Women in the Middle East - Iranian reformists

Haleh Bakhash, daughter of Haleh Esfandiari, outspoken human rights activist and director of the Middle East Center of Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, reminded readers of an important point - "The silver lining to this harassment [article is about women scholars journalists and activists thrown in jail in Iran] is the reminder that women have been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and rights in Iran. They have overcome adversity in the past. In an environment of threat and intimidation they are enduring, and they need and deserve all the international support that can be mobilized for them."

It is important to realize that women of the Middle East, as I have mentioned in previous postings, are not poor, helpless victims. They are actors, agents of change, in parliaments, in the workplace, forming organizations, starting businesses and advocating for their own rights in their own societies. That these reform movements are occurring indigenously is key to their success.

The women I spent time with as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco were the exact opposite of the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim or Arab woman. They were strong - physically, emotionally and psychologically. They were intelligent and had the most endearing cynical senses of humor I've ever encountered. They had sound judgment. They were strong and motivated and resourceful.

A history of women's rights movements in the region is a longer post for another day, but there were women's rights movements in the Middle East in the early and mid 20th Century. Women had more rights in the Ottoman Empire (in the eyes of courts...see Judith Tucker's In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine and her Restoring Women to the Middle East) than in Europe. Anyone seen pictures of women un Egypt in the 50s and 60s? Short skits and tanks!

Unfortunately women's rights became tied to an imperial 'West' particularly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the implementation of the mandate system and the COld War manipulations. One thing led to another and kerplop.

Women's rights in the Middle East will be successful as indigenous movements aided by foreign groups, and only as part of more comprehensive social, economic and political reform in the region - such as the end of dictators and opening of political space for expression (to protest and write about their desire for rights!) and economic opportunities (jobs for women!)