Blog 12: Women Fight to Define the Arab Spring

When Mabrouka M’barek is in the Tunisian capital these days, much of her time is spent writing a new constitution as an elected member of the National Constituent Assembly. It is a role the 32-year-old mother of two embraces with idealistic passion and more than a little amazement. Before President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in 2011, she never imagined herself a “founding mother,” as she referred to herself in a recent interview, of this country or any other.

Now Mrs. M’barek — a Tunisian-American whose constituents are Tunisians in the United States, Canada and Europe — is deep into one of the most important tasks of any new democracy. She is helping to write the document that will underpin the rights and responsibilities shared by the government and its citizens.

Men overwhelmingly dominate the Arab Spring countries, but women, enabled by advances in literacy and higher education, are increasingly asserting themselves. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, they have been on the front lines of revolution. These nations will not succeed unless women are fully incorporated into political and economic life.

Women in Arab countries have long lagged behind those in other countries in terms of opportunities and leadership positions in politics and business, and this has hurt the region’s overall progress, according to reports by the World Economic Forum and the United Nations Development Program.

 

I love reading articles that talk about the new found justice that some women in the world are beginning to enjoy. This article here talks about a women who works for the National Constituent in Cairo, Egypt. She is a young Arab woman with a family. Ms. M'barek never imagined that she would be doing what she is now before the former president was removed. She called herself a "founding mother" with great excitement. In the article it is stated that women in Arab countries have long lagged behind those in other countries in terms of opportunities and leadership positions and here is a story of that new type of freedom given to women. I believe this will help the overall progress of the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/opinion/sunday/women-fight-to-define-the-arab-spring.html

Blog 10: Women Fight Back Against Witch-Branding in Rajasthan

RAJASTHAN ––Shanta Devi was branded a witch nearly a decade ago, after her family was plagued by long bouts of fever and breathing problems.

Villagers still cover their faces while crossing the 65-year-old woman, who lives in a tribal belt about 60 miles outside Udaipur city in the desert state of Rajasthan. Last year, the branded woman’s relatives were advised by a witch doctor to make her drink goat’s blood as a cure. But she refused, even as neighbors wielded sticks in her backyard to pressure her into doing so. For generations, women have been frequently branded as witches in villages spread across the dusty Aravalli hills and elsewhere in rural parts of India, blamed for unexplained or incurable illnesses among villagers and livestock. The lack of medical facilities near remote villages allows these superstitious beliefs to prevail. In recent years, activists have pushed for better medical facilities and sanitary conditions in tribal villages. Still, most people cannot afford the jeep fare to the nearest hospitals, which are at least an hour away. So they turn to a witch doctor, called a bhopa, who plays the dual role of doctor and priest. The bhopa, who claims to have magical powers as well, prescribes remedies like burying a live chicken, burning hands with coal as well as identifying and punishing witches. Old and young widows are easy targets. The mixing of old superstitions with modern material desires has proved deadly for these women, as many brandings are now done to disinherit them from family property. Dakat Kunwar, 25, was declared a witch and thrown out of the house after her husband died. Ms. Kunwar, a manual laborer, now lives in a small room with her three children. “I can’t get remarried and I can’t feed my children,” she said. Branded women, called dakans, rarely defy their tormentors, but Mrs. Shanta’s resistance was supported by a fellow villager, Lakshmi Khadadi, who has intervened on behalf of nine women. Mrs. Khadadi, 23, involves other bold women in the community to try to defuse a volatile situation by talking to the feuding parties or advising them to seek medical help.

