Saudi Arabia’s “guardianship” system requires women to receive permission from their husbands to perform a host of daily activities.

Women in Saudi Arabia often face discrimination and violence, and the country’s “guardianship” system requires women to receive permission from their husbands to perform a host of daily activities.

Women also face obstacles when trying to obtain divorces. Islam allows men to have up to four wives at a time. A Worldfocus contributing blogger at the “American Bedu” blog speaks with a divorced Saudi woman now living in the United States for her perspective on polygamy.

Q: Your mother was a second wife. What was that like for you growing up? Did you and your siblings have any contact with your father’s first wife and children?

A: Yes, my mother was the second wife. We stayed in a different house, but same area, so I met Khala’s children regularly; also we go to school together. They are same as my brothers. We didn’t have much contact with Khala except when we went on trips or Eid’s or marriages. My step-siblings also came to my house with father sometimes. But my mother and Khala don’t talk much to each other. It was like any other family, I guess, except that my father had two wives.

Q: In your view, how accepting was your mother of being a second wife?

A: My father is from a well-known family. He was in a good position so when his sister/mom approached my mother’s father, they agreed, she has no choice. This is what I hear from her. She is sad always but initially, she says, it’s tough and then she adjusted by praying a lot and accepting that it’s only Allah’s wish. She always told me never to become anyone’s second wife.

Q: Because your father had two wives, two families, do you feel this impacted on the amount and quality of time he spent with you?

A: Father was busy so he didn’t spend [time] with us children too much except maybe vacations and holidays, on a daily basis our mother only took care of us a lot. I wish he had only one family, some days he comes home, but [the majority of time] he spent in Khala’s house as that’s where my grandmother also stays. So yes, we missed him a lot. So many days we were alone and to be fair so many days Khala and my step-siblings were alone. I sometimes felt why have a father when he’s there only 50 percent at best.

Q: Growing up as a child of polygamy, how did it affect your own views of marriage? And what about your siblings, did any of them also elect to have polygamous marriages?

A: I know Islam permits having four wives, but I wish it were not so. I have seen my mother suffer and I have suffered; my mother was not very happy with her married life. When she was young she said she had dreams of marriage and they were all gone. I did not want to accept polygamy in my marriage but again Allah has his plans for us. One of my brother[s] and one step-brother has two wives. The others all have only one family. I wanted to put in my marriage contract that I did not want a co-wife but that did not happen.

Q: [...] Tell us about your marriage. Was it arranged?

A: Yes, I had big dreams of studying to become a doctor, but that was not to happen. We got a proposal from a well-known family and my father does business with them also so it was arranged. I [told] my father I wanted to finish university and do some more studies, but he refused. I wanted to contact my two brothers — we were very close — but I couldn’t and they were not told also (since they both lived outside the country). My mother told me it is best not to go against the wishes of my father. [...]

Q: What can you share about your own personal experience and feelings when your husband chose to take a second wife?

A: I was broken. WeIl, I could not accept that happily — all my life I did not want that one thing in my marriage and it had to happen to me. We were married for such a short time and he said he fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. If I could I would have left the marriage. I could not agree to polygamy and that’s when the abuse started. I wish I had the courage then to stand up to him, but there are no options, everyone tells you to work it out and accepts Allah’s will , but it was hard, his family knew how I felt yet they never saw my side, we had arguments about polygamy, his rights, Islam etc., and then always it would end with it being permitted in Islam and my disobedience and hitting. I did everything he asked just I couldn’t get to accept a co-wife. I prayed and I was no one to deny him his right but my heart did not agree. But he married again and she came to live with us. I cried to my brothers here and mom but unfortunately he had taken a second wife by then and they told me to pray and try to be a good wife, but did not support me.

Q: Was it easy to get away from your husband and obtain a divorce?

A: No, it was very hard. I don’t wish it on anyone. I was afraid to tell anyone about the abuse for the shame; I was not permitted to go on my own. Even if I did where could I go. Luckily my step-brother and his family had moved to Riyadh and he heard about my marriage from Khala (I thank her for that). My father had suffered a stroke by then. My brother came to see me one day and saw my face all swollen –- my husband always never hits on my face but happened that time. [He] yelled at my husband, I think it was the first time a woman has questioned him and his faith [...] my brother simply told my husband that he will take me to stay with them and in [the] future my ex-husband will have to deal with him. This caused such a bad rift in our family to this day we are all not one. After that it was a nightmare; I don’t know where to begin or end, but my other brother came from England and together they both paid a large amount of money and got me a divorce and also [a] visa to another country where my aunt/uncle stayed. From there I came to the U.S. and have since settled here.

For more, see the “American Bedu” blog.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user letsbook under a Creative Commons license.

Producer Rebecca Haggerty describes her experience interviewing Yassine for the Worldfocus signature story “Moroccan single moms cope with hostility, shame.”

Madame Nadia Yassine is not what I expect. We’ve arranged an interview with her in her role as the public face of a Moroccan social movement called Al-Adl wal Ihsane, translated variously as Justice and Spirituality and widely described as Islamist.

By the time we arrive at her home, we’re two hours behind schedule and it’s nearly 8:00 p.m. Yassine has two other visitors patiently waiting — a young British convert to Islam researching her doctoral thesis at Oxford, and a French photographer. This, I learn, is typical. As the charismatic female leader of a conservative Islamic group, Yassine frequently plays hosts to curious journalists and academics from the West. She chats with us in her salon, a traditional Moroccan receiving room furnished with long sofas and her original artwork. Her daughter, Amina Shabani, a graduate student and a fluent English speaker, translates from her mother’s assured French.

