patients, although this has not been enforced.

The provincial government has also banned music on public transportation, confiscated billboards and greeting cards with images of women, and burned thousands of "un-Islamic" videocassettes, compact discs and even deodorant sticks (in the mistaken belief they were sex toys). The six-party governing alliance, known as the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), has created a special department to enforce public morality, similar to the ministry for the prevention of vice and promotion of virtue set up by the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

"It is the Talibanization of the North West Frontier province," complains Afra Siab Khattak, chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and an opposition politician. "It's a scary place to be a woman . . . With more segregation, men are more curious and poke and stare more. It's intimidating."

The commission attempts to monitor acts of intimidation against aid workers and human-rights workers, as well as acts of violence against women, most of which goes unreported.

Mr. Khattak says General Musharraf is partly to blame for the current climate, saying the military dictator "appears to be going to the left, but is actually going to the right." He accuses Gen. Musharraf of pandering to the mullahs.

Other analysts agree, pointing out that it was Zia al-Haq, the general who ruled the country from 1977 to 1988, who first formed a strategic alliance with the radical religious forces and implemented Islamic laws.

"Traditionally, the Islamist parties have been natural allies of the army, as against the democratic forces in this country, and this is an alliance that is yet to be questioned under the Musharraf regime," concluded Ajai Sahni, editor of the South Asia Intelligence Review, in a recent article in Asia Times magazine. "The threat of a collapse into fundamentalist anarchy has constantly been held out to the world as justification for the continuation of authoritarian rule by the military." …

Seated cross-legged on the floor of a religious bookstore in a Peshawar market, Mr. ul-Haq defends his party's record on women. As he sees it, the MMA government is asking "Islamic men" to accept their responsibilities -- to provide for their women and children -- and teaching women to be "in purdah and remain in their jurisdiction."

"Go around the whole province and you won't even see one single incident of a woman being treated badly," Mr. ul-Haq said. "We haven't imposed a Taliban-style system. Look, I'm sitting before you and talking to you. Islam says to cover your head, but we are only preaching and not imposing."

But his platform rings hollow to activists and human-rights workers, who say they have received anonymous threats for their attempts to work with women.

"It is a stigma to work for a non-governmental organization here in Peshawar," said Jamila Akberzai, with the Afghan Women's Welfare department. "They think aid workers are destabilizing family life by asking women to raise their voices for their rights."

Mr. Khattak adds, "Conditions are better today in Kabul than here."

”Pakistani Province May Enact Taliban-like Restrictions,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 29 May 2003.

Women’s groups in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan are reacting sharply to a proposed bill calling for the enforcement of strict Islamic law. The legislation, which places Sharia law above secular provincial law, paves the way for provincial leaders to “[follow] in the footsteps of the Taliban,” the groups caution, according to the BBC. While members of NWFP’s Islamic coalition insist the law would “curb obscenity and protect human decency,” many women fear new restrictions will ban them from working for foreign non-profit groups. “The way the Islamic parties have started imposing laws in the NWFP we feel will deprive many people of their basic rights,” Kamla Hayyat of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan told the BBC. Already deputies are considering introducing legislation to create a Department of Vice and Virtue, similar to that under the Taliban. In addition, a local legislator has already proposed mandating “purda” or veiling for all women over the age of twelve, the Gulf Daily News reports.

“Out of the shadows, into the world,” The Economist, 17 June 2004.

Slowly, but sometimes showily, the female half of the population is beginning to find a voice.

It was called a “national dialogue”, but to western eyes it was a strange kind of conversation. From June 13th-15th, in Medina, Saudi Arabian women and men discussed how women's lives could be improved. The women, however, were invisible to the men, except on a television screen.

From kindergarten to university to the few professions they are permitted to pursue, as well as in restaurants and banks and in other public places, the female half of Saudi Arabia's population is kept strictly apart. Women are not allowed to drive a car, sail a boat or fly a plane, or to appear outdoors with hair, wrists or ankles exposed, or to travel without permission from a male guardian. A wife who angers her husband risks being “hanged”; that is, suspended in legal limbo, often penniless and trapped indoors, until such time as he deigns to grant a divorce. And then she will lose custody of her children.

