Progress on women’s rights in Jordan too slow — activists

AMMAN — Progress towards gender equality in Jordan remains “very slow”, women’s rights activists said on Sunday.

Speaking at a panel discussion on gender equality, Layla Naffa, director of projects at the Arab Women’s Organisation, said that Kingdom needed to take further steps to improve women’s situation.    

“We have made some progress in including women in education and the workforce, but we still have a long way to go to achieve gender equality, especially in the arena of laws,” she said.

“Changes are happening but they are very slow. Family restrictions on women remain a big challenge to achieving gender equality as well.”

Abla Abu Olbeh, secretary general of the Jordanian People’s Democratic Party (Hashed), said that the “slow progress” in advancing women’s rights was due to public “neglect” of the issue. 

“We must admit that since the 1960, women’s issues have never occupied a major place on the public agenda. The political environment has never been friendly to public issues. Women have been marginalised and we are still fighting for basic rights.”

Nermeen Murad, a women’s rights activist and political analyst, said that acknowledging differences among Arab women was essential to achieving gender equality in the region.

“We need to acknowledge differences between Arab women. Not all Arab and all Muslim women are the same. But we are all fighting for one cause. We must agree to these differences and respect them to work together.”

According to Political Development Ministry Secretary General Malek Twal, changing the school curriculum to become gender-sensitive is the key to achieving progress on this issue in Jordan.

“Our curriculum is embedded with stereotypical views on gender roles and full of inequalities. When our children read this in school, they grow up with prejudice and misconceptions about gender roles. Changing our textbooks to make sure they are gender-sensitive is equally important to amending loopholes in legislation.”

The panel discussion, “Equality, so when?” was organised by the Swedish embassy in Amman as part of a week of activities dedicated to women’s rights and gender equality.

Speaking on the panel, Swedish Ambassador to Jordan Charlotta Sparre noted that gender equality is crucial to societal development. 

“Gender equality is not only a question of human rights. Society loses out if we do not utilise the force of women at work and education. Women’s participation in the economic sphere is not about taking jobs from men, but it is essential to increasing society’s overall productivity.”

Despite the Arab revolt, women remain shackled to past

Groped ... Sonia Dridi was attacked after her live broadcast.

The camera was still rolling when men began jostling Sonia Dridi, a glamorous television journalist for France 24 news. She was filming near Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of a supposed democratic awakening in the Middle East. What happened to Dridi suggests the so-called Arab Spring has been an exercise in wishful thinking in the West.

Even in public, with a TV crew filming, the men could not restrain themselves. About two dozen men began jostling Dridi, groping her, then tearing at her clothes. A male colleague, Ashraf Khalil, placed her in a protective bear hug. ''The crowd surged in and then it went crazy,'' he told the Associated Press.

The brazen nature and number of sexual assaults against local and foreign women during the recent upheavals point to a widespread level of sexual repression that goes far deeper than the surface tensions.
He also saw a bigger, darker picture: ''Sexual harassment is a 20-year problem here, but now there's a feeling of impunity, the knowledge that the police won't do anything, and it breeds this culture of lawlessness.''

It was not the first, second, third, fourth or even fifth time a foreign female journalist was sexually assaulted and had to be rescued by colleagues and passers-by while covering the Arab Spring.

Advertisement In June, a British journalism student, Natasha Smith, 21, was sexually assaulted by a mob near Tahrir Square while filming a TV documentary. ''Men started ripping off my clothes,'' she told CNN. ''My skirt went, my underwear was ripped away, then my shoes, then the clothes on my upper half were just ripped off.''

During the height of the demonstrations last year, an American TV correspondent, Lara Logan, was sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square. She later told CBS: ''Hands grabbing my breasts, grabbing my crotch … They just tore my pants to shreds, and then I felt my underwear go, I remember looking up and seeing them taking pictures with their cell phones, the flashes of their cell phones.''

It was one of a string of similar assaults in the past 22 months as demonstrations spread through the Middle East after Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself alight in December 2010, in protest against police harassment. Lost in the scale of it all is that the official who pushed Bouazizi to the brink was a woman, Faida Hamdi, which heightened his sense of public humiliation.

The demonstrations against government corruption, which then swept through the region, claimed dictatorships in Egypt and Libya, rulers in Tunisia and Yemen, caused shake-ups in Morocco, Algeria and Bahrain, and took Syria into civil war. One thing has not changed - the treatment of women.

On March 9 last year, Egyptian security forces arrested 18 women in Tahrir Square. All were subjected to "virginity tests", ostensibly to prove no sexual violence had occurred.

