Women

«This is how we give hope to the women of Bangladesh»

“In Asia female disempowerment is still a big issue and the history of the region is constantly marked by ethnic and religious clashes.” That is why Kamal Ahmad founded the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, where the leadership potential of women is cultivated and a new sense of tolerance is taught. In this interview he speaks of his project and of how, thanks to scholarships, women from all over Asia learn to aspire to have different lives than their mothers.

Million dollar babies in Kabul

Until 2001, the national stadium in Kabul was used by the Taleban for public executions of men and women. It now represents salvation for the first Afghan female boxers. Training is tough and made even more difficult by the many layers of clothes the girls are obliged to wear, including the veil. However, their wish to make their great dreams come true is even more powerful. They want to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Changes and Contradictions

My aim here – Naomi Sakr writes – is to assess how far women's personal and political status in Saudi Arabia has been renegotiated through the media. For that purpose there are two contradictory sets of evidence. The first indicates a big increase in women’s visibility in the Saudi media in 2004-06. The second shows that, despite the increase in visibility, there was very limited change in the status of women working as journalists.

Strained stereotypes

Although according to recent statistics, in the past decades all over the western world, women have improved their status in society, television has still not been capable of fully accepting this evolution. When women are present in the world of TV they continue to be the victims of a so-called “tyranny of beauty”, according to which their bodies rather than their opinions are represented.

Women and the Italian television: the end of an alliance

Italian women have become increasingly free but at the same time less equal as far as their rights are concerned. The paternalistic idea of women’s emancipation as mothers and workers that appeared in the Fifties and the Sixties, developed into an ever increasing eroticizing of the female body during the Nineties. In between there were struggles for civil rights, liberation processes, women’s increased access to the labour market and to education, but also the development of neo-libertarianism as well as the crisis of the welfare state, which increasingly reduced previously established social guarantees and provisions. Television too followed this path, evolving from a form of social paternalism to a global economic patriarchate with neo-populist features.

Voices behind Obama

One hundred years of women's struggle surrounded the US president, and echoed in his words, in his address from Cairo University. On 4 June 2009 it was a woman's voice that resounded in the Great Hall of Cairo University announcing: "The president of the United States of America." Over the past century, women in Egypt, thanks to their own efforts, have gained many rights and increased freedom to take charge of their lives, to make their own choices.

Taliban law is not Koranic law

Compared to the legal discourse of early pioneers of Islamic law, this reclaimed Shari`a is very distant from the obvious meaning of the foundational sources of Islam. Muhammad of the Sura never raised his voice to any of his wives. The Qur’an bears witness to this. He was a loving husband and compassionate father to his daughters. Marriage is presented in the Qur’an in terms of tranquillity and mutual love; the husband is his wife’s own dress and she is his. They contain each other. Shari`a, after all, is a historical human understanding of the Qur’an according to medieval norms, which the Qur’an itself opposes.
 

Morocco’s “mourchidates” and contradictions

Within the new context of the Family Code reform and the State’s position on the compatibility between the universal truth of women’s rights and Islam, women have been given a symbolic role in the religious sphere so as to promote Islamic arguments for gender equality. In the aftermath of the Casablanca terrorist attacks and under the supervision of the King, the Ministry of Islamic affairs embarked upon a widespread project for reforming the religious field, in which women were involved in the State’s attempt to lay foundations and revive a “Moroccan Islam.” However, this new responsibility in no case establishes that access for men and women to holy places, such as mosques, should take place on a totally equal basis.  

A global movement in pursuit of equality

Over the past two decades Muslim women, together with other concerned women as feminist activists, human rights activists, and democracy activists, formed global networks, forums, and associations which, along with local initiatives, have struggled to achieve legal and functional equality in the family. Modern information technologies, instantaneous interconnectedness through the Internet, websites, training manuals, books, articles, and pamphlets are vehicles for the spread of equality ideas and practices in the family among Muslims and between Muslims and others, reaching women across the spectrum from elites to ordinary women both urban and rural, trying to place options before people. 

The first victims of Islamophobia

Half a century after the Shoah, cultural and religious differences have once again become a symbol of radical ‘otherness’ that cannot be assimilated, because of which and in spite of themselves women have become the main target. This because their appearance contributes instantly to providing them with a specific label – as “Muslims” precisely – and because by appearing in public places (such as markets, shops, schools, etc.) far more frequently than men, they interact more with others.

A plural universe

The condition experienced by Muslim woman is now more than ever a crucial element not only in the policies of Muslim states, but also in those of countries in which Muslims are a growing minority. The female body is in fact at the centre of a debate that goes well beyond women themselves and concerns crucial issues of our times, such as Islam’s relationship with democracy and the West, the definition of what citizenship means today, the characteristics of post-national states and the nature of international relations, as shown by the use of female images both in many cooperation projects and in ongoing wars.  

Polygamy and Family Law

The emancipation of women in the Arab world takes place thanks to changes in Family Law addressing issues ranging from polygamy to the right to divorce. This is an overview of various national cases, particularly Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. Although for the moment Tunisia is the only country to have formally forbidden polygamy and repudiation, there are attempts in many Islamic countries, such as Syria, Jordan and to a lesser extent Libya and Algeria, to provide procedural obstacles to these practices.  

Veiled women and the emergence of global political Islam

“The veil appears as a regression only if we assume progress to be teleological and linearly moving towards secularization”. Yale political philosopher Seyla Benhabib has discussed in Genoa the struggles over cultural identity in the scenario of contemporary Europe. In occasion of her lecture, we propose here a conversation with the Editor in chief of Reset Giancarlo Bosetti.

Emma Bonino condemns the Afghan “Shia Family Law”

Emma Bonino, Vicepresident of the Italian Senate and former EU Commissioner, calls for the "Shia Family Law" to be abolished: "The Shia Family Law signed by President Karzai is a giant step back for women in Afghanistan. It entrenches the worst kind of discrimination by authorising violence against women. It denies Afghan women equal rights in education, employment, health care and custody matters. It is, in effect, a law that legalizes marital rape. The passage of this law is a crime against the women of Afghanistan and it must be repealed. We, the undersigned, call for: - the Parliament of Afghanistan to abrogate this law; - the President of Afghanistan and the Afghan authorities to repeal this law; - the international community and every individual concerned with the human rights of women to voice their opinion to the President and Parliament of Afghanistan".

To sign the appeal write to: resetmag@tin.it