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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons No time to talk
By Mariz TadrosA great deal of jargon about women has been heard: empowerment, decision-making powers and positions, gender sensitivity, reproductive choices, awareness raising, women's advocacy... But have we adopted anything from the Beijing Platform of Action apart from politically correct language?
The Beijing+5 conference is supposed to assess how far countries have gone in implementing the Platform of Action drawn up five years ago. On the home front, many agree that Beijing+5 was a missed opportunity to analyse Egyptian women's status and its evolution since 1995. While Beijing and the ICPD mobilised activists, feminists and development workers to come together, articulate their needs and strategies and challenge the government, preparations for Beijing+5 seemed to be somewhat hazy, low-key and scattered. Coordination between the government and NGOs and among NGOs themselves left much to be desired.
Two reports were prepared for the Beijing+5 conference: one by the government, presented by the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood and the National Women's Council (NWC), and one by NGOs, initiated by the Alliance for Arab Women in collaboration with UNICEF. The views of some 421 NGOs were included in the NGO shadow report, which indicated that 67 per cent of the NGOs believed there was no coordination between them and the government in preparing for Beijing+5. Some activists have also complained that the government's report was never publicly disseminated, but was virtually leaked to them -- and that's not even the final report. Amal Mahmoud of the NGO Forum for Women in Development (a network of 105 NGOs from five different governorates) believes that official bodies could have organised a national conference and/or series of workshops to bring together activists and development workers to discuss the Egyptian agenda for Beijing+5.
Mervat Tellawi, secretary-general of the NWC, feels that the presence of representatives from NGOs, the media and the private sector on the official delegation for the first time is a sign of the importance Egypt attaches to the participation of all sectors of society in improving women's status. Many NGO activists, however, see the participation of NGOs as having been "very selective" and "unrepresentative of the full diversity within that community."
Prominent activist and associate professor of psychiatry at Ain Shams University Dr Aida Seif El-Dawla argues that Beijing+5 got off to a bad start because the process of preparation "was one of exclusion, not inclusion of many NGOs and so its outcome for Egypt remains to be seen."
The official delegation will be highlighting the creation of the NWC and the new procedural Personal Status Law as the state's major achievements in advancing women's rights since 1995. Headed by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, the NWC seeks to look into all the issues concerning women's status, and help devise and coordinate strategies of action. Amal Mahmoud feels that, while the council is a step in the right direction, "it remains to be seen how far it will go in meeting expectations."
Expectations are indeed high: coordinating NGO and government efforts, following up on interventions, speaking out against gender discrimination... The press has presented the NWC as the holder of all keys to women's emancipation, which has raised many questions. Seif El-Dawla, for example, believes its role has been exaggerated, and that the absence of sufficient NGO representation is a real setback. "Where is the NGO mandate?" she wonders.
Fatma Khafagi, head of the Women's Department at UNICEF, notes that the establishment of the NWC shows a political commitment to institutionalising women's rights. "However," she cautions, "Egypt has by no means introduced enough institutional changes to promote and streamline gender. For example, there are still no women judges or governors. Since Beijing, many countries have established women's police desks to receive complaints of domestic violence and abuse, but not Egypt."
Apart from the NWC, the other great achievement since Beijing topping the official list is the new procedural Personal Status Law, which allows a woman to divorce her husband without providing legal justification, if she forgoes all her financial rights. Seif El-Dawla estimates that this, too, has been exaggerated: "The new Khul' law is a manipulation of religious texts to serve the interests of a sector of the elite, to the exclusion of most women, and to the exclusion of non-Muslims," she exclaims.
Most activists, however, agree that the law is a step forward, though substantive reform has yet to be addressed. Khafagi asserts that the new law, together with the repeal of the rape clause (which allowed a rapist to go unpunished if he offered to marry his victim) have helped address some forms of discrimination in the legal code. Legal discrimination, however, is far from being wiped out, she concedes, stressing that the nationality law has not yet been changed. Nor have some aspects of the penal code, while the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has not been incorporated into our constitution. Moreover, she points out that "Egypt has not signed the optional protocol, signed by 22 countries and allowing women whose rights have been violated to report directly to CEDAW, which in turn calls upon the governments to respond."
