The house of obedience: women in Arab society 9780862320126, 9780862320638

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Foreword (page vii)
1. Introduction: A Confessional Universe (page 13)
2. Everyday Forms of Oppression (page 29)
3. The Legal Status of Women: Reforms and Social Inertia (page 57)
4. Two Examples of Women in Arab Societies (page 79)
5. The Future of Arab Women: Some Basic Ambiguities (page 107)
Bibliography (page 113)

Citation preview

The House of Obedience

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Le Nord (Maspero, 1967) | Un ouurier parle (Le Seuil, 1968) L’Algerie independante (in collaboration with Gerard Chaliand) (Maspero, 1972) Les Travailleurs etrangers en France (Le Seuil, 1973) L’Algerie de Boumediene (Presses de la Cite, 1978) Je hais cette France-la (Le Seuil, 1979) Contributions to Collective Works Les Villes nouvelles de la province francaise (KPHE, Laboratoire de sociologie industrielle, Paris, 1969) Le Mythe du developpement (Le Seuil, 1977)

‘Women in Algeria’, in Women in the Muslim World , (Harvard University Press, 1978)

of

Obedience Women in Arab Society Juliette Minces

Translated by Michael Pallis

Zed Books Ltd London and New Jersey

The House of Obedience was first published in French by Editions Mazarine, 8 rue de Nesle, Paris, France, in 1980, and in English by Zed Press, 57 Caledonian Road, London Ni 9BU, UK and 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716, USA, in 1982.

Copyright © Juliette Minces, 1980. Translation copyright © Zed Books, 1982. Cover designed by Andrew Corbett. Cover photo by Christine Osborne. Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Billing and Sons, Worcester. Fourth impression, 1992.

All rights reserved.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library ISBN 0 86232 012 7 Hb ISBN 0 86232 063 1 Pb

ontents

Foreword | Vi

The Koranic Law 15 The Arab World 22, 2. Kveryday Forms of Oppression 29 A Man’s Society 30 The Arab Man | 34

1. Introduction: A Confessional Universe 13

The Incarceration of Women 4.0

Immigrant Women 45 Two Symbols of Women’s Oppression 49 The Veil (49) Circumcision of Women (51)

Marriage 60 Polygamy 64 62 Divorce

3. The Legal Status of Women: Reforms and Social Inertia o7

Reproduction and Birth Control og

Custody of Children69 68 Inheritance Education and Employment 71

4. Two Examples of Women im Arab Societies 719

The 19 The Maghreb: Near East:Algeria Egypt 95

o. The Future of Arab Women: Some Basic Ambiguities 107

Bibliography 113

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Foreword

This book is essentially the product of my observations in the field, during more than four years spent in the Indian Subcontinent, Iran, Turkey, Black Africa, etc., including two years in the Maghreb and Arab Near East. | was able to see the sort of lives women ied there. My knowledge of the area enables me to situate the Arab world fairly precisely, both in terms of the Muslim world as a whole and in terms of the non-Muslim parts of the Third World. My approach is certainly not based solely on the contrast between the Arab

societies and the West. ,

In order to be as specific as possible, rather than present a disparate series of comments on each Arab country, which would have been both over-ambitious and repetitive, | have chosen to illustrate my point with two examples which struck me as particularly interesting: Algeria in the Maghreb and Egypt in the Near East.

Algeria defines itself as a socially and politically revolutionary country. Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world (out of a little more than 100 million Arabs, 40 million are Egyptian); furthermore, EXigypt’s urban elites have long been ‘Westernized’, while its peasantry is tied to the land to a remarkable degree. In other words, two worlds coexist there without really meeting, and one may encounter a huge range of possible lifestyles, especially as far as women are concerned. [ have deliberately not included any study of Saudi Arabia, for example; Wahabism* is very much a particular case. I have tried not to make my Western experience the criterion for universal and absolute judgements. (As Maxime Rodinson puts it, Arab society * An especially strict and puritan Sunni sect. Vil

The House of Obedience

has its own specificity, but it is not, in itself, an exception.) Nonetheless, societies which continue to hold that fifty per cent of their population — the women — should remain subordinate, and be relegated to the status of minors or inferiors, cannot but be a problem for us. Finally, in this world where women remain unequal whatever the society, it is as a woman that | present this account.

Vill

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Introduction: Confessional Universe

a OD ce tucee Hur ntimwe ish

Western feminists have an unfortunate tendency to approach the status of women throughout the world as if it were a single issue. In doing so, they ignore historical factors and other differences in the degree of exploitation or lack of emancipation of women of various classes and in various countries. Of course, it is quite true that women everywhere are subject to effective discrimination, often unattenuated by legislation, even in the supposedly advanced societies of the West. Every where, there is still a long way to go before equality becomes a fact in education and daily life. Yet however unsatisfactory their condition, it is usually recognized that women are ‘persons’, individuals. This status has enabled them to carry their demands further and further, to an ever wider and more receptive audience. Let us not forget that the most ‘aggressive’ feminists are usually those whose socio-cultural position provides them with the means to run thelr own lives and thus to become aware of the extent of their alienation. If working-class women rarely go beyond demanding ‘equal pay for equal work’, it is because this is the central problem which must be solved before others can be tackled and understood. This digression on Western feminists is not simply a sidetrack. Many young women from the Third World, having come to Europe or America to complete their studies, return to their countries and try to engage in the kind of feminist struggles they have witnessed in the West. Their concern to liberate themselves and their sisters is quite legitimate, but their way of proceeding separates them from their own community; involuntarily, they see it only from the outside and cannot describe it in familiar or adequate terms. The result is that they are not understood by the women of their country; they have effectively become ‘Westerners’.