We’ve come to see Yassine in part because of her role as a leader of the protests against the reforms of Morocco’s family laws. Yesterday, we spent the day with Madame Aisha ech Channa, a passionate supporter of women’s rights — and the reforms — who has dedicated her life to supporting women shunned by their families after getting pregnant outside of marriage. I assumed that Yassine would oppose the work that Madame ech Channa does. But the reality, like so much in Morocco, is more complicated than it first appears.

“We are for abstinence, “ she affirms, dismissing Western sexual mores as irrelevant to Moroccan women. “But to be a Muslim is also to be a realist. I am against punishing single mothers, because these people are the victims.”

According to Yassine, 30 percent of her movement’s followers are women. Founded by her father, Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine, the group claims to be flourishing despite –- or perhaps because of — its opposition to the ruling elite. Four years ago, Madame Yassine faced criminal charges after publicly criticizing Morocco’s system of monarchy in a newspaper interview. Insulting the king remains a crime in Morocco, one that the government takes seriously. Last month, officials seized copies of a newsweekly that reported a public opinion poll on the King.

Ironically, King Mohammed VI holds a reputation as a moderate and a reformer, particularly when it comes to women. His sweeping reform of Moroccan family law in 2004 granted women greater rights than in many countries throughout the Arab world. But Yassine dismisses these and other reform efforts by the King as window dressing in a poor, closed society. Nearly 50 percent of Moroccan women can’t read – and the percentages climb even higher in rural regions . The concerns of most women, Yassine argues, remain largely economic and spiritual.

To her many critics among Morocco’s secular intellectuals, Yassine offers a disturbingly palatable version of fundamentalism that — if given a chance — would turn Morocco into a theocracy. Yassine counters by taking pains to avow her group’s commitment to non-violence. She also claims a “true” reading of Islam – including sharia, or Islamic religious law — in fact offers significant protection for women.

Yassine touches on a tricky area between secular feminists and Islam. According to a 2006 Gallup poll of women in the Muslim world, most Moroccan women believe sharia should be a source –- if not the only source –- of law in society. And the survey also reveals that while women throughout the Arab world admire many things about the West, including gender equity, they also disapprove of some aspects of women’s status here –- primarily the overtly sexualized images of movies, television and magazines. Freedom of expression may be laudable, but the West, after all, also provided the world with endless reruns of Baywatch.

This summer, Moroccan courts once again postponed Nadia Yassine’s trial. Presumably, the case will eventually settle. But the debate over women’s roles in Morocco seems likely to continue.

- Rebecca Haggerty

Sporting taboos for women are in fact seen worldwide. Nonetheless, women soccer players have made progress — the first women’s World Cup was held in China in 1991.

Click on flags on different sections of the soccer ball to learn about women’s soccer in various countries around the world. Below, read a Q&A with two sports historians who discuss the successes and challenges experienced by female soccer players around the world.

*Data courtesy of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association. Photos courtesy of government sources and Flickr users under a Creative Commons license.

Worldfocus spoke with Professor Fan Hong, author of “Women, Soccer, Sexual Liberation: Kicking off A New Era,”  and Jean Williams, author of “A Beautiful Game: International Perspectives on Women’s Football,” about the evolution of women’s soccer worldwide.

Worldfocus: Globally, how long have women been playing soccer? How has these female athletes’ position within the sporting world evolved over the years?

Jean Williams: There is plenty of worldwide evidence of women playing courtly (in China) and folk forms (in the U.K., U.S. and Europe) before the 19th century. Women have been playing modern forms of football — that is, codified forms — since at least the 1880s. Association football has a strong history since this time for women. There is some evidence of soccer in U.S. colleges from the early 20th century — such as handbooks for soccer and hockey for girls and women — but intercollegiate games were thought inappropriate by educators until the mid 1950s. And then, with Title IX, women’s soccer really took off as an unintended benefit of wider equity moves in education.

The evolution has been an overall increase in the numbers of women playing, in spite of bans by national associations until FIFA (the world governing body) suggested national associations should take over the women’s game. Many countries did this reluctantly and slowly…and still do. Nevertheless, there has been a women’s world championship since 1991, and now there are under-20 and under-17 World Cups as well as Olympic competitions since the 1996 games in Atlanta.

Worldfocus: What challenges remain for female athletes worldwide, particularly when it comes to soccer?

Fan Hong: Traditional images of masculinity and femininity still play their part to prevent the development of women’s football. Football by tradition is the man’s game. Gender prejudice and consequent institutionalized discrimination, limited media coverage and resources and recruitment shortage in an increasingly market economy environment have adversely affected the growth of women’s football in general in the world. The UEFA European Championships taking place in Finland at the moment hardly receive any media attention.

Worldfocus: In what countries would it be the most difficult for a woman to play soccer, and why? Would you say the sport is considered more socially acceptable outside official channels — played in the streets, for example?

Jean Williams: The social status depends on regions within countries and on particular situations. Female modesty is an issue, as are issues about women and contact sports — but so are issues of resource, finance and support from male dominated national associations. Teams which have won World Cups have been disbanded due to financial lack of support, for example, so it isn’t a simple case of wealthy and western countries being more well-disposed to women’s soccer.

Worldfocus: Our signature story focuses specifically on soccer in Turkey and women’s attempts to enter the sport. Are there similar attempts elsewhere in the Muslim world?

Fan Hong: Yes, Iranian women have participated in sport actively, so have Indonesian women, e.g. at the Olympics and the Asia Games. In fact, the Iranian women’s national football team recently traveled to Berlin.

Worldfocus: How have men around the world responded to the growing prominence of women’s soccer?