Still, it is true that legislation was introduced in 1996 prohibiting any individual, including a doctor, from performing female genital mutilation either inside or outside a hospital. The official report cites this as a major step toward the enhancement of women's reproductive rights and the elimination of FGM. NGO workers, on the other hand, insist that, while the move is welcomed, prohibiting the practice is not enough to bring about a change in beliefs and practices. They point out that a commitment to reproductive health must transcend the use of politically correct terminology and more toward the introduction of effective interventions.
Khafagi believes that progress has been made on the health and education front, with the government making such services more accessible. She is more concerned, however, with the lack of policies promoting gender equality in the political and economic arenas. For example, she says, "there have been no quotas established in parliament to encourage women's participation in politics, and there has been no pressure on political parties to recruit more women, as has been observed in other countries. There have been no data banks established on women's participation in the economy...."
Khafagi argues that programmes aiming at raising women's awareness of their rights and providing legal literacy courses, for instance, have been set up since Beijing; these, however, were NGO- and not government-initiated. Not a good sign, according to Khafagi, "because the government should show a commitment to legal aid programmes, to establishing shelters, to making programmes specifically targeting female-headed households. In this area in particular, the government seems to be paying more lip service to programme changes, than actually doing anything."
It is in the area of enhancing women's economic situation, especially among the poor, that the government has accomplished least of all since Beijing, argues Amal Mahmoud.
There is a general consensus that the privatisation and early retirement policies that have been gaining momentum in the past five years have a negative impact on women. "Structural adjustment has pushed many women into the informal sector," asserts Mahmoud. Given that women head 20 to 30 per cent of all households, she adds, they are trying to earn a living for themselves and their families under unacceptable conditions and terms of employment.
As for early retirement schemes, Mahmoud says that documented case studies now indicate that women were the first to be sacrificed, and that job opportunities for them tend to be lower than a few years ago.
"Poverty in general has increased, the gap between rich and poor has increased, and since women are the most vulnerable members of the community, they are the worst hit by this economic problem," she explains.
According to the official report to Beijing+5, the main strategy adopted by the government to confront poverty among women and limited employment opportunities has been promoting the establishment and support of microenterprises, either through the provision and facilitation of microcredit or through revolving loan schemes. There have been 14,000 projects established in the agricultural field and the Social Fund for Development is also establishing many microenterprises, according to the report.
Mahmoud, like many other NGO activists, is disturbed by the official emphasis on microcredit, which she believes is an insufficient form of intervention for addressing the poverty question alone. Certainly, women's access to credit is very important, and can sometimes increase their options of income generation. Success stories notwithstanding, however, microcredit has been unfairly presented as a panacea, a strategy for empowerment, a tool for poverty alleviation and a substitute for a proper job. Mahmoud lists market constraints, the absence of adequate training and the fact that not all individuals can become owners of their own enterprises as just some of the problems affecting women who take up microcredit. "Even programmes working under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Affairs have marketing problems. Officials there have told us that sometimes they were forced to give the products away as presents because they were not being sold," gasps Mahmoud.
On the whole, she concludes, while the plight of poor women is still to be addressed, the most important achievement since Beijing is that women's cause is now on the government as well as the NGO agenda. A partnership between the government and NGOs on women is still far off on the horizon, however. Khafagi notes that when the government finds it too risky to work in certain areas, such as violence against women and political participation, it leaves it to the NGOs to do the work, but there are limitations to how much NGOs can achieve on their own. Generally, the government has made progress in non-controversial areas such as health and education, but in other areas, it has been more inclined to pay lip service than introduce changes, she notes.
Seif El-Dawla feels that, "in a nutshell, the government has coopted NGO language as regards women's issues, but there is little substance." The great achievement for women since Beijing, she suggests, is the abrogation of the new NGO Law 153/1999, "because it restricted people's right to organise, including women's."
The main question, then, seems to be whether, in the next five years, it will be possible to move from using sophisticated gender terminology on women to supporting the long, thorny processes of real social transformation.
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