Last November, a French TV journalist, Caroline Sinz, was attacked and sexually assaulted by a group of men and boys while covering the protests. Within days, an Egyptian-American journalist, Mona Eltahawy, was sexually assaulted by police while in detention in Cairo. She suffered broken bones in both wrists and later described a group sexual assault: ''Five or six [police] surrounded me, groped and prodded my breasts, grabbed my genital area and I lost count how many hands tried to get into my trousers.''

In March last year, a photographer for The New York Times, Lynsey Addario, was repeatedly sexually assaulted while held captive by a militia group in Libya. The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, later expressed concern about reports of "wide-scale" rape in the Libyan conflict.

Today, Islamic fundamentalists are filling the political void in Libya, seeking to impose sharia and clamp down on the freedoms of women. Similar moves are under way in Egypt. Islamists also dominate the violent opposition in Syria, where there have been numerous reports of rape and gang rape by militias.

The brazen nature and number of sexual assaults against local and foreign women during the recent upheavals point to a widespread level of sexual repression that goes far deeper than the surface tensions.
In the May issue of Foreign Policy, Eltahawy wrote: ''Even after these 'revolutions', all is more or less considered well with the world as long as women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and unable to marry without a male guardian's blessing, or divorce either. Not a single Arab country ranks in the top 100 in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, putting the region as a whole solidly at the planet's rock bottom.''

The statistics support her analysis. So do the photos of her wrists in plaster. There has been an uprising for democracy on the Arab street, but for women, the spring appears to be over, if it ever existed at all.

Arab woman sentenced to death for killing male relative who tried to rape her

A Yemeni woman has been sentenced to death for having opened fire and killed a male relative who climbed up the wall of her house in an attempt to rape her.

Raja Hakimi was initially sentenced to two years in prison by a district court in the southern province of Ibb. The sentence was raised to death by the court of appeals, prompting the condemnation of women and human rights groups.

Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), an organization co-founded in 2005 by Tawakkol Karman, a recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, condemned the death sentence against Rajaa as an “unjust ruling, which violates all legislation and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Report recognises Arab women as ‘drivers of growth’

The social status of women in the UAE is improving with percentage of women in workforce hitting 12%, while Egypt has around 34%, a report released on Tuesday said. These figures indicate the role of women in economic development.

Booz & Company, a management consultancy firm, developed the Third Billion Index, which ranks 128 countries based on how they empower women as economic agents. The Index is a complex database of indicators women’s economic and social status and their potential for economic participation. Data is compiled by the World Economic Forum or the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The index divides women’s economic potential into two separate clusters: first, measures a government and other entities that consider the economic potential of women, such as women’s level of preparation for joining the workforce, the country’s access-to-work policies and entrepreneurial support, while the second centres on a set of observable aspects of women’s contribution to the national economy. This set comprises of inclusion in the workforce, the degree of advancement in the national economy and equal pay for equal work in practice.

Major findings

The results of the index lead to several revelations about government practices and women’s economic progress. The data shows a very strong correlation between index scores and beneficial outcomes. Around 128 countries are clustered into five broad categories:  “on the path to success,” “taking the right steps,” “forging their own path,” “average,” and  “at the starting gate.”

Developed countries are categorised “on the path to success,” while some countries which have introduced the right set of policies are categorised “as taking the right steps.” Most of the Arab states in the index are said to be at the starting gate.

The relationship indicates that positive steps taken by countries intended to economically empower women. In truth, all countries need unique requirements and input policies to create a solution that can best address women’s needs. However, Booz & Company’s research found several common challenges that women face in these countries.

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

Three countries from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are also featured in the Third Billion Index – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In terms of the categories of this report, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are all “at the starting gate”.

Arab Women Uprising: A Cyber-Call for Justice



Reem from Palestine holds her sign of support.

 A group has issued a cyber-call demanding justice and equal rights for women in the Arab world.
In a Facebook page launched in October, "The uprising of women in the Arab world" denounces violence against women, demands an end to "treatment as second class citizens" and calls for a "solidarity network."

Their Facebook page includes statements and photos of women from around the Arab world and their supporters with words of self-determination, strength and solidarity.

Zeinab from Lebanon holds a sign reading: "I'm with the Uprising of Women in the Arab World because I am the MASTER and PROTAGONIST of MY life, not merely an extra."

Amira from Yemen says, "I am half the society, why can't you see that?"

The group's supporters also include men from the Arab world, as well as women from other parts of the world including Poland, Puerto Rico and China, who have expressed their solidarity.