The 19 recommendations that went to Crown Prince Abdullah on June 15th would change matters somewhat, if they are ever enacted. Participants asked for special courts to deal with women's issues, more women's sections in existing courts, and a public-transport system for them. They wanted more education, more jobs and more voluntary organisations dealing with women's issues. Amid much vague good feeling, the phrase that recurred was “more awareness”—not just of women's rights, but of women as human beings.

Saudi Arabia certainly presents male chauvinism at its worst. Yet it is a mistake to imagine, as many westerners do, that Arab women as a whole suffer strictures as tight as their Saudi sisters'. It is equally incorrect to judge the donning of veils and headscarves—attire that is optional everywhere save in Saudi Arabia and non-Arab Iran—to be a sign of exclusion. For some it is simply a personal expression of religious devotion; for others, a means of escape from the tyranny of fashion.

It is even wrong to assume that life for the purdahed women of Saudi Arabia is necessarily hard. Boring, yes, and cluttered with minor annoyances, but also full of compensating richness. Many Saudi women take pride in the protectiveness, family-centredness and Muslim piety of their society—aspects that were stressed first in the list of recommendations.

Slowly but surely, too, the lot of Saudi women is improving, just as it has been for women in most Arab countries. Saudi girls were not even allowed to go to school until 1964. Now, some 55% of the kingdom's university students are female. Similar trends can be seen elsewhere. In Kuwait's and Qatar's national universities, women now make up fully 70% of the student body. Across the wider region, the average time girls have spent in school by the age of 15 has increased from a mere six months in 1960 to 4.5 years today. This may still be only three-quarters of the schooling that Arab boys get, but female education has improved faster in Arab countries than in any other region. Tunisia has narrowed the literacy gap between young men and women by 80% since 1970. Jordan has achieved full literacy for both sexes.

The Arab performance in improving women's health is also unmatched. Female life expectancy is up from 52 years in 1970 to more than 70 today. The number of children borne by the average Arab woman has fallen by half in the past 20 years, to a level scarcely higher than world norms. In Oman, fertility has plummeted from ten births per woman to fewer than four. A main reason for this is a dramatic rise in the age at which girls marry. A generation ago, three-quarters of Arab women were married by the time they were 20. That proportion has dropped by half. In large Arab cities, the high cost of housing, added to the need for women to pursue degrees or start careers, is prompting many to delay marriage into their 30s. Again, that is not much different from the rest of the world.

Houris and hijabs

Outsiders may think of Arab women as shrouded, closeted ghosts, but the images that come to Arab minds these days are likely to be quite different. Flick on a television in Muscat or Marrakesh, and you find punchy, highly competent and pretty female presenters. Competition between Lebanese television networks is so keen that their gorgeous weather-announcers, pantomiming, say, rain on the mountains, can be rather startling. More eye-opening still is the procession of video clips on the many highly popular satellite channels broadcasting round-the-clock Arabic pop music. Strapless houris (beauties), such as Lebanon's Nancy Ajram and Egypt's Ruby, croon and gyrate with scarcely less abandon than their western prototypes.

True, such imagery remains deeply controversial, and not just to feminists. In relatively open-minded Egypt, the state broadcasting monopoly has banned the more provocative female stars and has forbidden costumes that reveal belly buttons, saying they corrupt the country's youth. The saucy video clips are regularly blasted at Friday sermons in the mosques.

It is also true that provocatively clad starlets are hardly representative of Arab womanhood. Broadly speaking, the percentage of Arab women who wear some form of hijab, or veil, does seem to be inching upwards. Numbers vary hugely, however, from around 10-20% in Lebanon or Tunisia to perhaps 60% in Syria and Jordan, to 80% in Kuwait and Iraq. In rural Egypt, the near-universal adoption of the veil in recent years is as much a reflection of city fashions creeping into the countryside (where women traditionally worked in the fields unveiled) as of rising conservatism. The popularity of veils in Egyptian cities, meanwhile, is partly due to a rise in the number of women who leave home to work or study. In a sense, for traditional families the hijab is a sort of convenient half-way station to fuller freedom.