Fan Hong: This differs from region to region. In Europe, North America and East Asia, women’s football has been accepted by the societies. In general, women’s football is regarded as more skilfull than men’s, but less aggressive. The future of women’s football has prospects. However, female footballers should be present in places where decisions are made about their games. In some parts of Asia, Africa and South America, men still maintain a considerable amount of skepticism and resistance towards women’s participation in sport, including football.

Worldfocus: How does soccer compare to other sports when it comes to the strides women have (or have not) made?

Fan Hong: Women’s participation in competitive football, to some extent, has altered gender relations in the world. Stars have certainly improved their personal circumstances and raised expectations of gender equality in the still conservative global society. However, football — which is regarded as the last bastion of masculinity — still resists women’s intrusion and participation. The longevity of traditional values have adversely affected women’s football. In general, some other sports which are traditionally regarded as feminine, such as tennis, gymnastics and synchronized swimming, face less resistance from the society.

Jean Williams: The “most popular sport” or “fastest-growing sport” tag is one that many sports will claim because sports development in the West is about claiming large numbers even if the person has only played once in the previous year, so these claims should be treated with caution.

Sports administration is male-dominated. Male journalists give little space to women’s sport and there are myths about women being less spectacular as athletes compared to males for media audiences. Each of these myths have precise historical constructions that we need to unpick before we can change attitudes to women and sport.

In the meantime, western obsessions with size zero and fashions for thin celebrities mean that women’s bodies have been the subject of public surveillance in gossip magazines in really unhealthy ways. The wider normalization of physically active females in our societies is one goal we should be aiming at, as well as more human attitudes to male sport — which can encourage excess and unhealthy attitudes towards ill health in the name of sporting excellence.

As Worldfocus correspondent Gizem Yarbil and producer Bryan Myers discovered, part of the resistance to women playing soccer is religious and part of it is cultural.

Also, explore an interactive feature and Q&A on women’s soccer around the world.

Women outside Tehran University. Photo: Richard O’Regan

Producer Richard O’Regan ventured to Iran for the Worldfocus signature story “Women in Iran race ahead, but still face gender block.” He describes his impressions of the changing role of women in Iranian society.

The problem Iran has with its women citizens comes into sharp focus when you’re hanging around the gate of Tehran University. As the class day begins, students gush through the turnstiles. Little knots of friends eddy into campus and head off in their separate ways. Two out of three of the students passing by are women. Young women. They are, of course, Iran’s future.

What to do about the pressure for legal rights from young, educated women seems an intractable problem for the men responsible for the last few decades of Iran’s past. Like it or not, women will soon be their nation’s educated elite.

The women you talk to on campus — those few willing to risk being quizzed later about their contact with foreign reporters — say there are aspects of the system that they like. The Islamic dress code does prevent men from “checking you out.” Iranian women can’t imagine how women elsewhere put up with it.

Visiting Iran as a foreigner, you get the feeling that you have parachuted into a work in progress that no one involved can quite figure out; one which leaves outsiders thoroughly baffled. Some women push the limits of what the law permits. Others take comfort in it.

The closest we came to being in danger during our pre-election trip was when a young man took exception to his sisters and female cousins being filmed. The young women teased him for what they saw as an old-fashioned attitude. They were doing they best they could to be noticed. The law says everything but your face and hands must be covered. They went out and got nose jobs so what little the world saw of them was as attractive as possible.

From the look of things — and as a TV crew you sometimes never get past how things seem –- women are oppressed. But then there is the scene at the university gates, and even more revealing scenes outside the medical and pharmaceutical schools. Seventy percent of Iran’s medical students are female. The idea that a democratic nation can suppress its own professional class seems absurd.

Like many really knotty problems, this one stems from internal contradictions. Revolutionary Iran rooted its legal system in Islamic law. But they also were determined to create a Democracy. Not a Western-style democracy, to be sure, but Iran is governed by elected legislators. Soon after the revolution, the Islamic government began a campaign to spread literacy. The campaign worked. Nearly 100 percent of Iranian women educated since the Revolution can read and write. Before the 1979 Revolution, that figure was less than 50 percent.

But the Islamic legal system also took hold. Enshrined in it was a very traditional interpretation of what the rights of men and women should be. To an outsider, they seem a throwback to long-discredited sexist attitudes. When you sit down, as we did, with the men in power, they put forward their belief that the system keeps families stable and that women enjoy the protections it affords them. It sounds reasonable and thoughtful. But it also sounds uncannily like the defenders of patriarchy I met years ago in apartheid South Africa. They assured me that the vast majority of black people loved the system. It turned out they didn’t have that exactly right.

The problem for the men running Iran today is that the cohort of educated women they have helped create are perfectly capable of reading the Qur’an for themselves. When they do, they don’t find in it the rules they have had to live by for their entire lives. The movement to upend Iran’s legal patriarchy seems to be building. Mostly surreptitiously, activists have begun gathering signatures on a petition demanding change. Their stated goal: A million people.

So many Iranian women have come to think that the current laws of the Islamic Republic — which, in most cases, put them under the legal supervision of their male relatives — are not part of their religion at all, but part of the social customs of the Arab nomads who first adopted Islam and brought it to Persia in the Seventh Century. (Arabs in general, and nomads in particular, are not widely admired in Iran.)

Their reading has led to a nightmare for those in Iran who like the system just as it is. They see any movement for change as an attempt to overthrow the government. In one sense, it is. In a patriarchy, after all — it is the patriarchs who have all the power. Upend the system and other people take charge.

To Iran’s current leaders, a faithful religious opposition to laws and policies that they have declared to be a divine mandate is the worst kind of revolution -– one that strips them of their religious and political legitimacy by using the tools of democratic change.