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The House of Obedience

It is not so easy to move from one society or culture to another! Still less easy to go from an underdeveloped society, where the invariably more traditional peasantry is numerically so important, to an industrial society where urbanization and a different system . of production have already transformed people’s way of thought. It is hard to go against custom or religion or traditional and still solidly implanted social and family structures. Turkey, which imposed a Swiss Civil Code to replace Islamic law during Ataturk’s revolution, is a striking example of the enduring strength of tradition, even if, of all the Muslim countries, it remains one of the few to have granted women a degree of legal emancipation. One could also mention Iran which was long presented to us as a society where Westernization and secularization had been accepted at every level of urban life. The real problem is whether similar solutions can be brought to bear on such totally different situations. What the Arab feminists demand is equality before the law and in daily life, which for the moment their society cannot grant, for the very precise reasons linked to tradition and religion but also to certain political and economic problems. It is far too superficial to say that all women are equally exploited and subordinate, forgetting all the differences that the specific history of a society implies.

Let us begin by removing a possible source of ambiguity. Muslim or Arab women are not exceptional. Most pre-industrial societies are unfortunately similar in many ways when it comes to the inferior status of women. The role of women in the Arab world has not, historically, been so different from that of women in other societies and cultures over the centuries. The civilizations of the Mediterranean, Asia Minor and the Near East are there to prove it. What is particular, and problematic, is that while women elsewhere gradually liberated themselves — to some extent — from the total supremacy of men, most women in the Muslim world continued to be totally subordinate. They live under a system which has barely changed despite the undeniable evolution of their societies and the efforts of certain would-be ‘revolutionary’ governments to grant women greater equality and rights, in keeping with what we would call a desire for ‘modernization’. The traditional structures have survived the vicissitudes of history (colonization, introduction of capitalism, etc.) and are particularly strong in that they rest on a whole corpus of rules, codes, traditions and laws drawn from the Koran. Inasmuch as the Holy 14

Introduction: A Confessional Universe Book serves as both Bible and Civil Code, it is the determinant element which influences every aspect of private and social life. On the other hand, these traditional structures, for all that they are so oppressive both for men and for women, originally represented a source of great security. Their real foundation is the extended family — or the tribe -- with all that that implies in terms of solidarity and interdependency. In such a context, nobody is left to fend for themselves and relatives provide a form of social security which only the most modern contemporary states can match. Although women essentially remain minors throughout their lives, subordinate first to the men of their family and then to their husbands, the Koranic law theoretically guarantees that, whatever happens, they will be cared for till the day they die, as long as they respect the norms of decency laid down for women. In practice, however, this guarantee has gradually become increasingly fictitious. Given all this, and given these women’s ignorance of life outside, it is hardly surprising that so few of them seek to break out into a

world for which nothing has prepared them. |

The Koranic Law

When Islam came to the fore in Arabia during the 7th Century, and before it spread from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, it was not only a new religion but also a movement of social reform with particular relevance to the status of women. In pre-Islamic Arabia, for instance, women were treated as chattels, to be bought and sold or inherited. Polygamy was unlimited and the husband could break off the union as he chose. Infanticide of baby girls was quite common. Islam gave women a legal status, with rights and duties. They were allowed to keep their father’s name after marriage and acquired a legal personality. The bride-price* was henceforth to be the sole property of the bride; marriage thus became a contract between husband and wife, rather than a transaction in which the women’s guardian sold her to her future husband. The man’s right to divorce a woman on the spot as he chose was restricted by the imposition of a three-month waiting period, * Dowry paid by the fiance before marriage.

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The House of Obedience

before which the break could not be considered final. Women were entitled to inherit and own property, without their guardians or husbands having to serve as intermediaries. Even more crucially, women could now themselves become guardians of minors. They were authorized to go into business or ply a trade and they no longer required their husbands’ consent before taking a case to. court. Polygamy was theoretically restricted to a maximum of four — wives; furthermore, the husband was required to be capable of treating each of his spouses equitably. The Koran maliciously adds

that, if the husband was not certain of his capacities in this regard (given that equity of this kind is probably impossible), then he should only take one wife. But the matter was left to his own conscience. On the other hand, he was allowed as many concubines as he wished, providing such indulgence was within his means and

all the resulting offspring were recognized. The Koran contains many other equally important reforms. But as it spread, Islam became impregnated with local pre-Islamic | traditions, many of which have survived to this day, notably the

veil for the rich women of the towns and female circumcision in | many Arab countries. Nonetheless, in its golden age, Islam did not orevent women from participating in social and public life. They were entitled to education on the same basis that men were. Finally, Islam also introduced a Family Code which defined the rights and duties of men and women; it still constitutes the basis for the Family Code which applies to Muslims in all the Arab countries.

The Civil Code and Penal Code have a similar origin. |

These Koranic laws and prescriptions were reasonably well suited to the society of 14 centuries ago, with its patriarchal or tribal values, in which the male head of the family assumed authority and enjoyed privileges corresponding to the enormous responsibilities he had towards his direct family and his relatives. Later, different schools evolved and their interpretations of the Koran were to

a greater or lesser extent more liberal. But there were few disagreements as to the role of women, whose status evolved little, since the conception of the family unit remained stable. The Koranic law, like all laws, was also often sidestepped, to suit local needs and interests, in many cases, to the detriment of women. There are many Koranic Suras* dealing with women. They are * Chapters of the Koran.

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Introduction: A Confessional Universe

often contradictory and it is not our job to determine whether they have been correctly interpreted or not, or even whether they are liberal, just and egalitarian. What matters is that life has been organized in the various societies in terms of a specific framework. This framework, the Koran and the Sharia, continues to provide the justification for practices of every kind, including pre-Islamic practices such as female circumcision which the ordinary people think of as prescribed by the Holy Books. For the faithful — and there are practically no atheists or agnostics in these societies — the Koran remains the word of God, as revealed by the Prophet. The legislation derived from it is thus not easily amended. Furthermore, this legislation has gradually become impregnated with customary beliefs which have often had the effect of distorting certain Koranic prescriptions. But since the whole is presented as emanating from the Prophet, the task of reformist legislators has always been particularly arduous, in that one of the specific features of the Islamic religion, especially as far as women are concerned, is that it has created a set of laws which are relatively precise and hence difficult to modify. If we are to understand how the organization of the family and kinship proups affects the status of women in Muslim society, we must take two important elements into account. The first is the stipulation that a woman shall belong to her agnatic group* (an originally tribal concept which continues to have many structural ramifications). The implication is that the male patrilineal relative is economically, legally and morally responsible for his kin, whatever his own marital status. The second element focuses on the criteria of family pride.