 
As I read the title of this article I was very interested in the meaning of the word "witch" used. In today's society, especially in the United States, witch craft is not a common thing to hear about. The more of the article I read, the more interested I became. In India women are being named as witches and are being banned from many, if not all, privileges in their village. These women cannot marry nor can they take care of their children if they already have children. The article stated that women of all ages were easy targets because of the mixing of old and new superstitions. Many of these witches are used for medical help though. All of the people that these witches “tend” to live in rural villages too far from big cities to go to a medical doctor, or are too poor to afford the fair to take a bus into the cities. This relates to the idea of urbanization. Because of the rural areas that these people live in, locals are secretly going to witchdoctors for help. Also because these people live in the rural villages, many people are poorer and cannot afford fair for buses.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/women-fight-back-against-witch-branding-in-rajasthan/

Blog 9; Female Weight Lifters Compete

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — In a private gym tucked away in the warren of villas in the ritzy Jumeirah district here, Amna Al Haddad, a 22-year-old, adjusted her head scarf, bent to a dumbbell rack and jerked 100 pounds, roughly her body weight, into the air. Al Haddad is one of 12 women who train as competitive weight lifters in the United Arab Emirates, combating the stigma of lifting as a “man’s sport” in the Arab country, whose local population — despite the presence of bikini-clad foreigners for decades — holds to its conservative Muslim tradition. Weight lifting is often confused with bodybuilding in the Emirates and women who take part are often seen as masculine, or lesbian, which is a crime in the U.A.E. Female lifters say they are told that the sport will make them unattractive to male suitors; marriage is still considered the most important event in a young Emirati woman’s life. “A lot of women say, ‘Wow, look at her body,’ ” Al Haddad said. “They ask me how to get lean, and when I say I weight lift, they get scared. But it’s the 21st century now. I don’t want to get married until I make the Olympics.” Weight lifting remains the only women’s national team of the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.“We tried to make a team with other countries like Kuwait and Bahrain, but they also faced that negativity,” al-Hammadi said.

The U.A.E. allowed women to weightlift starting in 2000. In 2008, it separated the bodybuilding and weight lifting federations, lessening the decidedly unfeminine imagery attached to lifting compared with that of bodybuilding’s hulking muscles and popping veins.


In the Middle East women do not have very many privileges solely because it is a patriarchal society. But here is a story of a woman who has decided to change that for herself. She has chosen a sport that not even in America is very popular for women, weight lifting. She still does obey the Religious views of wearing a head scarf and covering the majority of her body as respect for herself, but is able to modify her scarf to make it easier to lift weights. She is not ashamed of her own body image, Amna Al Haddad acts as if she is even proud of her figure stating that she is not ready for marriage, not until she makes it to the Olympics. Marriage is very sacred to the women of the U.A.E. and she is most definitely breaking a social norm by waiting to get married. In all I complement this young women for pursuing something that she loves knowing that she lives in a place that is socially against female weight lifters, recalling it a "man’s sport".

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/sports/amid-glares-female-muslim-weightlifters-compete.html

Blog 8: In Rural Haryana, Women Blamed for Rape Where Men Make the Rules

Disputes in this small Haryana farming village, 70 miles from Delhi, are settled by 11 men dressed entirely in white, who hear arguments in a roomy hall and then retire to an underground room to make a decision. The group, the Sarva Jaateeya Venain Khap, is one of the largest khap panchayats, or unelected all-male village councils in Haryana, with a jurisdiction that extends to 52 villages. The system garnered national attention recently, after a series of rapes in the area were followed by a suggestion from a khap member that the marriage age be lowered to 16, keeping women sexual satisfied, to prevent further rapes. The suggestion comes on the heels of several “honor killings” in the area, in which families killed couples who had married against their wishes.
This week in a nearby village under the khap’s jurisdiction, a teenage lower-caste girl was raped by several teenager boys who dragged her into a house, one of more than a dozen rapes this month in the area. On Wednesday, she committed suicide by setting herself on fire.
Khap members said in interviews Thursday that if the girl’s family comes to them, they will ensure that the “right” culprits get punished. But, they said, they do not take up cases on their own.
Because khaps are social organizations formed on the basis of trust and social standing, there are no records of the exact number of in India. At the annual Sarv Khap, or All Khap, meeting, the number of khaps varies every year, attendees say. “There are new khaps formed every now and then, if there is a person of great social standing in a particular village, and some weak ones tend to die out,” said Subhash Nain, a senior member of the Sarva Jaateeya Venain Khap.