At the same time, the late-night club-culture of cities such as Cairo, Dubai and Beirut is thriving as never before. Even those women who shun the packed bars and discos may now venture into the cafés, once a male preserve. The sight of groups of women smoking waterpipes has become quite common. Such delights have helped attract a fast-growing number of tourists, especially Gulf Arabs, for whom the free mingling of sexes is itself a spectacle. Inevitably, these looser strictures have an influence back home.

Those other modern media, the internet and the mobile phone, increasingly reinforce such shifts in attitude. Hard as it may still be to meet members of the opposite sex openly, ever-growing numbers of young Arabs are chatting, flirting and even getting hitched over the ether. And that is the innocent side. This correspondent's wholly unscientific survey of internet cafés in several Saudi cities revealed that virtually all the websites recorded as “favourites” were blatantly pornographic.

Even the many Arabs who dismiss MTV and on-line dating as the preserve of gilded, westernised youth will admit that female role-models have changed a great deal. In all but three out of 22 countries in the Arab League, women have the right to vote and run for office. (Recall that the Swiss canton of Appenzell did not grant such rights until 1991). Arab women also work as ambassadors, government ministers, top business executives and even, in Bahrain, army officers. A fifth of Algeria's Supreme Court judges are women, and women hold 15% of the top judicial posts in Tunisia. Even in Saudi Arabia, Lubna Olayan heads the kingdom's leading private industrial group, and Thoraya Obeid runs the UN's family-planning agency, though admittedly in New York.

The darker side

Yet Arab women should not rest complacent. It is for good reason that the UN's devastating, and much-quoted, Arab Human Development Report cites women's rights, along with education and governance, as the main challenge facing the region. Statistics cannot easily capture, for example, the fact that the very idea of an unmarried woman living alone remains taboo in all but a few Arab countries. Numbers do not adequately measure the harassment that “immodest” dress routinely attracts in most Arab cities, or the destructive social impact of habits such as female circumcision (still practised widely in Egypt and Sudan), polygamy (sanctioned by Islam, yet rare except in the wealthy Gulf states), or “honour killings” (sanctioned by tribal custom, not religion, and declining—but in Jordan, more than 20 women are still murdered by their own suspicious relatives every year).

The numbers can still be revealing, though. In Egypt, a recent study showed that among families with low levels of education, baby girls are twice as likely to die as baby boys. In Yemen, the illiteracy rate among young women (54%) is three times that of men. And as for those proud Saudi women who are now earning most of the kingdom's university degrees, their prospects of careers are dim. Barely 6% of the country's workforce is female. Across the Arab region as a whole, only a third of adult women have jobs, compared with three-quarters of women in East Asia.

Just as disturbingly, movement towards equality in some Arab countries has shunted into reverse. Such is the case of Iraq, a country that during the 1960s and 1970s was in the vanguard of progress. Saddam Hussein's two decades of war and sanctions crushed the life out of the country's once large and rich middle class. Their decline discredited social models, such as the nuclear family, which had begun to replace the old patriarchal clan system. The lot of most Iraqi women has worsened even more dramatically since the war. In the cities, women are simply afraid to go out alone. The rise of religious radicalism has prompted many to adopt the veil, out of fear as much as conviction.

Even in more peaceable Arab countries, the gains women have made are not fully secure. As far back as the 1950s, for example, secularist Tunisia granted women full equality, going so far as to contravene Islam and ban polygamy. With their rights to vote, divorce, work in any profession and so forth, Tunisian women remain the envy of Arab feminists elsewhere. Yet they themselves complain that male attitudes have not really changed. A Tunisian sociologist notes a trend by wealthy men to seek brides from poor villages, since city women are “too independent”. And the incidence of wife-beating remains high.