Conformity to norms of behaviour is considered an integral part of the men’s ‘honour’, but this honour depends mainly on the behaviour of women in the family. Premarital chastity of sisters and daughters, marital fidelity on the part of the wife and sexual abstinence on the part of widows and divorcees (daughters or sisters) are the principles on which the reputation and status of the family depend. These principles have a very precise cultural meaning: they represent a set of cultural constraints upon behaviour which serve as an extremely efficient form of control over

social relations. |

The interaction between this awareness of economic and moral

* Patrilineally descended.

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The House of Obedience

responsibility towards all female relatives and the fact that family honour depends on the sexual purity of women has consolidated the structure of control exercised by the men over their female kin. The men of a family are institutionally supported in the exercise of this function by the religious and legal system, which means they can impose upon a woman whatever sanctions they see fit whenever they feel that family honour has not been respected. However, honour alone is not enough to justify such control. For family sanctions to be truly efficacious, it is essential that the family group should unfailingly accept the responsibility to provide economic support for women kinfolk, and that women’s economic dependency be perpetuated thereby. A woman in Islam is thus characterized by her status as a minor and the fact that her role is restricted exclusively to the family, as mother and teacher — in other words as guardian of the traditions; only in the more privileged classes does she have the status of producer. In the towns, customs have evolved a little, but elsewhere, amongst the poor, the peasantry and the nomads, traditional family relations and attitudes remain very much in force. Even in the towns, which are growing rapidly due to the rural exodus and where urban living conditions make it difficult for all but the richest to maintain extended families, it would be unthinkable for even distant relatives to be housed and fed other than within the family. Hospitality is a duty and must be free of charge, at least during the first few days. In other words, even when urban conditions have forced the family to become a nuclear unit (father, mother and direct descendants), people still think in terms of the extended family, with all the rights and duties that implies. Amongst the rural poor, the desire for many sons continues to have a real basis in the fact that children’s labour in the fields is necessary, especially for fruit picking and at harvest time. Furthermore a large number of sons is still seen as a source of pride and a guarantee for the future, since boys are required to support their elderly parents and their unmarried, divorced or widowed sisters. In the countryside, neither schooling for girls nor birth control as a means of securing a better overall standard of living are seen as necessities, since there is little in people’s own experience to show that these ‘novelties’ do improve the living conditions of the family as a whole. As a result, attitudes change only very slowly and most aspects of the tradition remain unquestioned. Religion and what is seen as desirable are still inextricably bound up with 18

Introduction: A Confessional Universe

the tradition. The Arab world is further characterized by clan or family ties which are strictly regulated by Islamic law. This is true at every level of society except amongst the intellectuals and Westernized cadres. Endogamous marriages, which do not involve a dispersal of family property or diminish the family’s power, are seen as preferable to exogamous marriages. Unions are often formed between cousins who are more or less closely related. The family group, in the broad sense, is the keystone of society. In order to ensure the purity of the line, the fiancee must be a virgin, so girls are frequently married off very young. They are educated almost entirely with a view to their future roles as wives and mothers, and are closely watched from puberty onwards. A girl’s virginity is a family possession of considerable importance, even today. Young women of the bourgeoisie who have led a relatively free life during their years at university usually have their hymen replaced before marriage by accommodating surgeons whose fortunes are quickly made.

In certain cases, for instance in the Gulf Emirates, a little girl will become engaged very young and be sent to live with her future husband’s family at an early age, long before the marriage can be consummated. Her education is thus completed by her mother-inlaw, who brings her up to meet the requirements of the future husband and his household. The enormous importance placed on women’s fertility is a fund= amental source of insecurity for those who are considered infertile or who give birth only to girls; either of these misfortunes is sufficient motive for repudiation, divorce or the introduction of a new wife into the household. It goes without saying that the infertility of a union is always blamed on the woman. Once she is old and has had sons, however, a woman can exert considerable influence within her family. Usually it will be she who, at the request of the father, will choose a wife for her sons. It is to her that her sons will come to share their troubles, for throughout their childhood and adolescence, she will have been their closest companion; relations with the father are often more difficult, and extremely codified. An elderly woman may remain a minor vis-avis her husband but she usually enjoys great authority over the household and its inhabitants, which is very much her own domain. Men have their own world outside, in the coffee houses, markets and in public life. At last she is universally respected; no longer a sexual being, she ceases to be that crushed and dominated 19

The House of Obedience

object whose actions might detract from the honour of the family, arouse desire in other men or cast doubt upon her husband’s_ | virility and manhood, which must constantly be reasserted. Finally, it is her task to maintain the tradition, transmit it to the young and ensure that even the most recalcitrant boys and girls

respect it. |

Older women transmit men’s authority and are thus equally important in maintaining customs. Few of them will accept changes in attitudes brought about by schooling. They remain convinced of the validity of the tradition which assigns to each person his or her proper place within the family or the clan: their authority over their own domain is often as despotic as the men’s © and they will exercise every means of pressure at their disposal to ensure that the established order is respected, formally at least. Only a few exceptional individuals, having at last acquired this power over the household, will use it to help younger women

escape the traditional bonds. ,

tn the countryside, where the majority of the population lives, the family system reflects an agrarian tradition which casts the house and the fields as a single economic unit, within which husband and wife play complementary roles. Marriage thus becomes an economic necessity, since women are necessary to the accomplishment of certain tasks. It is therefore arranged as early as possible. The young wife goes to live with her husband’s family, until he sets up his own household, and often becomes the servant of her mother-in-law, helping her with many domestic tasks. An extra pair of hands is always useful. As for the children, they are soon put to work and rapidly acquire responsibilities, especially the girls. but they never question parental authority. The different age groups live closely together and, providing the traditional family structure is scrupulously respected, there rarely develops that clash between generations which we witness so frequently in the West. The many quarrels between mothers and daughters-in-law described in Arab literature almost never pose a challenge to the fundamental equilibrium of

the family. | .