When reading this article I learned that there are villages in India that have groups of men that are in control of them in a manner like an unofficial government. These men make decisions about the village and the people within it. In this particular article the men are making a decision about a girl who was raped and as a result of that killed herself. The dispute was that the Khap are trying to make this incident the girls fault and not the perpetrators. In our society this would in no way be the girls fault, it would be the fault of the young boys. But even as strange as this seems the members of the village still believe that the Khep is in charge and they are trusted. They believe they would never do anything to hurt them. The elders in the village put full trust and faith into the Khep and know they are doing their best to ensure safety in the area. I am concerned for what the women in the society think; do they feel safe where they are? This may seem crazy for the people in charge to blame the victim for the action of a crime, but to them it is just another decision they had to make that day.

http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/in-rural-haryana-women-blamed-for-rape-where-men-make-the-rules/

Blog 7: Women in China Face Rising University Entry Barriers

In Beijing small groups of female, Ms. Xiong being the main one, and a few male protesters have shaved their heads in reaction to a growing trend in Chinese universities. Women are set higher test score standards than men to be accepted into the university. These women find that they are faced with unofficial but widespread gender quotas that favor men. The three women were outraged when the Education Ministry said in August that the practices were in the “national interest.” In all, Ms. Xiong said, about 20 people around China — mostly women but some sympathetic men, too — shaved their heads to protest the rules. No one is quite sure when gender quotas and gender-based admission scores were first implemented; but by now, they appear to be deeply entrenched, according to Chinese news reports that published publicly available admission criteria for the gaokao, the nationwide university entrance exam, as evidence. “In science courses at the China University of Political Science and Law, the bar is at 632 points for women but 588 for men,” the newspaper said, providing other similar examples from other colleges. It was even reported in July that the Shanghai International Studies University had lowered the bar of entry for male applicants to language programs in Hebrew, Arabic, Ukrainian, Korean and Russian.

In America the idea of education comes so freely to many. It is sad to think that in parts of the world education is only good enough for those who meet the standards, and in this case that standard happens to depend on ones gender. The women in Beijing have a harder time than men being accepted into universities because of higher standards. In some of these universities women have to score higher on exams just to be accepted. Other times the women have to score significantly higher on test such as the bar in order to become lawyers. I am assuming that the test that the men and women take are equal in how challenging they are but the different genders are held at different standards. It sounds as if the women have to prove to the university and society that they are as good as the men in whatever field that are wishing to pursue. There is no logical reason why different genders would have to have different qualifications but it seems that that is not stopping the Education Ministry of China.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/world/asia/08iht-educlede08.html?pagewanted=all

Blog 5; Afghan Girls going to School

For many girls in Afghanistan, the simple act of walking to school can be a life-threatening journey. Many people, mostly men, in Afghanistan believe it is wrong to educate women. The idea of girls going to school is very uncommon and extremely unsafe. Just last year there were 185 documented attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan. The walk home from school is said to be the most dangerous. Girls have been attacked with acid being poured on them. Other girls have had their drinking water poisoned or targeted by bombers who think that girls should not attend school. But among this violence girls are still attending school. Some say there is hope. "To see these girls walking to school, delighted to be learning and spending time together in the classroom, writing their own names for the first time, reading their first words -- I felt hope for the future" stated Beth Murphy, a documentary filmmaker who recently traveled to Afghanistan to work on a feature film about girls' education. Another spokeswomen even stated what she thought would be the solution to keep girls going to school despite all of the horror going on around them. "In Afghan culture, parents don't consider it appropriate for girls to be educated by a man," Roehrs said. "There is a high dropout rate of young girls after the early grades because there are not enough female teachers. So the secret of getting and keeping girls in school is to get more female teachers."