You’d have thought they might have seen it coming when they started that literacy campaign.

- Richard O’Regan

Iranian-American correspondent Bigan Saliani and producer Richard O’Regan traveled to Iran to explore the tensions between the expectations of many highly educated young Iranian women and the realities of their lives.

For more coverage of women in Iran, visit our Women in Islam extended coverage page.

(View full post to see video) Correspondent Bigan Saliani and producer Richard O’Regan travel to Iran to explore the tensions between the expectations of many highly educated young Iranian women and the realities of their lives. http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/09/th_iran_womeniniran.jpg http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/09/th_iran_womeniniran.jpg ]]> http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/09/08/women-in-iran-race-ahead-but-still-face-gender-block/7115/feed/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/09/08/extended-interview-with-irans-first-female-vice-president/6999/ http://worldfocus.org/blog/2009/09/08/extended-interview-with-irans-first-female-vice-president/6999/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:30:17 +0000 Worldfocus http://worldfocus.org/?p=6999

Masoumeh Ebtekar served as Iran’s first female vice-president under the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami. In 1979, a young Ebtekar — nicknamed “Mary” by the Western press — became the spokesperson and face of the Iranian students who held 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy.

Her fluent English was the result of several years spent in the United States as a child while her father pursued an academic career. She holds a doctorate in immunology, currently serves in Tehran City Council, and was named a 2006 UNEP Champion of the Earth as a “champion of cleaner production in the petrochemical industry.”

Iranian-American correspondent Bigan Saliani and producer Richard O’Regan interviewed Ebtekar in Tehran in May, before the disputed election.  She argues that women have made tremendous strides in the preceding decades. Her interview also touches on whether women need men’s protection; Iranian youth and reform;  and offers a surprisingly hopeful assessment of the future of Iranian-U.S. relations.

For more coverage of women in Iran, visit our Women in Islam extended coverage page.

A woman at a polling centre in Kandahar City.

Afghanistan is heading to the polls for national elections — but out of 41 presidential candidates, only two are women. Progress has been slow since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Perhaps to appease conservatives ahead of the election, President Hamid Karzai recently enacted a law allowing men to deny their wives food if the women refuse to comply with sexual demands.

Masha Hamilton is a novelist who founded the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, aimed at allowing Afghan women to have a direct voice. She describes women’s concerns as Afghanistan’s future takes shape.

One autumn morning not long after dawn, Shaista Hakim stood outside on her Kabul balcony, her head bare, sleep still in her eyes as she hung laundry. She quietly hummed to herself. Her husband and two young children lay peacefully asleep inside. Suddenly, on the street below, a gray car shrieked to a halt. The driver, wearing a turban, glared up at her with an expression so venomous it frightened her back inside.

Peeking through the window, she watched him push himself from his car. A moment later, she heard him pounding at her door. “I took off my glasses, put on a scarf and opened the door,” she recalled. “I was very scared.”

“Don’t ever go outside again without a burqa, or you will be arrested,” the man warned, his voice shaking with anger. He turned on heel and strode away.

The date: September 27, 1996, nearly thirteen years ago. Overnight, the Taliban had taken charge of Kabul, and the shift in the capital city was dramatic. To Mrs. Hakim, it felt as abrupt — and within a week, she and her young family abandoned their jobs and their apartment, fleeing the Taliban shadow and heading to Pakistan.

Mrs. Hakim returned to Kabul only after the post-9/11 fall of the Taliban, and I met her during a visit to Afghanistan last November. She now works as the director of a center that treats female drug addicts. Her job is not easy, nor is it often cheerful — she and her team brave Kabul’s most desperate and crime-ridden neighborhoods daily to reach out to women hooked on opium or heroin. Nevertheless, she considers it a gift that, for the moment at least, her government permits her to do the work she loves.

But Mrs. Hakim has become wary as Afghanistan goes again to the polls and calls have intensified in the last few months — from the U.S. to Europe to Afghanistan itself –- for the Afghan government to engage in dialogue with once-shunned moderate Taliban factions. She fears the change to a more conservative regime could happen overnight again –- that one morning on her balcony, she might look around to find her world unrecognizable.

President Hamid Karzai, long considered to hold geographically limited power (more like the “mayor of Kabul” than head of the country) has at times in recent months appeared to lose control even of Kabul. Observers, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have suggested his government’s survival may depend on opening talks with the Taliban.

Kathleen Rafiq, an American who began visiting Kabul after the fall of the Taliban and has lived there for the last four years doing humanitarian work, agrees. The Karzai government has repeatedly faced charges of ineffectiveness and corruption, and additionally, the Taliban has effectively taken control of much of the south of the country. “There is no way to solve the current political problems without bringing in the Taliban somehow,” Ms. Rafiq says, echoing a view widely held in Afghanistan itself.

Afghan women register to vote before an election in 2004.

But many Afghan women fear even the most moderate Taliban representatives will find it difficult to agree to a partnership with the Afghan government unless they win agreement for the country to follow a conservative interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law. This will by definition lead to renewed repression of women. Political expediency, these women say, may cost them their tenuous rights to walk outside without a burqa and male accompaniment, to attend school, to hold a job, even to hum as they hang laundry at dawn.

It is these fears that led me to develop an idea that had been percolating in the back of my mind for some time –- some kind of online link to Afghan women so that their voices would not be silenced, as they were during the previous Taliban rule. So that they would not again become invisible. So that we could hear directly from them, without having their words filtered through the voices of their men or the media.