The family is the real centre of most activities, be they social, economic, religious, educational or political. The interests of the extended family almost always prevail over those of the individual or even over those of the community as a whole. It is always worth remembering that a married woman’s status depends on her ability to have children. The larger the family, the greater its prestige, 20

Introduction: A Confessional Universe

political power and strength. Under such conditions, the choice of a spouse is far too serious a matter to be left to those directly concerned. Marriage is thus an issue for families to decide and not for the future couple. It would be a nonsense to bring love into the matter, in all but the most exceptional cases. Not that ‘feelings’ do not exist, especially in the countryside, where work in the fields brings young people of different sex together, young people who have often known each other since childhood in the village or within the extended family (marriages between more or less closely related cousins are in fact the preferred option). So platonic idylis sometimes do arise and lead to marriage, providing this suits __ the interests of the two families concerned. But apart from such cases, it is only in the towns, amongst the more educated strata who have abandoned the tradition, that | ‘love matches’ are made, and even there they are still a relatively recent phenomenon. Traditionally, a woman in love is to be treated with great suspicion. Usually, she will be considered immoral. She is not really supposed to have dealings of any sorts with men other than her brothers and her father. Modesty requires her to lower her eyes before a stranger, or to veil herself when she cannot avoid his presence. She may not be a physical recluse like the women in the countryside but her whole behaviour is meant to reflect what I would call her psychological reclusion. This ‘modesty’, this ‘sense of shame’ which is demanded of her is SO LmMportant that sexual passivity and submission to her hus-

band are called for. A woman who evinces any interest in the sexual success of her marriage, is, in theory, likely to become suspect in her husband’s eyes, especially in the early days of the relationship. ‘The reality is of course slightly different since, as we shall see, the manipulation of sexuality is one of the most frequently used weapons of femininity. Nonetheless, it is still true that when a young girl is led to the bridegroom’s bedroom, the only prenuptial advice her mother gives her is usuaily to be docile and “above all don’t move, or your husband will think you have © been with another man’. Chastity is crucial, in all things, and is an affair for the family, whose honour depends on it. sexuality in islam has a legitimate and vital function within the framework of marriage (and not just in order to procreate); adultery, on the other hand, is severely punished, and the sanctions laid down by the Koranic law threaten both men and women with stoning or flagellation. In everyday life, however, society is relatively lax towards men and extremely hard on women, who run the

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The House of Obedience

risk of being killed by their own family in order to regain lost honour. Only blood can wipe off such a stain. Birth control is not formally forbidden by the Koran, under certain conditions, but most women reject it because they see numerous pregnancies as their best guarantee against repudiation. As for the men, they see birth control as an attack on their virility.

In short, Islamic law continues to reflect the patriarchal and patrilineal nature of a society based on male agnatic ties. In this system of family laws, women, be they daughter, wife or mother. have an inferior status. The Arab World

I have chosen to write about Arab women rather than all Muslim women simply because the Arab world itself contains many very different societies. To speak in terms of Muslim women would have meant analysing societies as divergent as Indonesia and Albania. According to Maxime Rodinson,* a number of common criteria allow us to define the Arabs. Firstly, there is the Arabic language and its different dialects, which delimits a geographical area stretching from Morocco to Mesopotamia. Even then, there are exceptions, notably the Berber cultures in the Maghreb. Another, more modern, criterion is Arabism, an ideology which involves a drive towards unification and which cannot be ignored. Its basis, apart from language, is seen to lie in a common history and culture going back to the 7th and 8th Centuries A.D., the period of the Arab tribes’ great conquests, when they created an enormous empire and propagated a new monotheistic religion, Islam.

Naturally, this does not prevent North Yemen being very different from Morocco or Egypt, or the Bedouin tribes having little in common with the sedentary peasants of Syria. We shall occasionally go into the details of these differences, but only where they | determine specific types of behaviour towards women, who are our

real subject. |

The Arab countries are generally taken to include Syria, Lebanon,

* Les Arabes, PUF, Paris, 1979.

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Introduction: A Confessional Universe

lraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf Emirates, the two Yemens, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. Although they are members of the Arab League, Somalia and the Republic of Djibouti do not use Arabic as their

everyday language. :

While one can invoke a linguistic and religious unity of the Arab world, it would be hard to find any trace of political unity. The various states mentioned generally have conflicting economic policies, and the differences between them in terms of resources and revenues are considerable. The limits of solidarity are quickly

reached. ,

The Arab and Muslim societies do, however, all have an almost identical vision of women, a vision which is the very root of the status of women in those countries. As we have seen, the tribal or familial structural basis of these societies imposes upon women a role and a position such that any modification of their status threatens to bring down the patriarchal, familial or tribal pillars on which those societies rest. It may, at first, seem paradoxical that the richest countries, notably those of the Arabian Peninsula (except Kuwait) and Libya, are by no means the most liberal in their legislation affecting women. Similarly, although Syria and Iraq, countries claiming a socialist (Ba’athist) orientation, have promoted the participation of reasonably well-to-do urban women in economic and public life, Algeria, which presents itself as even more revolutionary, has brought little radical change to the traditional constraints. In all cases, attitudes towards woman and her place in society have changed very gradually, and only because econonic and social necessities made it essential. Where there have been no such pressures, legislation has remained unaltered. In most Arab countries, the last few decades have seen a modernist commercial or bureaucratic bourgeoisie develop, and women have benefitted from the relative Westernization of these strata. some have gained access to university education and a few can practise lucrative professions, instead of living cloistered segregated lives. But this is obviously only true of a small minority amongst the female population. Over the centuries there has in fact been considerable vacillation, at least among the elite. At first, during the colonial era, there was a fascination with the West, its values and its power. Mustapha Kemal in Turkey, soon followed by Reza Shah in Iran, tried to introduce reforms and promote what in those days was universally considered to be progress, 2d

