The Arab revolutions, and their aftermath, are a testament to the human spirit. In a matter of months, decades of corruption and injustice were confronted by the raw strength of women and men unified against a common dictator. Facing death, torture, and sexual assault at the hands of state police and government-hired thugs, people across the greater Middle East sought to shed the yoke of tyranny, as they demanded one simple human right – dignity.
But once the revolutions ended and the transitional phase began, women were expected to return to their homes. Men continued to monopolize power feeling little obligation to include the women who marched for freedom alongside them. For many women, however, the revolution was not only about removing a lone dictator but also uprooting an entire system of authoritarianism stretching from the presidential palace to the classroom and into the bedroom. Thus, Arab women of diverse political viewpoints are now focusing on ensuring the revolutions were not merely an exception to the norm of patriarchy that prevails in many Middle Eastern countries.
The revolutions reshaped gender roles in the public square. Indeed, in Egypt alone, 20 to 50 percent of the daily protesters were women, and as a consequence they, too, were beaten, jailed, and tried before military tribunals. Women protesters were also humiliated with virginity tests to warn others that they faced the same fate should they leave their homes to join the revolution. Despite their sacrifices, Arab women’s glaring absence from the new parliaments, constitutional drafting committees, and cabinet appointments does not bode well for what lies ahead for them.
In Egypt, for example, women comprised less than 2 percent of post-revolution parliamentarians, compared to nearly 12 percent during the Mubarak era. By eliminating quotas for women candidates and listing women at the bottom of party lists, new election laws nearly guaranteed an absolute exclusion of women from the legislative branch. Even in Tunisia, where women successfully fought for a new law requiring every party to include a woman in the first two slots of a party list, women comprise only 26 percent of the parliament because they were consistently placed second in districts where a party could win one seat.
And in Yemen, patriarchal tribal traditions appoint men in key political positions as the women without whom Yemen’s former leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh, would not have been overthrown are pushed back into their homes. Similarly, in Libya, women are woefully underrepresented in the transitional council.
— Read the full article published on December 12, 2012 on the Christian Science Monitor here.
