Arab Spring and Arab Women

Muhamad Olimat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781857437126
• eBook ISBN: 9781317937371
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume examines the role of Arab women in Arab Spring and their contribution to the ongoing process of change sweeping the region. The book begins with an examination of the process of democratization and its impediments in the Arab World since the Second World War. It then looks at the conditions that led to the upsurge of the so-called Arab Spring. Finally, it underscores women's role as participants, organizers, leaders, but also as victims.

The main thesis of the book is that while Arab women were an integral part of the revolutionary efforts within the Arab Spring paradigm, they did not benefit from their sacrifices. Although they continue to be part of the process of change, their gains, rights and scope for participation are still limited. If the expansion of women's participation and the scope of their rights do not seem to be a priority for revolutionary forces, women have made remarkable achievements, especially in some Arab Spring countries such as Yemen and Libya.

The book includes case studies of some Arab Spring countries and other countries influenced by developments: Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. It calls on revolutionary and reformist forces to give special attention to issues related to Arab women, as they are an indispensable pillar in the process of reform, development, peace and stability in the Middle East.

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Arab women and political development

Rowaida al-Maaitah, Arwa Oweis, Muntaha Gharaibeh, Hmoud Olimat and Hadeel al-Maaitah

Introduction

This chapter highlights the journey of Arab women in politics within the contexts of political participation, democratization and the Arab Spring. The case of Jordan will be presented as an example of how the journey of women’s empowerment and democratization can be achieved within the challenges of regional instability, and political, economical, cultural and legal stressors.

Arab women and political development: an overview

The Arab region comprises 22 states that are members of the Arab League and is confined by a complex set of issues, including the Arab–Israeli conflict and its repercussions in addition to the Arab Spring, unstable economic conditions, the population-resource imbalances and environmental stressors.¹ The Arab region is not in isolation from the global debate on women and human rights, where the political will plays a major role in enhancing Arab women’s development.

The movement of gender equality in the Arab world is not well documented. Early signs were evident in the movement of girl’s education in the 19th century, which started in the early 20th century to involve active participation of women in national efforts on social development.² Arab women did not have any formal participation in politics in the past but they were not absent from the Arab struggles for freedom and national independence through their informal participation.³ In 1919 women in Egypt fully participated in the demonstration for independence during the British occupation. In addition, women in Sudan struggled and fought against the military regime in 1964 and 1985. Similar and strong informal political participation was noted among women in Algeria and is continuing among women in the Palestinian Territories. In addition, Jordanian women formulated the Jordanian Women’s Union in January 1945 and joined the efforts to fight for independence from the British.⁴

Further advancement on the women’s movement was witnessed during the 1950s and 1960s by the aspirations of progressive groups to place women on the Arab agenda as part of overall national development plans during the period of independence of many Arab countries.⁵ The League of Arab States established a Women Committee in the Secretariat of the League in the early 1970s and adopted the Arab Strategy for the Advancement of Women.⁶ Consequently, by the mid-1980s both the discourse and the interventions of the Arab countries changed their strategy for women’s development. They realized that change cannot be achieved through working with women alone, but rather by mobilizing men and society as a whole to take responsible action to introduce social and political change. Most Arab states have joined the international agreements and conventions on women, most notably the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).⁷

The 1990s witnessed the emergence of the concept of a ‘gender approach’, and just after the Beijing Conference governments of the Arab countries began to develop strategies and national plans targeting women as well as mainstreaming gender in national policies. In response to that, policies focusing on gender equality, especially with regard to women’s rights, were formulated and national strategies aiming to empower women and address issues for the advancement of Arab women’s role in politics, economic and social development were developed.⁸ This created a huge demand on the local governments and international donors as well as on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to support activities targeting women’s programmes and projects in several areas, particularly in education, health and poverty alleviation.⁹ With time, more interests have been directed to gender equality and the importance and nature of Arab women’s role in politics and decision making.

An important impact of the Beijing Conference is the increasing number and roles of NGOs in advocating more rights for Arab women, including political participation, and becoming active partners in promoting gender equity.¹⁰ Many Arab countries have made progressive steps towards changing legislation to enhance the equality of women in labour law, social security, and introducing more measures to protect women against violence.¹¹ In addition to the United Nations (UN), international women conferences and summits Arab women were heavily involved in regional and international forums to enhance the development of women in the region, which created a momentum and political will to advance women’s status in the Arab world. Throughout their participation in forums, Arab women shifted the nature of their participation from passive to active participants, influencing women’s priorities within the framework of political, social and economical domains.

Another important landmark for Arab women was the establishment of the Arab Women Organization (AWO) in 2003 under the umbrella of the League of Arab States, in Egypt.¹² The AWO aims to address women’s issues in regional and international forums to raise awareness of the situation of Arab women. It seeks to achieve women’s empowerment through policies furthering legislation based on equality and competence, integrating women’s issues within the priorities of comprehensive development schemes, raising grassroots awareness on issues pertaining to women and their ability to participate in decision making at all levels. As a result, more collaboration was witnessed at the national level in Arab countries among non-governmental and governmental organizations to advance women’s agenda, prepare comprehensive national reports on the status of women in each country, and co-ordinate national and regional efforts for their participation in regional and international forums.