Egypt was another Arab pioneer in women's rights. The first Arab feminist manifesto, “The Liberation of Woman”, was published in Cairo in 1899. By the 1920s, society women were dropping their veils; by the 1960s, the country had more female doctors than many in the West. But progress stalled in the 1980s, when the parliament scotched a law that would have ensured nearly full sexual equality. Discriminatory laws still hinder women's progress in many other countries. Algeria's 1984 family statutes give men an automatic right to divorce, with no legal obligation to their former spouse. In all but a few Arab countries, citizenship may only be passed on by the father of a child, not its mother. Similarly, custody of children customarily goes to the father, a fact that comes into tragic prominence every year in consulates across the region, when the foreign divorcees of Arab men discover that they may lose their children. And Islamic inheritance law grants female heirs only half the portion given to males.

Islam's importance

Outsiders commonly assume that Islam itself is the cause of sexual inequality in the Arab world. This is not strictly true. Earlier this year, for instance, Morocco adopted a progressive family status code which, among other things, grants both sexes equal rights to seek divorce and to argue before a judge for custody of children. It also places such tight conditions on polygamy as to render the practice virtually impossible. Yet the new law won backing not just from King Muhammad VI, who declared it to be “in perfect accordance with the spirit of our tolerant religion”, but also from the country's main Islamist parties.

In Kuwait, too, religion is being used to push reform. Five years ago, Islamists in the country's parliament blocked a law that would have granted women the right to vote and run for office. The same law is being tabled again this year, but this time several Islamist MPs have defected to the liberals. One reason is a fatwa recently issued by a prominent cleric, which questions the reliability of the source who, 14 centuries ago, reported the Prophet Muhammad as saying “A nation commanded by woman will not prosper.”

Aside from giving them the short stick on inheritance, and having their testimony in law considered half as weighty as men's, and letting husbands marry up to four wives, whom they may beat if they are disobedient, the Koran itself is not unkind to women. Centuries before Christian women in the West, Muslim women freely enjoyed full property rights. In many Arab societies, it has been customary to evade statutory inheritance laws by simply signing over property to female relations before your death.

The trouble, in places like Saudi Arabia, lies more in how the holy text—as well as the hadiths, or Prophet's sayings, that inform the Sharia—are interpreted. Such texts are often not so much interpreted, as twisted to fit pre-existing traditions. The ban on driving, for instance, is unique to Saudi Arabia. Yet even Saudi clerics are hard-put to find support for the rule in holy scripture. (And in any case, according to one survey, 29% of Saudi women say they already know how to drive.)

The extreme Saudi phobia regarding ikhtilat, or mixing of the sexes, also has no textual justification. And although the Koran mentions modesty in dress, how much is a matter of opinion. Most scholars agree that hadiths about fuller covering relate to the Prophet's own wives. Whether to follow their example should be a free choice, as indeed it is in most Muslim societies.

Some countries, such as non-Arab Turkey and Tunisia, have simply bypassed such questions by imposing fully secular laws. For the time being, Arab public opinion is strongly opposed to this; the link to Islamic roots is seen as essential. Yet when it comes to women's rights, the evidence is that Arabs, even the men among them, acknowledge the need for improvement. In a 2002 survey of social attitudes carried out in seven Arab countries by Zogby International, 50% of respondents considered the improvement of women's rights a high priority (see chart). Significantly, the firmest support for change came from Saudi Arabia.

The reformers will eventually get their way. Saudi women are, in fact, already chalking up important gains. Last month they were granted the right to hold commercial licences, a significant advance considering that women own a quarter of the $100 billion deposited in Saudi banks, with little opportunity to make use of it. In 2001, they won the right to have their own identity cards (though a male guardian must apply for them). Saudi businesswomen spoke eloquently, to long applause, at a major conference in Jeddah earlier this year. Since January, Saudi state TV has employed female newscasters.