From this sprang the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, an organization that has drawn generous volunteers from across the U.S. to reach out to women in Afghanistan. The project pairs Afghan women with authors and teachers here on a rotating basis and presents their work on a blog. And because it has become uncomfortable if not impossible for women to go into Internet cafes –- particularly in the south of the country but even in Kabul -– the AWWP is fundraising to open Afghanistan’s first-ever women’s-only Internet café.

Roya, one of the AWWP writers, wrote in a poem entitled Afghan Woman: “Who asks about my identity? I am lost on the pages of history books.” As the U.S. encourages the Afghan government to negotiate with the Taliban, we must make sure Afghan women do not become overlooked again.

- Masha Hamilton

For more on women in Afghanistan, view PBS Wide Angle’s “A Woman Among Warlords.”

Photo courtesy of Flickr users The Advocacy Project under a Creative Commons license.

When Jackie Redd was 14, she was forced to join the NPFL (National Patriotic Front of Liberia), a rebel group. She was raped and forced to be the “wife” of three men for 11 years, until she escaped in 2001.

Jackie is now speaking out. She is trying to start a support center called the “One Help One Center for War Affected Women” to provide care and training for women who are trying to recover from the war. She has also been working with Amnesty International and is the subject of a documentary about war-affected women.

Some of the biggest victims of that era were young women who were often taken prisoner and forced to fight, or made into sex slaves. As Worldfocus special correspondent Lynn Sherr and producer Megan Thompson report, many of them are now struggling to recover and struggling to forget.

For more on the rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers, watch PBS Wide Angle’s film on child soldiers in Uganda, “Lord’s Children.”

Worldfocus special correspondent Lynn Sherr and producer Megan Thompson venture to Liberia and meet some women on the front lines of what’s become a war on sexual violence.

Watch more videos from this series and read blogs from the field: Liberia’s Long Road Back.

For more on efforts to combat sexual violence in Africa, watch Rape as a weapon of war in DR Congo.

Over the past several decades, women politicians have made strides in Africa. The share of parliamentary seats held by women increased from 7 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2007.

The Rwandan parliament is a world leader in terms of female political participation, with 56 percent of its seats held by women. Liberia now has Africa’s first elected woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Watch Worldfocus’ signature story and an extended interview with Sirleaf: Africa’s first elected female president lifts Liberia.

But this heightened gender equality in government has not necessarily translated into equality in everyday life for the majority of African women, who still face disproportionate poverty, violence and challenges in accessing education.

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explored the political, economic and social implications of the rise of women power players in Africa.

Thank you for your questions. Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosted a panel of guests:

Micheline Ravololonarisoa is the chief of the Africa Section at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She has more than 25 years of experience as a sociologist, feminist and activist specializing in African development and women’s issues. Micheline began her activist career with a student movement in her native Madagascar and was forced to leave the country in 1974 because of this work. She has served as program director at the Agency for Cooperation Research and Development (ACORD) and remains a member of several African and international women’s networks, including Akina Mama wa Afrika and ABANTU for Development.

Lynn Sherr is an award-winning journalist and author who has contributed to Worldfocus reports from Liberia, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua. She is a former correspondent with ABC’s “20/20″ and covered a wide range of stories, specializing in women’s issues and social changes, as well as investigative reports. Lynn is the author of “Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words” and “Tall Blondes.”

Aili Mari Tripp is a professor of political science and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the director of the Women’s Studies Research Center. Her research has focused on women and politics in Africa, women’s movements in Africa, transnational feminism, African politics (with particular reference to Uganda and Tanzania), and on the informal economy in Africa. She is co-author of “African Women’s Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes” and author of “Women and Politics in Uganda” and “Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania.”

See related Worldfocus videos and blogs:

Women rank high in Rwanda’s government

Africa’s first elected female president lifts Liberia

Liberian summit celebrates African women with laughter

Women’s movement transforms post-war Liberia

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Nicole E. Foster and Katie Combs

Worldfocus special correspondent Lynn Sherr and producer Megan Thompson report on a movement that helped to drive a dictator from power and gave women the kind of opportunities they could never have dreamed of.

For more from Lynn Sherr, listen to our online radio show on African women in power. 

Watch more videos from this series and read blogs from the field: Liberia’s Long Road Back. 

Also watch for PBS Wide Angle’s showing of “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” next year.

Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state.

Worldfocus correspondent Lynn Sherr is in Monrovia, Liberia, reporting on how the country is faring following its long civil war. She writes about attending the lively International Colloquium on Women. 

Who says feminists don’t have a sense of humor? The laughter was liberating today in Monrovia, Liberia, where a two-day International Colloquium on Women opened with appropriate pomp, ceremony and wit.

That Liberia could even contemplate such an event in the wake of a 15-year civil war that destroyed the country’s government and infrastructure, and nearly its future, sounds like a very bad joke all by itself. More than 200,000 people died in the fighting; several million more were displaced. The roads are barely passable; bullet holes still make major buildings uninhabitable.

And when one American guest arrived at our downtown hotel past midnight this morning, she was stunned to be escorted to her pitch-dark room by a fellow toting a rifle. She was, of course, perfectly safe.

Still, the rooms are clean and spacious, and the band at the rooftop bar plays a mean rock tune.

After all, Liberia has had a new president since 2006 –- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state, who has brought a new sense of promise to this West African nation and to the entire continent. It is she who dared to convene hundreds of women from around the world to help inspire her own countrywomen.

In the process, she’s made them smile, which is no small feat in this post-conflict country.

During the opening ceremonies, a young Liberian girl participating in a pageant of famous women in history charmed the house with her portrayal of Rosa Parks, the American who woman whose refusal to sit in the back of the bus helped start the civil rights movement.