The House of Obedience

namely an imitation of the West. Half a century later, after all the struggles of decolonization, the West was perceived as a dominating force to be shut out lest it destroy the character and personality of the region. This feeling made for a desire to ‘return to the sources’: the quest for identity was pursued in terms of Islam which is indeed the source of local culture, especially for the Arabs, whose language is that of the Koran. Islamic values were reaffirmed and presented as the only suitable ones for the societies concerned; all other influences were more or less violently rejected as corrupting, or, at best, totally inadequate. This fundamentalist revival put forward the most rigid interpretations of religious dogma as the only model to be followed. The idea was to make the differentiation

from the West as sharp as possible. |

For women, this ‘revival’ implied not only a rejection of Western ways but also withdrawal back into the traditional family universe. But this tradition, especially in its revived form, was partly based on a nostalgic myth; the ancient ways could not really be main-

tained intact, given the changes which had already taken place in | society and in family life itself. The evolution of most of these societies meant that women could no longer live in the relative security provided by the traditional family. Yet the ‘modernization’ which has done away with tne security of the extended family has not provided women with a substitute, since few women were prepared to assume complete and sole responsibility for their own lives. The contradictions have thus become even more acute. The societies of the Arab world have been shaken to the core by Western penetration and have been too profoundly modified for a return to the old lifestyle to be possible, except in the most unusual cases. Western-type urbanization, which seems irreversible, has broken the structure of the extended family, which offered the only way back to the authentic traditionai lifestyle. The transformation of the Arab world’s economic structures and methods of production has not only helped dislocate the traditional family, it has made it possible for women in the towns to work out of the house. (In the countryside, women have always worked in the fields.) This new feature may as yet only affect a limited number of women, but it has important consequences and reduces their dependence on the economic level at least. Furthermore, girls have been given access to schooling in several countries. True, the girls stay at school for far fewer years than the 24

Introduction: A Confessional Universe boys, because of pressures from their families. Consequently, not many women gain higher qualifications or access to the liberal or administrative professions. Apart from these improvements, there have been few major changes in the condition of all but the most privieged women. As we shall see, some small progress has been made, but day-to-day life remains as difficult, unequal and discriminatory as ever. Let us not forget that in terms of both rights and actual behaviour, the evohition of women’s condition in the West is still recent. lt is worth recalling that, in France, women only secured the vote in 1945; that equal pay for equal work is still an expectation rather than a fact; that women participate far less in political and trade union activities than men do, not because they lack rights but because it is not yet customary for them to be fully integrated. Finally, we must face one central question. Can the evolution of the condition of women in the Arab world be evaluated by the same criteria as 10 the West? Is it not Eurocentric to put forward the lives of Western women as the only democratic, just and forward-looking model? I do not think so. The demands of Western feminists seem to me to represent the greatest advance towards the emancipation of women as people. Ideally, the criteria adopted, like those for human rights generally, should be universal. The facts are certainly more complex, given that there are considerable divergences between one society and another, divergences which make it difficult to adopt such criteria completely or even partly, at least in the short term. The traditional societies, including the Arab world, are not yet ready — and nor are thelr women — to undergo an emancipation which throws into question a secular equilibrium which has the full backing of religion.

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A sultan was deeply depressed. His vizier grew worried and inquired as to the reason. ‘I am in love with another harem’, replied the Sultan. Ottoman anecdote

A man’s shadow does more for a home than the shadow of a wall. Egyptian proverb

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Forms pression

The Arab press is usually full of incidents which involve acts of violence against married women or young girls, incidents which are locally considered as very run-of-the-mill stuff. Here, a brother has assassinated his sister because he — or the family — has decided she has been having an affair with a young man; there, a male member of the family has kidnapped a young girl who had run away from home to avoid a forced marriage; elsewhere, a husband has seriously beaten up his wife because she disobeyed him; and so on. The readers’ letters columns frequently contain correspondence from women complaining that repudiation has deprived _ them not only of the guardianship of their children, who have reached the age when they are expected to return to their fathers’ home, but also even of the right to visit them. Women students often write to protest at the offensive behaviour they have to endure in the streets from men or old women who insult them because they are not wearing a veil; they bewail the fact that they cannot be in a public place without being immediately exposed to verbal or physical aggression. It may seem surprising that, in our day and age, women living in countries where the law often grants them the same civil rights as men ~ as is the case in many Arab countries of the Maghreb and the Near East —- can nonetheless be so despised, manipulated, deprived of control over their own fate and reduced to the status of a minor their whole life long. The women with whom tourists come into contact in the towns of the Arab countries represent only a tiny fraction of the Arab female population; they are usually Westernized, having had an opportunity to pursue their studies and play a role outside the house. Often their families are part of the modernist bourgeoisie. They are very far from constistuting the norm. On the contrary, they are the exception which 29

The House of Obedience

proves the rule; they are looked down upon in traditionalist or popular circles and violently rejected, unless their profession and their way of life (which must be exemplary) cast them as asexual intermediaries. In that case, although they no longer belong to the traditional world, the service they provide as teachers, nurses, doctors, etc., gains them a certain respect, in spite of their being women. The strict segregation between the sexes which still prevails is not often broken down, even in such cases. Professional women, by the very nature of their occupations, usually deal only with children and other women. Furthermore they are expected to conform to the general law of these societies: they must marry and have children of their own.

A Man’s Society | In order to speak of women in the Arab world — or even in the Islamic world as a whole — several different criteria have to be brought into play, not just social class, but also country and even region. ‘True, the vast majority of those women who have abandoned the veil and the saroual, the traditional long dark dress, and who now wear Western clothes, pursue their studies and choose their husbands, belong to the modernist bourgeoisie. But the working-class women of Helouan, near Cairo, or those who live on Tunisia’s northern coast also do not wear veils and they seem to have fairly egalitarian relationships with the men. Furthermore, many educated, apparently modern daughters of bourgeois families are still forced to accept the sudden decision of

their families to marry them off. An understanding mother may take her daughter’s tastes into account, but it is out of the question that the girl should choose her own husband. The mother will at most find a partner who has some of the qualities her daughter is looking for. And usually the daughter will conform with her family’s wishes.