The kingdom's best-known TV personality also happens to be a woman. Rania al-Baz won further fame earlier this year when her husband beat her almost to death. Instead of staying silent, as her mother would have done, Mrs al-Baz invited photographers into her hospital room to show the world her broken face. She has now formed a group to combat the abuse of women in Saudi Arabia.

”Saudi Arabia's Top Cleric Condemns Calls for Women's Rights,” Reuters, 22 January 22, 2004

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 21 — In a mounting struggle between reformists and conservatives, Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority has denounced calls for greater women's rights as a violation of Islamic teachings.

The official, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheik, also sharply criticized women who mixed unveiled among men at an economic conference this week in Jidda, Saudi Arabia. He said such behavior was a cause of "evil and catastrophe."

His comments, which amounted to a religious edict, were broadcast late Tuesday after the three-day conference in Jidda, which gave women a rare public platform to voice their grievances in the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam.

"This is prohibited for all," Sheik Abdulaziz said. "I severely condemn this matter and warn of grave consequences. I am pained by such shameful behaviour in the country of the two holy mosques," in Mecca and Medina.

"Allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe," he said. "It is highly punishable. Mixing of men and women is a reason for greater decadence and adultery."

He also criticized the appearance of women "without wearing the hijab ordered by God."

His comments seemed to be an attempt by Saudi Arabia's religious authorities to limit political reform in the conservative kingdom.

One Saudi academic who has followed Saudi Arabia's cautious reform effort said religious leaders monitored even "trivial things" like women's roles in the Jidda conference.

"If they see this as a violation of our purity and values and believe it opens the door of corruption, what about more concrete reforms?" he asked. "This could stop the reform process."

Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler in Saudi Arabia, pledged last week to press ahead with reform but said changes would be gradual and would conform with Islam. "This country is either Muslim or nothing at all," he said.

A leading businesswoman, Lubna Olayan, opened the conference on Saturday with a rallying call for equality in Saudi Arabia, her loose head scarf slipping occasionally off her head onto her shoulders as she spoke.

"My vision is of a country in which any Saudi citizen, irrespective of gender, who is serious about finding employment can find a job in the field for which he or she is best qualified," Ms. Olayan said. She also called for mutual respect regardless of "social class, religion or gender."

Women applauded a speech by the former President Bill Clinton, who said that Saudi Arabia could not fight the "tide of change" and that the Prophet Muhammad would have let his wife drive if cars had existed 1,400 years ago. Women are banned from driving in Saudi Arabia.

Although men and women at the meeting were segregated by a screen, women were able to cross into the men's section and mingle, much to the anger of conservatives.

"I decree that Muslims should beware, be alert and avoid being carried away by this propaganda, which destroys religion, morals and virtues," Sheik Abdulaziz said. "What was published in some newspapers about this being the start of liberating the Saudi woman — such talk is null and void. One's duty is to obey Shariah by complying with orders and shunning that which is forbidden." Shariah refers to Islamic law.

Saudi Arabia is ruled by an alliance of the House of Saud and powerful Wahhabi religious authorities.

Edward Pilkington, “Identity cards make first inroads into Saudi restrictions on women,” Guardian Weekly, 11 July 2002.

Saudi Arabia is to gender what apartheid South Africa was to race. In public life a woman is almost entirely segregated from men: excluded from the workplace, penned in special "family sections" in restaurants, taught in separate schools and colleges, and forbidden to drive.

Under the country's fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, her husband may marry up to four times but an adulterous woman faces death by stoning. Outside the home she must wear the abaya , a black gown which enshrouds her completely, except for a slit for the eyes.

There are signs, however, that the kingdom is reforming. It is not so much a wind of change as a puff, but it is significant. Women have been granted voluntary identity cards for use in banks and other public places. The card ends the iniquitous legal position in which a Saudi woman simply does not exist. As a child she is the ward of her father, as an adult the ward of her husband and as a widow the ward of her sons.

In a current case an Italian woman who divorced her Saudi husband because he wanted to take a second wife has been told she may never see her daughter again - the child will never reach independence and therefore will never have the right to choose to live with her.