Political participation of Arab women

Women’s journey to attain their rights and involvement in political life has been and continues to be replete with different waves of struggles, progress and drawbacks. An important measure of women’s development is their voice in the decision-making sphere, as measured by their participation in public life and in professional associations. A common definition of political participation is an activity intended to influence the work of the government, either directly by influencing the policy makers or by implementing policies, or indirectly by influencing the selection of persons who make these policies.¹³

Women’s empowerment was one of the main themes of the political reform that was discussed during the Arab Summit in Tunisia in May 2004.¹⁴ Arab leaders, for the first time, discussed the issue of advancing Arab women as an essential element of the political and economical development of the Arab world. Full participation of women at all levels of the decision-making cycle and political life was also considered as a critical drive for achieving international benchmarks indicated by the Beijing Platform for Action, the UN CEDAW, the MDGs, UN Security Council Resolution 1325, as well as the 23rd UN special session of the General Assembly, which called for the full participation of women at all levels of decision making, including peace processes, peace-keeping and peace-building.¹⁵

The investment of Arab countries in education, health, job creation and greater political rights has influenced women’s advancement and development. The focus on state modernization of many Arab countries benefited the status of Arab women where many national initiatives related to women’s empowerment have emerged and were led by female political figures and local communities.

Progressive policies were adopted at the national level, especially by countries characterized by labour-intensive and export-oriented economies, such as Tunisia and Morocco.¹⁶ These countries realized the importance of the need for social change through integration of women in the labour market to improve the economies of their countries; therefore, women’s development has been addressed within the context of nation building.

Most Arab countries established different forms of ministries and national institutions for women with the objective of achieving gender equity. Separate ministries for women’s affairs were established in the Palestinian Territories, Algeria, Egypt and Iraq, for example. Other countries formed women’s councils or committees, as in Bahrain, Jordan and Lebanon, or a mixed model of women’s councils and ministries at the same time, as in Jordan and Egypt.¹⁷ The formulated councils or ministries have the responsibilities of planning, recommending policies and legislation, monitoring and co-ordinating activities for various women’s issues, as well as preparing the national reports for the UN.¹⁸ Many women’s organizations have succeeded in initiating modifications in some laws, lifting reservations on CEDAW and introducing general strategies/plans for a gender component in national plans.

For example, Arab countries like Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and the Palestinian Territories adopted some form of affirmative action such as party quotas or reserving seats for women in parliament to ensure their political participation.¹⁹ However, like other countries in the world, the vast majority of the Arab countries failed to achieve the target of Beijing 1995 benchmarks of 30% women representation in decision making.²⁰ Actually, the Arab world reported the least participation of women parliamentarians in the world, as it amounts to 13.8% compared to 6.5% seven years ago.²¹ According to Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) statistics from February 2013, women only comprised 20.4% of the world’s parliamentarians in the lower and upper houses of parliament. The only region that exceeded the Beijing 1995 benchmarks was the Nordic countries, where representation amounts to 42% in the lower house of parliament.²²

In 2013 only 33 countries in the world achieved the target of at least 30% representation by women in parliament.²³ Rwanda had the highest percentage of women in the lower house of parliament in the world (56.3%), and Burundi ranked first in the world (46.3%) for the upper house of parliament. While still under-represented in the parliaments, Arab women are rapidly increasing in numbers in political systems. In recent years, women in the gulf countries have achieved significant breakthroughs by participating in parliamentary elections and Shura councils. Kuwait granted women the right to vote and run for elections in 2005.²⁴ Four courageous Kuwaiti women broke through to win the election through tough competition with their fellow men. The debate about women in politics has become absolutely vital to public debate and a cornerstone of Arab governments’ economic and social agenda.

The number of seats allocated to women varies in the different Arab countries. Among them, Tunisia reported the highest percentage of women in the lower house of parliament (26.7%), followed by South Sudan (26.5%), Iraq (25.2%) and Sudan (24.66%). Bahrain reported the highest percentage of women in the upper house of parliament (27.5%). Egypt, Oman and Yemen ranked the lowest in women’s participation in the lower house of parliament, with none in Qatar. The most remarkable of the 2013 statistics is Saudi Arabia, where women have participated for the first time in the council of Shura, which is appointed by the King.

Among all Arab countries, Iraq is the only one that included the women’s quota in its constitution in 2005 rather than in its election law, as in other countries. Although the quota system is still a debatable issue, the experience of Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan and Jordan suggests that it is a good mechanism to increase women’s representation in legislative bodies. The introduction of the quota system has led to an increase in the percentage of female members of parliament (MPs) in Morocco from 1% in 1995, to 10.5% in 2010, to 17% in 2013.²⁵ Moroccan political parties that adopted a quota on their ‘party list’ set an outstanding example for other Arab political parties. Many Arab parties tend to ignore women candidates in their lists, based on their belief that women are not capable of winning seats in elections because they lack leadership skills while political parties are still shaky and/or young in many countries of the Arab world.

Women’s access to e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: democratization, Arab Spring and Arab women
• 1. Arab women and political development
• 2. Gender empowerment in Algeria
• 3. Bahraini women and the Arab Spring: meeting the challenges of empowerment and emancipation
• 4. An Egyptian Spring for women?
• 5. The role of women in the Egyptian revolution of 25 January 2011
• 6. The Arab Spring and women in Kuwait
• 7. Prospects for women in the new Libya
• 8. The struggle for women’s rights in Morocco: from historical feminism to 20 February 2011 activism
• 9. Saudi Arabian women’s rights and the Arab Spring uprisings: contextualizing grassroots activism and state reforms
• 10. The status of women in Syria before and during the Arab Spring
• 11. Social networks and women’s rights activism in post-revolutionary Tunisia
• 12. The Arab Spring: the beginning or the end of women’s dreams in Yemen?
• Conclusion
• Index