In America education is valued by many, including myself. Education is something that should not discriminate against gender, race, ethnicity, or any other "divide" among people. But unfortunately that is not how reality works. In Afghanistan the idea that women should be forbidden to attend school blows my mind. I have a feeling the idea behind that is that women will just be staying home to take care of the home and children later in life so why educate them when they are young. But this article give me some hope for the girls and women of Afghanistan. Although there is a tremendous amount of terrorism in that country there are still young girls risking their lives to learn the simple things that many Americans take for granted. These girls get so excited just to be able to spell their names and to write out full sentences. The idea of attaining more female teachers seems like a great idea to me. Having more females as teachers might give the young girls more hope when coming to school and even encourage more girls to start attending school. Having a female presents in the classroom may be more comforting to the parents as well as they feel it is inappropriate for girls to be educated by males. As I have stated before, this article gave me some hope that some day in the near future, young girls in Afghanistan can wake up in the mornings excited to go to school and not fear for their lives on the walk home. It also gives me hope that more women can be given teaching jobs and give parents some peace at mind about their daughters being educated by a female rather than a male.


 http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/26/world/asia/cnnheroes-afghan-schoolgirls/index.html?hpt=wo_bn3

Blog 4: Patriarchal Norms Still Shape Family Care

As this country is climbing closer to an election many people are voicing their opinions on what they think the presidential candidates should discuss. Here, Nancy Folbre has expressed her opinion on how the general household should be taken care of, traditionally or modern style. Folbre notes that it is easy to find many examples of patriarchal societies and that many Americans are willing to keep the tradition of father head households. At the Southern Baptist Convention, it was stated that "a wife should "graciously submit" to her husband's leadership." The Mormon church holds similar views of wife submission and imposes even stricter curbs on women's access to positions of spiritual leadership. Southern Baptist and Mormons are not the only two religious groups in the United States that embrace patriarchal values. Traditional patriarchal systems restrict women's legal and economic rights. Even in countries like the United States, in which women enjoy virtually equal opportunities outside the home, patriarchal norms assign them primary responsibility for family care. Many women enjoy new economic opportunities, sometimes gaining the confidence to flout traditional gender norms. Folbre writes that "maybe we should try to end patriarchal norms instead. We could start by defining family care as a challenging and important achievement for everyone rather than a sacred obligation for women alone."

As I read Folbre's article I noticed that not only did Folbre talk about and issue, she proposed an idea, a possible solution. Instead of making family care an obligation for women alone, society should redefine family care, making it a responsibility for both parental parties. I am noticing more and more norms that are labeled strictly as "mother" and "father" roles in society. These norms happen to be based off of tradition but in today's world more and more women are branching out and are taking on some of the roles traditionally taken on by men. In the United States, still a patriarchal society, women are branching out and are not only home care takers anymore but now work in industries, offices, and even in government affairs. With this movement of women into the work force and into politics the general society of the U.S. is changing and could become more of a combined effort in the home from the father and mother. As the general roles may be changing in the United States, many women world wide still live under patriarchal conditions. Many women have grown up with the idea that the father is the head of the family and has final say in decisions. The women in the U.S. are fortunate to have some say in decisions but clearly feel they do not have enough if women are still writing articles on the importance of women's values and roles in society.



http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/women-should-take-care-of-home-and-family/









 

Blog 3; Freewill Mariages

In Pakistan, marriage is decided by the parents of the bride and groom. This is called an arranged marriage. The parents usually have this marriage set up early in their children's lives. The parents do this because they want the best for their children. It is expected of the children to marry and live together and having children together. If one of the partners in the marriage decides they want out of the marriage, this is considered of up most disrespect to the parents. The couple in this article not only disobeyed their parents about going into an arranged marriage, they ran away and eloped. As this couple took this action the parents of the wife, Nusrat Mochi, are convinced that the husband, Abbas Bhatti, kidnapped Ms. Mochi. They threatened Mr. Bhatti's parents. Not only are they threatening his parents, they keep sending people out to kill the couple because of their disobedience. Ms. Mochi's parents said they would stop if Mr. Bhatti could pay them off but he doesn't make enough money to do so right away. Until then the family must keep moving to keep themselves and their children safe.