The new ID has to be issued to a father or brother, rather than the woman herself, but it is being heralded as the first step towards proper legal recognition and the rights which flow from that. Before the cards were introduced a woman was not allowed to open a bank account without a male relative verifying her identity. Many have been swindled by husbands or brothers who pocketed their money, using another woman to pose as the account holder.

Other barriers are gradually being overcome by a new generation of ambitious, highly educated young women who account for more than half the school and university students. Nada al Fayez is typical of the new breed. At 26 she is a successful newspaper columnist and businesswoman (she plays the stock market).

Ms al Fayez is confident she will be among the first women government ministers in the next 10 years. But she is also aware of how far Saudi Arabia has to go. Women form only 4% of the workforce. While the country has been modernised rapidly in the past 50 years on the back of oil, social behaviour has not kept pace. "We developed the infrastructure, but we did not develop the mind," she said.

Selwa al Hazzaa is another of the new generation. She was the first woman in the kingdom to hold a top hospital job: five years ago she was made head of ophthamology at King Faisal hospital in the capital, Riyadh.

She points to the contrast between her life and that of her mother, who is only 15 years older. "My mother didn't go to school. She was only taught to read the Koran. Her father was a sheikh and she got married at 14. A huge jump has been made."

Ms al Fayez and Ms al Hazzaa live in Riyadh and have spent several years studying in the United States. As such, they are part of a tiny minority of urbane, Westernised women at the cutting edge of reform. Most Saudi women continue to be constrained by centuries-old restrictions legitimised by the country's harsh Salafi religion.

Vice police, the mutawwa, patrol public places and shopping malls to prevent young men and women mixing. In March a fire broke out at a girls' school in Mecca. According to local reports, the vice police prevented several girls fleeing the burning building because they were unveiled and would be exposed to male emergency workers. Fifteen died.

The traditional role of women is being challenged daily by satellite television images of scantily clad Hollywood stars beamed into most Saudi front rooms. Yet male attitudes remain doggedly opposed to change. Two young men in an internet cafe in Jeddah said they were fans of Sandra Bullock and Brooke Shields, whom they described as "cute". But asked whether their sisters should be allowed to drive, they were adamant. "A woman is like a queen here. She shouldn't drive," one said.

"Men are just scared of women being independent," said Layla, who works on computers in a segregated women's office at a private company in Jeddah and did not want to give her full name. "They have to control a woman to make them feel like men."

According to Western diplomatic sources, the Saudi royal family is considering giving driving licences to professional women aged over 40. The government is keen to break the taboo because the kingdom spends millions of dollars a year employing 500,000 immigrants as drivers.

Meanwhile there have been some attempts to liberalise the rules on wearing abayas. Shops began selling them in blue and brown, rather than the regulation black. The mutawwa objected and banned them. Now they are sold under the counter.

A few women believe the enforced wearing of abayas, the ban on driving and the segregation are products of Saudi Arabia's reactionary interpretation of the Muslim faith. "There is nothing in the Koran that says a woman can't drive, or has to have her face covered. This is male domination - not Islam," Layla said.

But most choose to follow these rigid social norms. Even Ms al Fayez would never drive and would allow her husband (she is not married) to take a second wife because it is sanctioned in the Koran. She is convinced that Saudi women will always cover themselves up. "If you come in a million years you will find Saudi women still wearing the black abaya. Yes, I want change, and yes, I want to prove myself. But that doesn't mean I want to lose my religion."

Spain

Molly Moore, “In Spain, women are shaping a cultural revolution,” Washington Post, 8 Oct. 2006.

MADRID - When Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega graduated from law school in the 1970s, Spanish law prohibited her -- and any other woman -- from becoming a judge, serving as a witness in court or opening a bank account.

Today, the angular, outspoken 57-year-old is Spain's first female vice president, helping orchestrate a cultural revolution in the boardrooms and living rooms of the country that coined the word machismo -- male chauvinism -- five centuries ago.

