Opinion piece by Karim Al Kharsa, Visiting Contributor

February 7th, 2022

"I preferred to live as the master of men, not their servant." This is a quote said by one of Egypt’s first feminists, Nabawiyya Musa. She was one of the first pioneers to fight for women’s equal rights to education and journalism in Egypt. For the longest time, women in the MENA region have been protesting for a better reform in governmental laws in the hopes of being viewed and treated as equally as men. According to the Global Justice Center (2007), the gap between men and women in the Middle East plays a huge role in the region’s decreased social, political, and economic development. The World Bank (2019) shows that the percentage of men and women in the Middle East is as follows: 48% of females and 52% of males. This indicates that 48% of the population is neglected and not taken into consideration when it comes to implementing new laws that can enhance their economy and increase the wellbeing of the general population. However, even with the increased attempts from local and international sources to prompt change and apply a new reform in the region to provide women with their rights, a couple of issues arise that stop women from attaining their rights and their chances to enter the justice system. Regardless of the efforts of some countries in the region to prompt equality between men and women, there are still laws that are implemented by the government that hinder the chances of change in the region. Men and women should have the right to live in a society where they are both treated equally with no laws that restrict them from attaining their natural right to live a fair and comfortable life.

To start, the Domestic laws (family, criminal and personal laws) that are implemented in the MENA region have increased the discrimination against women by lowering their status compared to that of the male in the region. These laws cover personal issues such as marriage, divorce, freedom to move up classes, and citizenship. The way these laws increase discrimination against women is as follows: they foster the patriarchal system that gives the higher power to men in society. This is very clear today: men are considered to be the breadwinners of the family and mothers cannot pass their citizenships to their children, although the fathers can. All things related to government documents center back to the father and not the mother. Moreover, men are placed at a higher level than women when it comes to criminal justice. Let’s take the example of a rape allegation: the government officials and police stations never take women seriously. A man can kill his wife if she commits adultery or if a woman (sister, daughter, etc.) has sex outside marriage through a law called “Jarimet Sharaf”, since, in the MENA region, the “Sharaf”, in other words the ego and honor of a man, is more valuable in society than women are. According to UN Women (2020), approximately around 37% of Arab women have been subjected to some types of gender-based violence in their lifetime. They also estimate that around 4 out of 10 women are killed by their intimate partners for a variety of reasons, one of which includes honor crimes. Thus, laws like these put women at a higher risk of being subjected to violence. Unfortunately, even with the help of NGOs in the MENA region, for example KAFA in Lebanon, the percentage of women that are being subjected to violent acts every single day is still at an all-time high. This legal discrimination that is implemented by the government puts women in a very vulnerable position in society and weakens their power and their social participation compared to men.

To add onto that, even though some Arab countries have implemented and introduced laws that protect and provide women with their rights, these laws are useless if they are not implemented and applied correctly. For example, according to Johansson-Nogués (2013), in Tunisia, the government provided women with their rights, but the reason behind that isn’t because they deemed it necessary but rather to have this image that they do care about women’s rights, just to be able to get help and funds from the UN and other external sources. It also explains how politicians use women’s rights as tools during their election speeches just to rally up more votes, but then after they are elected, they dismiss the entire situation and do not implement any change when it comes to providing women of the region with their basic rights. Moreover, the MENA region is known to hold on to its traditional customs and values, which can overrule some governmental laws and can affect how the society would react to certain changes that the government does if it goes against them. For example, some Arabic countries still practice underage marriage even though it is legally prohibited, and that is because underage marriages have always been considered normal, and even though these societies have progressed, some still hold on to this practice due to the weak educational systems. In cases similar to those of underage marriage, the state rarely interferes since they believe that these are private family matters, thus they do not concern them. For example, in Lebanon, the minimum age for marriage is 18, yet the sectors and religious groups state otherwise, and a country like Lebanon is built on sectarianism in which the government grants these sectors the power to overrule their official law since they can still get married religiously. Hence, the government and the people should both be held accountable for the discrimination that is found against women in the MENA region, since both play a role in what is implemented in society and what is not.

Finally, it is against the law in some MENA region countries for women to act as judges or public prosecutors. Even in the countries where it is not illegal, women are bombarded with restrictions and limitations to practice as judges and to some extent, they are disregarded and ignored when it comes to applying for judge positions. The reason for that is the following: most Arab countries believe that women are too emotional to act as judges and cannot be objective when it comes to prosecuting someone in court. This leads to males having a higher power when it comes to legalizing laws and creating new ones with time. Even after the rise of women during the Arab Spring, there still exists a gap between men and women when it comes to entering governmental positions. According to Carmen Geha (2018), an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the American University of Beirut, only 3% of the elected members of the Lebanese parliament are female, compared to 20% in North African countries like Morocco. She stated that multiple reasons behind this phenomenon exist: she starts by discussing how Lebanon consists of political parties that are mainly male-dominated and that are fixated on sectarianism. She moves on to talk about how the Lebanese legal system discriminates against women in many areas of their personal lives, which affects their public roles. Finally, she ends the discussion by saying that the patriarchal society favors men over women in all aspects of life. Hence the consequence of the lack of female representation in society hinders the chances of any gendered law reform happening in the MENA region. Moreover, the lack of any female representation in courts limits female voices from any access to legal decision making, especially when it comes to situations such as divorce, marriage, rape allegations, and murders (hence, honor killings).

Overall, the issue of gendered laws in the MENA region is still very much prominent in today’s world. Arab women have been trying to fight these laws for years in order to live in peace, fairness, and equality, yet there are always different obstacles that hinder this fight to live on. Even though there has been a significant shift in the way some Arab countries view and treat women, the majority of the countries found in the MENA region still neglect the importance of women in society. Nevertheless, if we were to work together as a collective, as a unit to try our best to close this gap found between men and women, there may be hope for this reform to one day be implemented in all of the countries of the MENA region. As Nawal Al-Saadawi once said, “Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change and can influence future development in ways favorable not only to women but also to men.”

References

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Johansson-Nogués, E. (2013). Gendering the arab spring? rights and (in)security of Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan women. Security Dialogue, 44(5-6), 393–409. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010613499784

Lebanese Women in Politics. (2018). YouTube. https://youtu.be/WO3RMu1mB5Y.

Puri-Mirza, A. (2021, February 5). Mena: Gender share of Labor Participation by country 2019. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201320/mena-gender-share-of-labor-participation-by-country/.

 Women, U. N. (2020). Facts and figures. UN Women | Arab States. https://arabstates.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures.

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