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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Catalan meditations
By Nehad SelaihaFor two hectic but amply rewarding days in June, 36 professional women from 14 countries around the Mediterranean met in Barcelona to assess the achievements of women in the 20th century and define the problems, dangers and challenges that they still have to face on the eve of the third millennium. The meeting, held under the title The Century of Women in the Mediterranean, was hosted, and admirably organised, by the Institut Catala de la Doña (The Women Equal Opportunities Institution) of the autonomous government of Catalonia; and the six intensive sessions which covered many areas of human activity in the fields of culture, science, politics, and human rights were held at the Centre de Convencions Winterthur in the presence of a 500-strong audience, mostly female. I wished there had been some men on the panels and more in the audience. The look of the hall faintly suggested a kind of segregation based on gender and reminded me of the singularly uncomfortable feeling I experienced at a couple of theatre seminars held in the Gulf, where I was the only woman. In the case of the Institut Catala de la Doña, however, this is not a deliberate policy of exclusion. The sessions were open to the public regardless of age, race, or gender, and most of the speakers emphasised that their quarrel was not with men but with the coercive and unjust laws and institutions of patriarchy which engender and perpetuate the oppression and exploitation of women. And, indeed, some papers made glowing references to men who played key roles in the progress and liberation of women, and there were even some passionate personal admissions of gratitude to husbands, fathers, and male friends and colleagues.
What engaged the speakers, whatever their discipline -- be it law, science, philosophy, anthropology, history, psychology, social studies, politics, literature, or the arts -- was to look for the ground roots of female oppression down history and discuss ways of eradicating them. When Tunisian anthropologist Nozha Sekik described the problems and living conditions of immigrant women from North Africa in France, Italy, and Spain, she clearly pointed out that the root cause of their plight, and what drove them out of their countries in the first place, was a vicious combination of reactionary social, political, economic and religious systems. Neither the government of the home or the host country is willing to do anything to relieve their ignorance, poverty, loneliness and abuse, or even give them access to legal advice. If single, they feel alienated, vulnerable and ostracised; if married to a compatriot, their misery is compounded by having to suffer the anger and frustration of their immigrant husbands, which is invariably vented on them. At the end of Sekik's presentation, a member of the audience who works at a regional clinic catering for an immigrant community in Spain spoke of her dilemma in dealing with her clients. "Many of the women do not speak the language because their husbands forbid them to learn it," she said. One husband told her when she wanted to talk to his wife that he was there to talk for her and added, "If I can speak Spanish, she has no need for it." Her candid words raised the vexing question of cultural identity versus human rights; where does one end and the other begin? How far can one tolerate flagrant abuses of human rights for fear of impinging on the sanctity of certain traditional beliefs, modes of thinking and ways of life?
Fatma Rushdi, the Sarah Bernhardt of the East, 1920s
These and related questions were taken up by other speakers and tackled from various angles. Margarida Boladeras, a philosopher specialised in bioethics and law, and reader of moral and political philosophy at Barcelona University, traced the roots of female oppression in Western thought and philosophy, exposing many of the fallacies about women that have been passed off as hallowed truths; Nativitat Senserrich, a theologian, also from Barcelona University, corroborated Boladeras's argument by attacking all forms of clericalism and arguing that theologians have often manipulated religion to pass off their ideologically biased interpretations of holy script as holy laws; Khadija Elmadmad, a Moroccan lawyer actively involved in the campaign to change the personal status laws in her country, described the fierce opposition she meets with from religious fundamentalists and other reactionary bodies; Shulamit Aloni, another lawyer, spoke openly against the tyranny of the Jewish ecclesiastical establishment; Maha Abu Dia Shammas, the founder and director of the Palestinian Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling in Jerusalem, spoke of the violence many Arab women suffer in the name of customs and traditions; and Ouiza Cherifi, a professor of chemistry from Algeria, defiantly declared that Algerian women will go on fighting for a civil society against all odds.
There were many other speakers, equally interesting: a young Catalan biologist from the Department of Medicine at Barcelona University, fighting for the right of women to control their bodies and reproduction; another young psychoanalyst who discussed the problems of female adolescents in choosing a model for the self from among the many projected by the media; the Catalan demographer Anna Cabre, who discussed the stereotyping of women according to age and personal status; a sociologist who described in painful detail the exploitation of female street children in Mexico and other countries she worked in; a charming topographer from Greece, Leda Yannakopoulou, who surveyed the history of Greek women and spoke of the generation gaps between females in the same family, urging tolerance... And many, many others.
At the end of the two days, we had covered so much ground and so many topics that Marta Pessarrodona, the coordinator of the meeting and Joaquima Alemany i Roca, the president of the Institut Catala de la Doña, found it very difficult to make a comprehensive summary. Nevertheless, a genuine dialogue and exchange of ideas had taken place and a common ground been discovered. Many friendships too had been forged. It was reassuring to be among so many intelligent and dedicated women who, despite their different faiths and cultural backgrounds, were fully alive to the danger of theocracies, deeply suspicious of authoritarianism under whatever guise, willing to radically question the patriarchal heritage in its most sensitive areas, and who firmly believed that a civil society was the only guarantee for human rights and the dignity of women. We had a reader in mediaeval history amongst us; after her presentation, I found myself wondering with my Arab colleagues if we had really put the Middle Ages safely behind us. Maha, the Palestinian, remarked that they were only round the corner, ready to pounce on us -- as they did in Afghanistan and are trying to do in Algeria -- if we were not careful; Ouiza, our Algerian friend, nodded bitterly and talked of the daily horrors she had to put up with, of the assassination of director Abdul-Qadir Allula and many friends and students, of the mass emigration of artists, and the demise of the once thriving Algerian theatre. The Moroccan lawyer, Khadija, reminded us how only a few years ago their leading actress, Thoraya Gubran, was kidnapped by Islamists who shaved off her hair before releasing her and threatened to kill her if she went back to acting after that. I made a mental comparison between Gubran, who immediately resumed her career despite her traumatic experience, and those Egyptian female performers who penitently turn their back on their art and withdraw from public life. The comparison was so disturbing and depressing and my mind flew for comfort to the memory of Fatma Rushdi, the Sarah Bernhardt of the East. But remembering her glorious stage career, her struggle in 1927 to form a company that carried her name, and her defiant taking on of famous male parts brought no relief. It only made me wonder (as I often did during those two days) if what we call time is the same for everyone and everywhere. I know some places where it has lagged behind; people there have yet to reach the 18th or 19th centuries. But can it move backward in others? Or in small, vicious circles? For nearly 100 years, Egyptian women have fought for many rights, among them a place in the theatre and recognition as artists; and now they are voluntarily relinquishing (with many of their achievements) this place, or turning their back on it in disdain, or abusing it by using it for purposes other than art. It seems we shall have to fight, all over again, many of the battles our brave predecessors fought and thought they had won once and for all. But this time, I hope we shall fight them right, and put time on the right track, making sure it always moves forward and does not suddenly double back upon itself to carry us back to square one. The presentations at the Barcelona meeting I cited briefly at the beginning point in the right direction. In Egypt, some NGOs, like The Women and Memory Forum Research Centre, are following the same route; and in the field of theatre there is a new crop of artists, brave young men and women who are not afraid of questioning the basically authoritarian framework of our culture and society, and exposing all the ossified assumptions that underpin the dominant trends of thought which want to carry us back to the Middle Ages.
Will these enlightened forces survive into the third millennium, or will the currents of repression and regression sweep them away?