"We have a prime minister who not only says he's a feminist -- he acts like a feminist," Fernandez said in her cavernous office of polished wood floors and cream-colored sofas. "In 2 1/2 years, we have done more than has ever been done in such a short time in Spain."

Her Socialist government is requiring political parties to allot 40 percent of their candidate lists to women and is telling big companies to give women 40 percent of the seats on corporate boards. Half of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero's Cabinet members are women -- the highest proportion in any European government.

New divorce laws not only make it easier for couples to split, but stipulate that marital obligations require men to share the housework equally with their wives.

To draw more women into the armed forces, the government is shrinking the height requirements for women entering the National Guard and opening child-care centers on military bases.

Not even the royal family is immune: Zapatero wants to abolish the law giving male heirs first rights to the throne.

The push for gender equality in one of Europe's most macho cultures comes as internal and outside forces are creating seismic social shifts: Spanish women are taking greater control of their own lives by waiting longer to marry and having fewer children.

The European Union is exerting more pressure on members to enforce equality.

And the growth of high-tech businesses with a greater sensitivity to hiring women is expanding job opportunities.

The chief executives of Spain's IBM, Microsoft and Google operations are all women.

In many cases, they are not only hiring more female employees than traditional industries, but are also attempting to make the workplace more family-friendly.

Microsoft chief Rosa Maria Garcia, a 40-year-old mother of three, said she has mandated that no company meetings be scheduled before 8:30 a.m. or after 5:30 p.m. -- a revolutionary move in a country where workdays routinely stretch until 9 or 10 p.m.

Despite the advances, Fernandez said, "There is resistance. We have a long way to go."

Business organizations are attacking the proposed quotas for women on corporate boards.

Some Roman Catholic Church officials denounce decisions allowing gay couples to marry and liberalization of abortion laws as "demonic."

Despite new laws cracking down on domestic violence, the number of women killed by their partners has escalated this year -- in part, some sociologists believe, because men are striking back even harder at spouses who dare to report abuses to police.

Many men scoff at the law's efforts to legislate home life.

"Just because Zapatero says by law men have to do dishes, men are not going to do dishes," said Alberto Fuertes, a stocky, square-faced 37-year-old owner of a small factory. "That's ridiculous. It's totally absurd."

A recent government-sponsored television advertisement showed a man meticulously washing his car and admonished that if a guy can clean his auto, there's nothing unmanly in helping his wife pick up around the house.

Despite advances in government opportunities for women, the Spanish private sector remains one of the most chauvinistic in Europe.

Women sit on less than 5 percent of corporate boards and overall earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts. It remains common practice for companies to fire pregnant women, according to women's organizations and victims.

Turkey

"Turkey: Over-zealous imam boycotted," Women in the Middle East, Vol. 24, May 2004.

Turkish villagers have boycotted an imam who accused women of indecency simply for travelling on the same buses as men. Since being appointed to the mosque in the village of Kotanduzu a year ago, Mustafa Platin has also ordered women to don full chadors and instructed their husbands to force them to remain indoors if they refused to comply.

The imam's behaviour sparked a near-unprecedented rebellion. Villagers in the community perched high on a plateau in eastern Turkey have demanded his sacking and promised to boycott daily worship in the local mosque until a replacement imam is found.

Leyla Karsli, a 35-year-old mother of six, makes an unlikely temptress. She is shrouded in a headscarf concealing her mouth and buried in a shapeless, ankle-length gown. She was none the less a target for the imam. "He even wanted these ones to cover their heads," said Mrs Karsli, pulling her six-year-old twin daughters close to her.

The imam's superiors in Erzurum, the provincial capital, have ordered the cleric to undergo a series of medical examinations to shield him from prosecution.

”Uproar as Turkey plans virginity tests,” BBC News, 26 July 2001.

Girls as young as 14 could be subjected to tests

The human rights pressure group, Human Rights Watch, has called on Turkey to withdraw an order authorising virginity tests on nursing students suspected of having sex.