As I finished reading this article it made me reflect not only on the culture of Pakistani women, but also of my own. As I understand the reasons for marriage around the world can be very different, I didn't think about the different troubles a couple might face. This was a great example for me. This couple who went against their cultures tradition now lives with a fear of whether or not someone will find them one day and kill them just for being different. In my own ethnocentric mind, I think to myself how this is not what a married couple should go through. In my own culture married people deal with cheating and communication problems, not what their parents think of the marriage. As it is socially unhealthy to think in this way, this article helped me realize that in the types of marriages that Ms. Mochi was put in, women normally have little to no say in the matter. Although this taboo family faces hardships and the consequences of going against family tradition, it is a great example of women increasingly asserting their rights in society.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/world/asia/some-pakistani-women-risk-all-to-marry-for-love.html?pagewanted=all

Blog 2. Special Visas for Abused Women

The Department of Homeland Security allows 10,000 women a year, who are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault to come to the United States and live a violence free life. These U visas allow women victims and their closest relatives to come to America to escape from their perpetrators and come forward to testify against them. The visas allows women in to the country to work for four years. The problem that is being faced is that the 10,000 women cap has already been reached, and fast. This is the third year in a row this has happened and some worry that with this limit already hit, other victims will go unnoticed and this will discourage women from speaking and acting out against their attackers. A bill approved by the Senate in May called for this cap to be raised from 10,000 to 15,000 allowing more of an opportunity for these women survivors. However House Republicans pushed through measures that omit the Senate's U visas increase.

This U visas idea is a great way for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault to feel freed of some of the worst violence. Giving these women and their families hope for a better life. The number 10,000 sounds like a lot but when hearing that this number is being reached before the year is over is frightening. It was a smart move in Senate to increase this number to 15,000 but a heart break when the increase was denied. Nearly one in four women are raped by the age of adulthood (http://www.oneinfo urusa.org/statistics.php). These women do not need to live with their attackers. These survivors need to know that justice was served and that's exactly what these U visas are helping to do. The increase for more U visas should be reevaluated because if there is something the United States can do to help these women then we need to take more action.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/opinion/special-visas-for-abused-women-hit-a-ceiling.html

Blog 1; Saudi Arabia Women and the Work Force

The battle for women's rights seems to be an ongoing fight for the women of Saudi Arabia. The government, along with religious leaders, have set very strict boundaries for women of Saudi Arabia. These leaders believe that women and men are "different but equal". These leaders say that men have a role and that is to be the guardian, money maker, decision maker, and head of their household whereas women are to stay in the home, take care of the children, not take on a job, and to completely obey men. By giving women jobs, the religious understanding of gender roles is challenged. But lately the workforce has been more female friendly. The number of jobs for Saudi women although  just slightly, has increased in the past few months. But with new jobs comes new laws. The king of Saudi Arabia has a plan to replace foreign male sales clerks with women. That is good for the women as there would be more open jobs but some conservatives oppose this plan to prevent gender mixing. In 2011 some sales markets were ordered to be run only by women, such as lingerie shops.

As I am reading this article I am excited to hear that jobs for women in Saudi Arabia have increased, although it does not surprise me that the men of Saudi Arabia are still in total control over the very few jobs that women may obtain. The idea that the government and religious leaders see men and women as "different but equal" is their way to justify that women do have "work" to do but it is not the same type of work that men do. It is believed that women cannot do the same type of work that men can do because they lack the physical and mental strength that men have. Therefore the women are forced to stay home to cook and clean and take care of the children. The women become completely obtain to men. For reasons like this women's unemployment rate is still four times as high as the men's, even with the few opening jobs.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/22/workplace-battle-continues-for-saudi-women/