Women's rights are human rights
By Safaa Zaki Murad
On International Women's Day it is apt to reconsider the conditions of Egyptian women today, a subject that receives abundant attention from official and popular institutions as well as women's rights groups. Women's committees have emerged in several trade unions, and women's groups in political parties command more attention.
Notwithstanding such increased support, I have two comments to make about the issue.
The first concerns the official institutions that deal with women's issues: that they deal with women's rights mostly in the context of women being competent wives and mothers, honouring their role in the household and thinking of the right to education as one of the qualifications for that role.
Women's rights as an essential part of human rights are never or seldom brought up.
The second concerns civil organisations and individuals: that such people have not managed, despite their best intentions, to integrate their efforts into the daily lives of the vast majority of women, especially working-class women, in any convincing way. Their work remains sporadic and discontinuous, whereas only an integrated full-scale programme for engaging women in the struggle to attain their rights would bring about the desired social transformation.
* This week's Soapbox speaker is a human rights lawyer and feminist activist.