Another Liberian participant brought down the house when she announced herself as “the richest woman in the world.” Who knew Oprah Winfrey would show up?

Actually, it wasn’t a house at all, but a leafy-roofed, open-air shelter in the center of SKD (for Samuel Kay Doe, one of Johnson-Sirleaf’s less beloved predecessors) Stadium, a recently refurbished arena that seems to be tolerating the foreign guests reasonably well. No plates in the lunch line? No problem; they’re washed and dried in just a minute. No spaces in the conference? Stand by –- a stack of chairs is brought in.

Plenty of stacks were needed for a riotous session late this afternoon during which two teams of extremely distinguished female African dignitaries entertained the packed hall with a tongue-in-cheek debate on whether we really need all those women in public office. The debaters –- elected and appointed officials from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zimbabwe and other countries –- maintained a spirited dialogue, whose tone was set by moderator Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, co-founder and executive director of the African Women’s Development Fund.

“Throwing shoes is acceptable,” she announced at the start of the festivities, “as long as they are size tens and Manolo Blahniks.”

Tomorrow, it’s down to more serious business. If, that is, there is anything more serious than being able to laugh at yourself.

- Lynn Sherr

Watch for Worldfocus’ upcoming series on Liberia in the coming weeks. 

Photo courtesy of Flickr user World Economic Forum  under a Creative Commons license.

A parade in Cameroon on International Women’s Day.

Sunday marked International Women’s Day, a global day recognizing economic, political and social achievements of women.

Amid celebrations worldwide, from Cameroon to Chile, some of the discussion focused on how the gender gap may be impacted by the worsening economic crisis. 

“It is expected that women and girls in both developed and developing countries will be particularly affected by job cuts, lose of livelihoods, increased responsibilities in all spheres of their life, and an increased risk of societal and domestic violence,” reported the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Yakin Ertürk, on Sunday. 

Read an account of International Women’s Day in Liberia, where hundreds of world representatives met for the International Colloquium on Women: Liberian summit celebrates African women with laughter.

Blogger “Dawn,” an American living in Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, writes about a women’s day march outside her apartment:

Somehow I had never noticed women’s day until I came to live in Africa. [...] Here, it is a big deal. [...] The event consists of women parading around town. Each group of women buys matching outfits, carries a banner and often something to signify their group. For example, the group of women who sell shoes were carrying shoes on their head.

[…]If there is anywhere in the world, where women deserately need to stand together and show their strength it is here in Congo. The incidence of rape in Eastern Congo is the highest in the world right now. And if there is anywhere that they could speak out, it is here in Congo. Congolese women are strong; they are not timid. Certainly they were not timid as they jostled for the best place in line. I understand that there are some places in the world where women are simply unable to stand together and make a statement. They are too afraid to raise their voices. But this is not that place.

And so I found it heartbreaking when I began to calculate the amount of money women spend to buy cloth for this one day. And I considered the power that a group of women this large could have, if they decided to tackle an issue that women here struggle with. So much could be done on this day.  

Learn more about violence against Congolese women in our signature video: Rape as a weapon of war in DR Congo.

The “American Bedu” blog, written by a former American diplomat living in Saudi Arabia, discusses the country’s progress in terms of gender equality:

For those who take relish in reading of the lack of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia and viewing the Saudi woman as among the most oppressed in the world, I’d like to point out that Saudi women are consistently receiving more opportunities. These are opportunities in education, employment, legal rights, etc. I know there will be so many naysayers saying these are minimal and only because a “man” approved but guess what…that is a fact of life in Saudi Arabia. And this fact will not change until Saudi women (and not expat women or other groups) choose to take initiatives for changes – if they want them in the first place.

[…] I wish to recognize my dear Saudi mother-in-law, Mama Moudy. She may never drive, she may never be seen uncovered, she may not be educated but she is among one of the wisest, compassionate, supportive (she accepted her son marrying an American!), kind and beautiful (inside and out) women I have met.

Blogger Roshan Norouzi, a photographer in Iran, posts images of a young Iranian man wearing a headscarf in solidarity with women.

An American blogger named “Bethany,” living in Jerusalem, writes about a women’s march against demolitions of Palestinian homes:

Yesterday was International Women’s Day. Women’s Day is celebrated in many countries around the world. […] Right here in Jerusalem, a group of women celebrated this holiday. Here, however, the focus was not solely on women. A group of women formed a march against home demolitions occurring in the Al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan. 88 homes have been set for home demolitions, which will result in the displacement of 1500 Palestinians. Demolitions in Silwan, will leave room for a park, hardly a justification for leaving 1500 people homeless.

A coworker of mine and I joined in the March against the home demolitions in Silwan. It was powerful to see the strength of the women involved and clear that Palestinian women often emerge as the movers and shakers of their society. When the group began to form before the march, the leading women handed out posters. The posters symbolized the essence of a Palestinian woman. They are rooted in the land, the protectors of livelihood (symbolized by olive trees), and shine light to the world. As the group began to walk into the area of Silwan, chants emanated from everyone following. We made our way through the neighborhood to an area where the home demolitions are planned. When we got to this area, we joined a group already congregated underneath a tent, holding a rally for the Al-Bustan neighborhood. Both men and women, children and elders joined together in solidarity. You could see the passion of the people as they expressed their frustration and heartache over their families and friends who were losing their homes. Children even joined in the peaceful protest. They sang a song dedicated to Silwan and joined in the chanting. One of the most precious moments happened when a girl, probably about 6 years old, shouted a chant in the silence, which rallied the whole group to join in a response.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user zzilch under a Creative Commons license.