From early childhood, girls are taught obedience. This amounts to thorough-going conditioning and is justified by Koranic law which lays down that women should be respected but also stipulates that their position is inferior to men’s. Authors who claim that this is not so, since an element of the Islamic division of labour is that the woman is the mistress of her own home, forget that women are given no choice in the matter: the division of 30

Everyday Forms of Oppression labour is imposed by men, and a woman’s only option is to fulfill her allotted role. Conceived by men and for men, like all other societies, Arab society is distinctive in that the men’s prerogatives in most fields are still undiminished despite the various reforms introduced to help women in recent years. Her father, her elder brother, her uncle or other male guardians, even her cousins exercise absolute authority over a woman or girl of their family; later her husband and his family will take over this role. A young girl passes from the tutelage of the men of her family to the tutelage of her husband without ever acceding to true adulthood, even though Koranic law envisages her as an adult from the onset of puberty and the civil law treats her as such from 16, 18 or 21 years of age in the various countries which have moved away from Koranic law, on this subject at least. Should a particularly courageous woman refuse this tutelage, she will be shunned or physically forced to submit. A woman who has been cast out by her family faces a very hard and isolated life. Most will not find it easy to get work, given that girls are often taken out of school by their parents at puberty and receive no professional training, not to mention the high level of unemployment which prevails in all underdeveloped countries. The isolation of rebellious women Is reinforced by the whole community, to whom such behaviour is quite unacceptable. ‘There are no institutions geared to help women in this situation: the family has always been considered to be the only possible institution, and women’s education ensures that a revolt on their part remains unthinkable. The education young girls receive from their mothers and aunts, especially when the extended family still lives under one roof, is conceived precisely to enforce respect for the tradition, a tradition which requires that girls should be docile, submissive, discreet, active, modest, quietly spoken and without curiosity about the outside world: the family’s honour, which rests on the correct behaviour of the girls and women, must be safeguarded at all costs. The girls are taught that their sole aim in life should be marriage and childbearing. They must obey not only their fathers, but also their brothers, even when the latter are much younger than they are, In short, from her early childhood, everything is done to turn a girl into the ideal wife and mother. The birth of a boy is an occasion for great festivities, even amongst the poor; God has blessed the family’s house. A baby boy will be suckled longer, his mother and sisters will carry him until a later age, he will be pampered, spoilt, given everything. His 31

The House of Obedience

caprices will be forgiven and interpreted as signs of future virility. By their own behaviour, by their tenderness and indulgence, mothers create the despots who will eventually rule over their daughters and daughters-in-law, and thereby reproduce the same male traits they themselves have often suffered from. A 15-yearold boy who worked in Cairo but came from a small village in Upper Egypt told me how he hit his elder sister whenever she failed to obey him quickly enough. The matter seemed self-evident to him. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘she was misbehaving and deserved to be punished; her job is to do as | tell her.’ Cuddled, cajoled and admired by all the women of his family, the male child is fully indulged and given every freedom. Whilst his sisters will, from a very early age, be helping their mothers with domestic tasks, preparing the meals, cleaning, washing, caring for younger children and so on, the little boy will be allowed to play in the street or at home, do as he pleases, give orders and hand out punishments until he is old enough to join the world of adult men. Perhaps one of the reasons that women, including the sisters with whom the boy plays when they are very young or when they have the time, continue to have this attitude is that they know that he will soon move into a different sphere. Furthermore, the tradition implies that the whole future life of the women will be conditioned by how the boy will behave towards them once he has become a man, be it by providing for their material needs until their marriage or by undertaking to look after them if they are divorced or widowed. The degree of despotism exercised by a little boy obviousiy depends partly on his own personality and partly on how much stress is placed on the respectability of his mother, his sisters and his female cousins. In any case, it does not prevent strong bonds of affection being established between boys, their mothers and their. sisters. As children, the boys live in constant contact with the women. Mothers take their sons with them to the public baths, and often eventually have to be told by other women that their little boy is perhaps now a little too old for his presence to be acceptable. The boys sleep in the same room as their mother and sisters since the traditional house does not have separate bedrooms, except in the case of polygamous marriages, when each wife has her own ‘apartment’ which she shares with her children. Nothing is demanded of the little boy when he is young, but he is very rapidly taught the rights and duties of a male, the stress being on the fact that Islam has conferred these responsibilities on him because he is 32

Kveryday Forms of Oppression

superior to all women.

He also learns to become the chaperone of his sisters whom he accompanies whenever they have to go out. He is not only their protector, but also the guardian of their virtue, which gives rise to a murky feeling of possessiveness which can often be more intense than the classical incestuous reaction. This feeling is sanctioned by tradition, since women literally belong to their family, and later to their husband. If he has secured his parents’ approval, a brother

can thus ‘give away’ one of his sisters to his best friend, to further the friendship. A boy may respect the women of his family but he will despise any woman who does not belong to his family group unless she is a potential bride. As far as he is concerned, an unveiled woman has deliberately put herself on offer. She must therefore be contemptibly lewd. As a man he can respect only other men and elderly mothers; throughout his childhood he has learnt that women are there only for men’s pleasure. Suddenly, almost from one day to the next, the male child is, as it were, torn from the womb a second time; he enters the world of men. His father takes charge of him, takes him to the market where women are not allowed (men even buy clothes and underwear for the women of their household, especially in the Maghreb), and to the fields where he has to make the transition from spoilt child to hard-working peasant, unless his father has a profession, of course, in which case he will become an apprentice in the family workshop or stall. The boy’s happy, spoilt and idle life is over. He may try to seek comfort from his mother or to speak to his sisters but he no longer belongs with them. From nowon, most of his life will be spent outside. As a schoolboy, once he has done his homework, he joins his friends in the street — something a girl could never do. What he does with his time is his own business, unless his father intervenes; but it is still rare for a father to concern himself with the education of his children, even of his sons. That remains the mother’s role, and she rarely has any authority over the boys. However, if a child is deemed ill-mannered, noisy, violent, or disrespectful towards his elders and betters, the blame falls on the father, who is accused of not knowing how to run his own household. No challenge to the father’s authority is permissible; he is the man, the progenitor, the breadwinner (even if his wife works); traditionally, he does not eat at the same table as everybody else, but sits apart, alone or with his guests, and is served by one of his