In a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, Human Rights Watch said that the order introduced by Health Minister Osman Durmus was a "profound violation of women's human rights".

The regulation says that girls studying at government-run nursing high schools should be expelled for having sex, and that those under suspicion should be subjected to gynaecological examinations.

It also says that, once expelled, girls should be forbidden from studying at any government institution.

Rat poison

The order has sparked an uproar in Turkey, with angry protests being made by women's and human rights groups.

Forced virginity tests on girls suspected of having had premarital sex were common until the practice was banned in 1999, when five girls attempted suicide by taking rat poison rather than submit to the tests.

Pre-marital sex under the age of 18 is illegal in Turkey.

"Imposition of this test on girls - and the subsequent denial of education opportunities based on test results - represent an intolerable form of gender discrimination," Human Rights Watch said in its letter.

A representative of the group's Women's Rights division, Martina Vandenberg, told the BBC that the Health Minister's order was an attempt to circumvent the 1999 ban.

She said the students - aged 14 to 18 - were children under international law, and had a right to education.

Grounds for suspicion

She added: "When it is enshrined in law that the state can force girls to take virginity tests, it has an effect on millions and millions of girls in Turkey, in the sense that there is constantly the threat of a virginity exam hanging over their head."

Even innocent activities, such as having a picnic with boys, could be perceived in Turkey as grounds for suspicion, she said.

The Health Ministry's order technically avoids the ban on forced virginity tests, because students enrolling at nursing schools would be voluntarily submitting themselves to the rules of the establishment.

Zimbabwe

”Zimbabwe Parliamentarian Claims Women's Inferiority,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 16 October 2006.

Timothy Mubhawu, a member of parliament (MP) in Zimbabwe, is insisting that the national assembly reject a bill that would criminalize domestic violence. He stated, “I stand here representing God the Almighty. Women are not equal to men. This is a dangerous bill, and let it be known in Zimbabwe that the rights, privileges, and status of men are gone,” IRIN reports.

The bill in question has drawn widespread support from the international and women’s communities. It strives to address the serious problem of domestic violence in Zimbabwe, where over 60 percent of murder cases are connected to domestic violence, and more than 8,000 rapes are reported annually.

Mubhawu’s sexist remarks have sparked the protests of 35 women’s organizations in Zimbabwe. Betty Makoni, founder of the Girl Child Network, a nongovernmental organization in Zimbabwe, told IRIN, “The MP made some very outrageous and gender-insensitive statements, and we have to express our anger by marching against him – he has made a lot of people angry. It is unfortunate that such statements should come from an official who should be representing both women and men in parliament.”

”Zimbabwe,” AfricaWired.com, May 1999.

"In Harare, when soft-spoken Vennia Magaya was evicted from her deceased father's house, her TV set and oven thrown out into the yard after her, she thought it wasn't right. So she sued her half brother for evicting her. She had a compelling case. The nation's constitution, a separate law enforcing women's rights and several international human-rights treaties that Zimbabwe signed clearly backed her claim as heir to her father's estate.

But in a stunning reversal of fortune for Zimbabwean women in particular and African women in general, the nation's Supreme Court overruled or challenged almost every law relating to women's rights in Zimbabwe and gave the house to her half brother. In a landmark 5-0 decision, the court said the "nature of African society" dictates that women are not equal to men, especially in family relationships. The court said centuries-old African cultural norms, which are not written down, say women should never be considered adults within the family, but only as a "junior male," or teenager.

"I was shocked," said Ms. Magaya, a 58-year-old seamstress, who now rents a one-room shack. "I thought things had changed. But they haven't. If you're a woman, you can't do anything." Experts say the ruling, handed down last month, strips Zimbabwe's women of almost all the rights that they had gained since the nation broke free of colonial rule 20 years ago. It runs contrary to progressive rulings for women's rights in other African countries, such as Botswana and South Africa, and it may slow down the modest advances women have been making on the world's poorest continent."

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