Opinion Analysis by Roa Daher, Featured Writer

April 15th, 2021

In the span of a few decades, Lebanon went from being one of the first Arab countries to grant women suffrage in 1952 to now having one of the lowest rates of women’s political participation in the MENA region. Even though more than 100 women candidates registered in the 2018 parliamentary elections, which is a ten-fold increase from just a decade earlier and the largest number in Lebanese history, women only won 6 out of 128 seats in the parliament. 49.69% of the Lebanese population is composed of women, and yet these women only hold 4.69% of the seats in parliament. Beyond the obvious issue of a lack of representation in politics, women face many obstacles that may prevent them from seeking a seat in the parliament, never mind actually winning the seat against a male candidate. The origins of the mechanisms that negatively impact women’s political participation lie in Lebanon’s colonial past; however, that foundation was further perpetuated and strengthened by the pluralistic Personal Status Codes that disproportionately target women in matters of divorce, child custody, and spouse pecuniary rights. If a woman is lucky enough to not be affected by the punitive personal status laws, that actually give her an unequal legal status, another barrier awaits her: political parties. The sectarian nature and patriarchal structures of political parties in Lebanon prevent women from entering the political sphere and gaining their rightful representation. In fact, sectarianism is so deeply entrenched into every aspect of Lebanese society, whether it is through political parties, legislation, or Personal Status Codes, that it plays a key role in excluding women from politics at every stage.

What the French Mandate Left Behind

While Lebanon was still under the French Mandate, a Representative Council hired by the French High Commissioner completed the daunting task of writing the Lebanese constitution. Since then, the constitution has been amended, though it remains evidently influenced by and strongly rooted in the French liberal tradition. The seventh article of the constitution, which is derived from the French Declaration of Human Rights, states, “All Lebanese shall be equal before the law. They shall equally enjoy civil and political rights and shall equally be bound by public obligations and duties without any distinction”. Unfortunately, this article does not reflect the reality that millions of Lebanese women face every day, especially women coming from poorer socio-economic classes. In true liberal fashion, the constitution emphasises de jureequality (or the legal right of equality) for women, without actually making any strides to help women achieve de facto equality (or equality in fact). The reason article 7 fails in its application is that it does not consider the social, political, and religious factors that restrict women’s rights in Lebanon, which is in line with the liberal tradition of focusing on the word of law and nothing else. Furthermore, article 7 does not protect women because it is directly contradicted by article 9, which confirms that the personal status of an individual will be respected according to their respective religious sect; due to the nature of the Personal Status Codes, article 9 gives religious courts the power to infringe on the rights promised to women in article 7. Lastly, even though the constitution has some obvious liberal influences, they remain quite selective. For instance, the constitution refers to the smallest individual unit of Lebanese society as a patriarchal family, rather than the individual which is usually the case in liberal thought. This only emphasises the degree to which women are at the mercy of religious courts and the men of their families according to the word of law. The structural and institutional barriers to women’s legal equality as citizens build women’s political exclusion into the very fabric of what it means to be a Lebanese woman.

How Courts Can Legally Discriminate Against Women

The Personal Status Codes (قانون الأحوال الشخصية) in Lebanon are described as pluralistic because there are fifteen different Personal Status Codes for the different recognised religions and sects in Lebanon, meaning that every sect has separate courts and different sets of laws that govern matters that fall under the courts’ jurisdiction. There is no other optional civil code available under Lebanese law, though civil marriages officiated outside of Lebanon are recognised and governed by the laws of the country where the marriage took place. Thus, the state leaves the lives of women in the hands of the inherently oppressive and discriminatory religious courts, with almost no hope for justice as the state cannot overrule the decisions of religious courts. The patriarchal-sectarian legal system guarantees women diminished legal status after marriage by discreetly implementing the unnamed practice of coverture whereby a woman is legally represented by her husband as she ceases to have her own independent legal status. The United Nations Human Rights Watch concluded that women continuously encounter discrimination in matters of marriage, divorce, and child custody, regardless of the religion or sect they marry into. Given that women have only ever gained their rights from the secular parts of the stateand not religious institutions, there appears to be limited hope that women will ever receive equal treatment under the Lebanese Personal Status Codes. The inherent discriminatory nature of the Lebanese legal system prevents the establishment of any level field for women’s entry to the political sphere in Lebanon.

Abolish Sectarianism and Embrace Women’s Equality

The only way that women can only break free from the hands of oppression, in a country when sectarianism invades all social and political aspects of life, is by abolishing the sectarian system. Political sectarianism within Lebanese society is so pervasive that the Lebanese identity is almost inseparable from one’s religious sect, and there is no civil society outside the sectarian sphere. Thus, political parties are inherently sectarian, which makes it all the more difficult for Lebanese women to enter the political sphere because of the strong tradition of political familism in Lebanon. Political familism has been defined to be, “the deployment of family institutions, ideologies, idioms (idiomatic kinship), practices, and relationships by citizens to activate their demands in relation to the state and by state actors to mobilize practical and moral grounds for governance based on a civic myth of kinship and public discourse that privileges family”. In other words, political familism describes what we have been seeing in Lebanon for decades now: a tradition of seeing political parties as patriarchal legacies passed on from father to son and restricted within the family. A woman has a better chance of gaining a seat in the parliament through the death of her father or husband, if she belongs to a political family, than she does by running for parliament and being voted in. This way of gaining access to the political sphere is not especially attainable or sustainable for the vast majority of women in Lebanon, and actually allows the political parties led by men to control women’s political inclusion and representation. The sectarian power-sharing system that is embedded into the constitution, and came about as a result of religious civil conflict in Lebanon, has carried over many women’s issues in the legal realm and it continues to enable discrimination against women. 

The way that different systems within Lebanon all contribute to the political exclusion of women is not entirely clear at first, but a deep look into the legal history of women in Lebanon quickly exposes the foundations for women’s inequality in Lebanon. With systematic obstacles at every point of entry, a legal system that does not consider women as equal and full citizens, and sectarian political parties that purposefully exclude women, it is a wonder that Lebanese women have any representation in parliament. The 2022 elections are coming up, and with them comes hope for women’s representation in parliament. With them, comes hope for legislation that recognises women as equal and full citizens capable of passing on our citizenship to our children at the very least. With them, comes a need for the abolishment of the Personal Status Codes that trap women in abusive marriages and rob them of their children. With them, comes the need for the elimination of the patriarchal-sectarian system that benefits men and causes the suffering of countless women. Political representation is only the tip of the iceberg; the issues spoken about in this article prevent women in Lebanon from improving their quality of life in any number of different ways on a daily basis. The state needs to do better: it needs to give women full legal rights and full protection under Lebanese law and abolish the punitive Personal Status Codes. Give women the recognition and help that they deserve.

This article is published as part of the SawtixThe Phoenix Daily Partnership.

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