| 33

The House of Obedience

children. If he is not alone, the women retire to the kitchen or the back rooms. His elder sons may eventually be allowed to sit with him and listen respectfully to what he has to say, but they will rarely speak without being spoken to and will never smoke in his presence (or indeed in their mother’s presence). It is also not considered seemly to listen to records or modern music in the presence of one’s parents. Obviously, the advent of television has changed things somewhat in those families who can afford to buy a set. Generally speaking, the father takes all the important decisions concerning both his wife and children. But certain local traditions,

or certain relatively recent reforms limit a few of his prerogatives. | As we have seen, the father and his friends eventually take over | from the women the task of inculcating the hypertrophied masculine values of the society, including virility which must be stressed constantly, especially to women outside the family, if they are not protected by the rules of hospitality, but also to one’s friends, in boasts and stories. This is part of the reason for the number of verbal or even physical acts of aggression endured by women in the streets. What would an honest woman be doing in the streets anyway?

Yet the absence of women in public places has as its corollary a | permanent sexual obsession which a wife (or even four of them) cannot appease. This phenomenon has got even worse recently, with the appearance of advertisement hoardings and cinema posters showing couples entwined, and with the growth of tourism and the corresponding discovery of other lifestyles, which seem tempting

but frightening. In this respect the best protected countries are the most traditionalist ones, where cinemas have been banned, and in which tourists tend to stay tucked away in the big international hotels where they

have no contact with the population at large: on the whole, these | countries are opposed to any form of Westernization, except perhaps that which affects the oil industry.

The Arab Man | There can be no doubt that the impact of capitalism has promoted the development of more Westernized ways amongst the privileged sectors of the population. It has also given birth to new classes, some of which are directly linked to it. These classes have initiated a degree of reform vis-a-vis Islam, right from the end of the 19th 34

Everyday Forms of Oppression Century. By contrast, in those social strata which remained untouched by capitalism or which were its victims — the traditional traders of the souks and bazaars, the artisans in both town and countryside ~~ a rejection of the West grew apace. Western innovations, in any case, found no place amongst the nomads or the traditional com— munities in the countryside. Schooling was quite irrelevant to the shepherds and modernization of agriculture remained limited, since the peasants were too poor to invest in new methods and tools. The ‘new ideas’ were deemed useless. In order to protect their own identity, especially after their countries had been colonized, the people strove to preserve their tradition and developed a nationalist ideology which put considerable stress on the ‘unrevised’ values of Islam. Islam became an ideology of resistance. Women’s liberation was thus quite out of the question, and remains so today. Men’s image of themselves and of women has changed little except amongst the Westernized or cosmopolitan elites (Egypt, Lebanon) who are, by definition, only a smail

| minority. Women’s liberation would require a real change in attitudes, a particularly difficult process, especially as it involves a

loss of power for the men. |

We have seen how the little boy is brought up, the attention that is showered upon him and the almost unlimited rights he enjoys simply because he is a boy. This deliberate promotion of narcissism, by attaching such excessive value to his virility and to virility in general, forces him to feel ‘committed to machismo’ in a way which conditions all his behaviour. The way he feels, the way he acts and sees things is moulded by it. If he does not conform to the image of the virile male that society conveys and expects him to internalize, he will immediately be mocked and depreciated. In this sense, one can also talk of the oppression of men. This forced commitment to machismo has several manifestations. Firstly, on the economic level, a man who cannot provide adequately for his family is looked down upon and loses his selfrespect, especially if he is already of an age when society expects him to stop behaving like a young man (usually around 40). On the moral level, as we know, the chastity of girls and wives is the guarantee of family honour. If the family, or more accurately, the men of the family, believe, correctly or not, that one of the women has misbehaved, the father, or a brother, or even a cousin, is duty bound to avenge the family honour, usually by killing the girl or woman who has become suspect. A man who refuses to follow the 35

The House of Obedience

custom suffers an irredeemable loss of face. Certain social groups are more tolerant, or less punctilious, and crimes of honour are committed more frequently amongst certain social classes than amongst others. The elites, the modernist bourgeoisie, no longer conform. At worst, the father or brother of a girl whose misbehaviour has been proven will give her a good hiding or, if the culprit is a wife, the husband will demand a divorce. In the poorer and more traditionalist classes, especially in the countryside, a man cannot escape his obligations, for fear that everybody, including the women, will think he is ‘not a real man’. The women have learnt to play upon all the so-called weaknesses

of their male relatives in order to reduce the oppression that | weighs upon them, but in denouncing these weaknesses, they perpetuate their own oppression. They force men to be the male chauvinist autocrats which this male-oriented society has produced. There is one area, in particular, within which this virility, or rather this perversion, manifests itself: sexuality. Sex is not sinful according to the Islamic tradition. A ‘real man’ is supposed to have an active sexual life, or at least to behave as if he did. Boasting on the subject is commonplace. It is difficult for a man, given his education, to imagine any form of relationship other than a sexual one with a woman who is not a member of his family. A woman from another family can only be a prey. This attitude becomes a reflex, despite the revulsion he feels on | other levels for women, those impure beings who menstruate and whose genitals are defiling. The religious prescriptions (ablutions after lovemaking, necessity of purification before prayer if there has been any contact with a woman, ban on embracing or even desiring a woman during Ramadan) both reinforce and justify this revulsion. Yet sexual attraction and the need to boast of one’s exploits (multiple, of course) prevail over disgust at women’s bodies, and the men remain sexually obsessed. Amongst boys and girls, puberty and consciousness of sexuality are precocious, especially amongst the poorer ciasses. A 10-year-old urchin will quite naturally make obscene or sexually complimentary comments to a passing woman in the street. He knows what he is saying, and his superiority as a male allows him to do so. By comparison, Western

children seem backward. |

However, although sexuality is not bound up with the notion of sin, as in Christianity, people rarely talk about it except with those of their own age. But they think about it all the time, obsessionally. Adolescence starts very early on the sexual level: it is followed