A woman in Nepal.

Ahead of International Women’s Day on Sunday, a group of Nepali women announced that they would climb the world’s highest mountains in a symbol of female empowerment.

Nepal has made strides toward democracy in recent years, and a number of women were elected to the country’s new assembly last year. 

But discriminatory attitudes persist, and daily life for women in Nepal remains difficult. Domestic violence against women is common, and the United Nations reports that beating, slapping, kicking, hair-pulling, verbal abuse and use of sticks, knives and acid are also frequent. During menstruation, some women are confined in dirty huts. 

Nepal was ranked 120 out of 130 countries [PDF] on the World Economic Forum’s measure of gender equality. 

Jannie Kwok is a program officer at The Asia Foundation’s office in Kathmandu, Nepal. She writes at the “In Asia” blog to describe how one theater group in rural Nepal is using drama to combat gender-based violence and work toward equality. 

In Nepal: Countering Violence against Women in Post-Conflict Nepal

I recently watched a local Nepali theater group skillfully combine theater with politics to explore gender-based violence in conflict-affected communities.

Developed in the 1970s by a Brazilian political activist and director, “The International Theater of the Oppressed” is a method that has been practiced in theaters across the globe to help communities address social injustices. A drama is acted out in scripted mode until it reaches the climax; then, at that moment, the audience is asked to collectively reflect on the problem and is invited into the drama to “rehearse” the preferred ending they envision for their communities.

When I arrived to see the first performance at Aarohan Theater in a Tharu village in the Kailali district of mid-western Nepal, the midday sun was beating down. The actors were dressed in colorful traditional Tharu costumes and were dancing and singing to attract an audience. I was particularly pleased to see a large number of women and their small children already gathered for the performance.

The play began with a very typical scene in these villages: the wife doing household chores and the husband shouting to her to make him tea and breakfast. It continued to depict the daily hardships in the village and the struggles of the Tharu people. Then one night, the husband came home drunk and began belligerently shouting at his wife. During this scene, one woman in the audience, sitting near me, commented out loud to all of us (including the Aarohan director), that this scene frequently played out in her own house. She softly laughed, but her eyes were sad.

The narrator stopped the play at a dramatic point when the husband was about to beat his wife. He then asked for comments from the audience. The woman seated near me loudly suggested from her seat that he should not beat his wife. The narrator asked her to join the drama and act out what the wife should say next to the husband. At first she refused, but after some encouragement from the Aarohan director and other audience members she approached the “stage” and proceeded to speak out against the abuse. Although her moment in the spotlight was short, she had a chance to rehearse what she wanted to do in real life; to fight against the violence she faced.

The audience also shouted out other ideas and solutions, such as asking neighbors to intervene or going to a mothers’ or women’s group for assistance. After more than an hour of discussion and debate, the husband in the play finally signed an agreement stating he would not beat his wife. This action was facilitated by the local mothers’ group members. Through these exercises developed by “Theater of the Oppressed,” the audience not only got to suggest the outcome they wanted for the play; they also got to practice how to make that outcome a dramatic reality, in essence learning how to deal with gender discrimination and oppression in real life in the process.

As the group performed, I was surprised by the boldness of these village women in the audience and their courage to speak out against their own oppressive situations. While tradition and religion have long relegated Nepali women to a lower status than men, the decade-long armed conflict in Nepal has severely exacerbated the inequality in male-female relationships, increasing women’s vulnerability to exploitation and violence. Things that have contributed to the disproportionate impact of the conflict on women include damage to traditional social and economic networks, loss of male heads of household, forced displacement, and reduced access to health and educational facilities. The breakdown of community safety networks has also resulted in marked increases in the incidence of threats, rape, sexual harassment, and exploitation perpetrated against women.

Even today, women in the most conflict-affected areas of Nepal continue to encounter high incidences of domestic violence in their homes. According to a local survey taken in Mid-Western Nepal, of the 190 married women interviewed, 91 percent reported domestic violence perpetrated by their husbands in the past two years. Survey results also revealed that 86 percent of respondents were forced into non-consensual sex, 70 percent reported physical injuries such as slapping, arm twisting, hitting with fists or other objects, pushing, kicking, or choking, and 50 percent reported injury with a weapon at least once.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user farmingmatters under a Creative Commons license.

Cristina Fernández, the president of Argentina.

Latin American leaders like Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Argentina’s Cristina Fernández — both the first elected female presidents of their countries — have been heralded as examples of gender equality in politics and inspirations to women worldwide. But other Latin American countries retain cultural stereotypes about gender and few women hold office.

Kristen  Sample is senior programme officer at International IDEA and writes at “OpenDemocracy” exploring how different electoral systems have resulted in such varying levels of power for Latin American women.

No hay mujeres: Latin America women and gender equality

Thirty years after the start of the third wave of democracy in Latin America,  the region’s policy-makers and civil society have the “final frontier” of this historic process in sight: to ensure that democracy works for all citizens in equal measure, regardless of gender.

In Latin America there has in recent years been an increase in both the number and percentage of women in politics - embodied by the rise to power of two female presidents, Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Cristina Fernández in Argentina. Their election has, in turn, generated a renewed debate on the state of women in politics today in the region. The reality, perhaps surprising, is that the progress of women in assuming elected office in Latin America varies considerably: between and even within countries, nationally and sub-nationally.

[...]The choice of electoral system has an enormous impact - perhaps more than any other single factor - on the number of women elected to public office.

