W is for...Women...and Wrong impressions

is for

Egyptian musician Maii Waleed, collaborating here with Zeid Hamdan, a Lebanese producer, in Hsafeer Ba'aeid 

and also Dina el Wedidy, another emerging Egyptian musical star, with her Sokoun (Tranquillity) -

And if you are not in the mood to read a long and somewhat cantankerous post, you should stop while the going is feel-good with this music.  But if you want to feel hot and bothered like me, then go right ahead…

Women

I keep getting these vibes from non-Arabs about how Arab women are ‘oppressed,’ ‘not empowered,’ ‘can't access education,’ and somehow ‘forced’ to wear the hijab. Let’s talk some facts and kick the stuffing out of these stereotypes!

Firstly, Bahrain, where I am now: Bahraini women’s situation in particular is different from their much larger and notorious neighbour Saudi Arabia. Here’s an excerpt from a book by a couple of Western authors, one of whom grew up in Bahrain.

Bahrainis are more politically advanced than elsewhere in the Arabian Gulf because Bahrain has a longer exposure to Western style institutions. Prior to 1930, the Ruler of Bahrain appointed a British advisor who introduced elements of British law into the Bahraini legal system. Bahrain was the first country in the region to hold parliamentary elections in 1973 and 2002, women were probably the first in the region to have the right to vote.

Culture Shock! Bahrain: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette – Harvey Tripp, Margaret Tripp.

According to the UNDP study on Gender Inequality, Bahrain is second among the GCC countries in Gender Inequality Index (GII), second to UAE by a hairsbreadth. Here is a recap:

Country	GII 2016	Global Rank (in 188 countries)	% women’s share of seats in parliament	% female population 25+ with some secondary education (male)	% women  in labour force (15+)
Arab
Libya	0.167	38	16.0	65.7 (44.2)	27.8
UAE	0.232	46	22.5	77.4 (64.5)	41.9
Bahrain	0.233	48	15.0	61.6 (55.6)	39.2
Saudi Arabia	0.257	50	19.9	63.3 (72.1)	20.1
Oman	0.281	54	8.2	59.8 (57.1)	30.0
Tunisia	0.289	58	31.3	37.5 (49.9)	25.1
Kuwait	0.335	70	1.5	56.8 (58.1)	48.4
Lebanon	0.381	83	3.1	53.0 (55.4)	23.5
Algeria	0.429	94	25.7	34.1 (35.7)	16.8
Jordan	0.478	111	11.6	78.5 (82.7)	14.2
Morocco	0.494	113	15.7	26.7 (33.2)	25.3
Iraq	0.525	123	26.5	35.8 (55.5)	15.1
Qatar	0.542	127	0.0	70.9 (67.8)	53.6
Syria	0.554	133	12.4	34.8 (43.4)	12.2
Egypt	0.565	135	2.2	54.5 (68.2)	22.8
Chart-topper n benchmarks
Switzerland	0.040	1	28.9	96.1 (97.4)	62.7
UK	0.131	28	26.7	81.3 (84.6)	56.9
USA	0.203	43	19.5	95.4 (95.1)	56.0

It leaps off the page that in most Gulf countries, more women than men have secondary education. Bahraini women certainly are not denied schooling!  In twenty years, I haven’t met a Bahraini who was not literate. The overall literacy is 95.7% here, so it figures! 

A greater percentage of women participate too, in the labour force in the Gulf as compared to other Arab nations. Political participation is a different matter altogether, but then again, nowhere in the world is it perfect, is it? Not even in the strongholds of democracy do women have adequate representation, so what of these here, which are just a few decades into their lives as independent nations? 

Now onto Egypt, where I was just before I came to Bahrain. Egypt is a painful instance of regression over the last few decades, they started out very differently.  Again, don’t take my word for it, I am an outsider, read what Alaa al Aswany, a famous Egyptian author, essayist, social commentator and a US-trained dentist, has to say:

In the aftermath of the 1919 uprising against the British occupation, the pioneering Hoda Shaarawi took the Turkish burka off her face at a public ceremony as a sign that the liberation of the country was inseparable from the liberation of women. Egyptian women were truly the pioneers for women in the Arab world: the first to be educated and to work in every field, the first to drive cars and fly planes, and the first to enter parliament and government.  But at the end of 1970’s Egyptians fell under the influence of fundamentalist ideas and the Wahhabi school of thought proliferated, with the support of oil money, whether through satellite television or…the Egyptians who worked for years in Saudi Arabia and came back saturated with fundamentalist ideas.

On the State of Egypt – the Issues that Caused the Revolution.

Alaa al Aswany.

For all the depressing figures, there are still many, many educated women working in every field in Egypt, and across all of Arablands.  A quarter of the Egyptian female population is still more than 10 million.  

This is not to claim that women’s situation is not a concern – in Egypt particularly - Wahhabism, Female Genital Mutilation and sexual molestation remain major issues.  But it is equally wrong to assume all Egyptian/Arab women are uneducated, powerless, browbeaten, spineless wilting lilies, covered top-to-toe in veils, who don't know their own minds. This attitude is patronising and insulting and frankly, weird. Read about some prominent Egyptian women here. 

And watch this Saudi video which went viral last year.  The lyrics translate to 'Oh God rid us of these men.' :) Times they are a-changing, even in the final bastion of patriarchy! 

Oh yes, nearly forgot - the misplaced Worry re hijabs. I've known Arab and Muslim women who wear it, and those who don’t. As a random example, I once knew a young woman who wore the hijab to work because she didn’t want to “deal with hair issues at 6 a.m.” and never covered her hair for social occasions/in the evening.  And I have known others, deeply devout, who wore it as a religious duty. Some women wear it as an identity marker, others as a fashion statement. There's no law that forces women to wear the hijab in Bahrain. Or Egypt, though there has been a spike in veiling as mentioned before.

It seems to me beyond belief that the hijab is conflated with degree of freedom, or ambition, or education, or anything else. It's a non-issue, women should be free to make their own choices re attire and not be discriminated against for wearing/not wearing a scarf, or a dupatta, or a certain length of hemline, full stop. People really need to get over this obsession with what women wear, everywhere in the world! 

An apology for the length of this post, and thank you for your patience if you've read through till here.  It's just one of those topics where word limits get thrown into the wastepaper basket. 

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2017