Chart detailing the percentage of women representatives in elected office in Latin America. Chart: OpenDemocracy

For instance, one basic ground-rule: “list” systems - in which electors select from lists of candidates - are far better at facilitating the election of women (and minority-groups) than first-past-the-post system systems (as found in the United States, Britain and Canada) as they encourage parties to develop comparatively more balanced candidate lists. When a party has to bet on one candidate for a legislative seat - as in the case of a first-past-the-post system - the slot generally goes to a man. When the party presents a list of candidates to represent a legislative district, however, it is more apt to balance the list by assigning selected slots to women. That’s why of the ten countries with the highest percentage of women legislators, nine have some variation of the list system.

Two specific examples demonstrate the importance of the design of the electoral system to more balanced representation:

Why does Argentina have 40% women legislators, while neighbouring Brazil has only 8%? Both countries have list systems with gender-quotas, but they’re only effective in Argentina where parties run “closed” lists and are required to alternate men and women in “electable” positions higher up the list. Brazil, on the other hand, allows parties to present a number of candidates equivalent to as much as 150% of the number of seats being contested and there is no sanction for non-compliance with the quota. Additionally, Brazil’s candidate-centred “open” list-system makes success more dependent on access to campaign funding, an area in which women face greater disadvantages.

Why do women account for nearly one in three legislators in Peru, but only one in thirty mayors? There are at least two reasons for this. First, representatives in collective bodies (legislatures, town councils) in Peru are elected from “list positions” while executives  (president, departmental president and mayor) are chosen from a first-past-the-post system. Second, a 30% quota applies to the legislature and local councils, but not to mayors or other executive positions.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ¡Que comunismo! under a Creative Commons license.

The United Nations estimates that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in that time, some victims as young as three years old.

Both the Congolese army and rebel groups have used rape as a weapon of war.

Armed groups use rape to tear apart families, spread disease and weaken communities. Women are often victimized doubly — first by their rapists and secondly by spouses or family members who then find it dishonorable or socially unacceptable to associate with them.

Worldfocus special correspondent Michael J. Kavanagh of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and video journalist Taylor Krauss recently reported from eastern Congo. Together with Lisa Biagiotti and Bijan Rezvani, they produced this signature story.

See their previous signature story: War in DR Congo: The story of Pascal and Vestine.

Watch a companion Web-exclusive video: Rehabilitating rape victims and families in Congo.

Michael Kavanagh and Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge, along with other experts, held an online radio show on roots of the conflict and prospects for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For more on the conflict, read our Q&A: History, rebels and crisis in eastern Congo or read Human Rights Watch’s background and timeline of the conflict.

The rise of women in power is in part due to the country’s electoral quota (30 percent female), and partly a consequence of male deaths during the country’s 1994 genocide. Women comprise 55 percent of the Rwandan population as a whole.

Worldfocus special correspondent Martin Seemungal travels to Rwanda, a country recovering from its terrible genocide with the help of some very powerful women.

Blogger Andrea Friedman at “The Huffington Post” writes in support of gender quotas, arguing that they foster change.

The “African Studies Blog” links to an article claiming that though women are participating more and more in politics, they are not able to influence policymaking.

Writer “Dana Liebelson” discusses Rwandan gender politics in the context of American politics and the state of women in other African nations, arguing that women are viewed in black-and-white terms as either “equal citizen or victim.”

Watch a female member of the Rwandan parliament talk about her experience.

Stephen F. DeAngelis outlines the contributions of women to the Rwandan economy and traces a short history of gender roles in the country. The Washington Post published a video about Rwandan women and the economy.

In the U.S., about 17 percent of national government officials are women.

President Tabaré Vázquez vetoed a bill that would have legalized abortion in Uruguay. Photo: Presidencia de la Republica Oriental del Uruguay

President Tabaré Vázquez used his veto pen to stop a bill that would have legalized abortion in Uruguay, keeping the procedure illegal.

Uruguay has been secular for much of its history, unlike many other Latin American nations. The bill had passed in the Uruguayan House and Senate, but parliament did not gain the three-fifths support necessary to override Vázquez ’s veto. The president, a doctor, cited “the reality of the existence of human life in the gestation period” in his explanation for the veto.

Benjamin Gedan is a Fulbright research scholar living in Montevideo and studying the Uruguayan media. He writes at his blog, “Small State,” about the ongoing Uruguayan abortion debate.

In secular Uruguay, abortion still a criminal act

At first glance, the decision by Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez to veto legislation legalizing abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is surprising. After all, the president’s own party, the Frente Amplio, promoted the legislation in both the House and Senate. The very fact that abortion is illegal in Uruguay, by far the most secular country in Latin America, seems out of place. For example, in Mexico, where the Catholic Church is far more influential, the capital city legalized abortion in April 2007.

But what seems clear is that Uruguayans are far more comfortable skipping out on church on Sunday than accepting abortion. A recent poll by Interconsult found that only 57 percent of Uruguayans support the legalization of abortion, the BBC reported.

In a statement, Vázquez framed his objections in secular terms: “Los derechos son la ética de la democracia, la vida de todos es el bien primero por el que deben velar los gobiernos democráticos” (”Legal rights are the ethics of democracy, and human life is the primary object that democratic governments should value”). But as my Fulbright colleague and guest-blogger Todd Martinez has observed, Uruguayans, though hardly churchgoers, are not exactly atheists either. Read Todd’s take on the abortion debate here.

I’ve heard that Vázquez may ultimately come out in favor of a referendum on the abortion issue, or simply leave the issue to the next president. If the Frente Amplio wins the presidency for the second time and keeps control of Congress, Uruguay may very well end up with an abortion law that matches its global image. For now, however, women who have an abortion and the doctors who help them still face prison, and abortion is only allowed in cases of rape or if the life of the mother is in danger.

See the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.