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Everyday Forms of Oppression

by at least ten years of frantic and almost total frustration, which is all the more difficult to bear in that the boy is a little male and must prove himself socially. This feeling of frustration, born of the specific structures of the society and of this long sexually frustrating adolescence, will stay with him for the rest of his life. It is a society which condemns a man to masturbation and chronic sexual obsession, even when sexuality is satisfied, since the women of his family (apart from his wife) are forbidden and the others are hidden away. This psychological frustration is compounded by what one could call a ‘psycho-visual’ frustration resulting from women’s. incarceration. Women are rarely seen without a veil. The veil, which protects them when they leave their homes, only accentuates the obsession of adolescents and adult males alike. Even a married and sexually satisfied man cannot avoid it. Extra-marital relations ave difficult to organize, especially for the poor, and resorting to prostitutes is looked down upon and is in any case beyond many peopie’s means. Men are thus constrained to chastity — or to only partial relief with their wives — a condition they cannot accept since society demands they demonstrate their triumphant virility. Women remain as strangers, and they are so much part of another world that the men feel really happy only amongst themselves. Relations with women are exclusively sexual or familial; all other contacts or leisure activities are conducted amongst men, whom one can trust and share things with. Hence a widespread male homosexuality, which may be repressed but is also free of the connotations of sin, perversion or sickness that it carries to this day in the West. Homosexuality is condemned mainly because it does not lead to procreation, one of the major goals of this society. There are, in fact, two different kinds of homosexuality. One is aristocratic; a taste for very young boys is seen as the epitome of refinement throughout the Islamic world — as a supplement rather than a substitute for the harem. Arab, Persian and Ottoman literature is full of allusions of this kind to pederasty. The second is more of a substitute and serves for the poorer classes in the towns and countryside. ‘The shortage of available women and the difficulty of accumulating the invariably necessary bride-price often delay marriage for men, who find temporary relief in homosexu-

ality, but usually stop once they are married. |

_ There is no opprobrium attached to the ‘active’ homosexual. It is the ‘passive’ partner who is looked down upon, assimilated to a woman (and naturally, embarrassed because of it). But he will 37

The House of Obedience

generally be a very young man, who will get his own back by becoming ‘active’ as he gets older or when he marries and recovers his virility. The men’s sexual obsession is even more openly manifest when faced with a Western woman. In such cases, sexuality combines with an almost racial form of nationalism. The idea is to prove not only one’s own potency but also the sexual superiority of one’s sroup. Furthermore, the Western woman is not a member of the clan, so everything is permissible, there are no restrictions whatsoever. She is seen as not only approachable but available, since her behaviour is the opposite of what is expected of a ‘decent’ woman — only the behaviour of a traditional Muslim woman Is considered ‘decent’. Even more than an Arab woman, a Western woman is seen as potential prey. Any refusal on her part is greeted with astonishment, sometimes with anger, always with aggressiveness. Does her attitude and dress not proclaim that she is on offer to the first bidder? Does she not have the reputation of being ‘free’ and thus at the disposition of every man? (Freedom for a woman is thought to consist in not saying ‘No’.) In any case, how could she refuse such a suitor? This naive cynicism is only explicable in terms of the spoilt child’s upbringing which little boys receive. The hunt is on permanently, and the need to hunt is insatiable. This is overlaid with a well-known phenomenon, the desire of the colonially dominated to revenge himself upon the women of the dominator. Colonization, in the broad sense, has induced a terrible feeling of humiliation, even of shame. For a long time, European women were completely forbidden to Arab men, an interdict even more hurtful than that placed upon their own womenfolk — hence a very powerful sexual attraction. Amongst the Westernized intellectuals, the hunt begins with conversation and exchange of views: they have discovered that women are capable of such feats. The Western interlocutor, often relatively uninformed about these societies, is then less aware of being pursued. The possessiveness of an Arab lover, the jealous care he lavishes on her, convinces the Western woman that, to him, she is unique. She imagines that this concern, even if excessive, is at least directed at her personally, whereas in reality it is aimed at her whole sex. And since she also shares in the cult of mythical virility, she interprets the domination, brutality and extreme possessiveness she is often exposed to as signs of attachment. The fact is that few men have genuinely made the transition and given 38

Kveryday Forms of Oppression

up the desire to dominate in this type of relationship. Generally, those who have lived in exile, away from their own country and the social pressures which would prevent them living on equal terms with their wife and going out with her in public, even if she was a foreigner. More often, the Western woman will be the Arab man’s mistress and he will take a compatriot as his wife: after all, his lineage is at stake, and so is the peace of mind which the traditional education of women provides for men. His identity is less likely to be thrown open to question. And yet, it is. The transitional society imposes upon men an even more acute contradiction than upon women.

Their whole existence is threatened. ‘What am I, in this society | which demands that I maintain my position when I no longer have the means to do so?’ Machismo, which once seemed a self-evidently correct attitude, and which to this day is not threatened, thanks to the traditional submissiveness of women, is now being indirectly undermined, if only by the fact that many women have to work out of the house, and if only by schooling for girls, who often do better than the boys despite the obstacles put in their way by their parents. Faced with this menace which is slowly but steadily whittling away at their autocracy, the more unadaptable men react very badly. Sexual obsessiveness and aggression become pathological, complete with psychosomatic consequences. The incarceration of women, leaving the men with no outlet except masturbation or homosexuality, has produced societies which fall sick the moment the traditional system is weakened. Men of the ruling classes are also obsessed but they find a partial solution in foreign travel and in a certain evolution of women’s condition in the circles they move in. For the others, at the moment, there is no answer. There has really been no sustained effort to change these ways of thinking, except perhaps in Tunisia (even if the results there are not always evident) and in revolutionary Yemen. The central point that is never raised is how to change the status of women. Marriage in its present form remains the cornerstone of the whole system. A radical transformation of the roles attributed to women would imply a revolution at every level including the political, especially in the countries where the maintenance of the status quo in this domain is one of the guarantees of stability for the ruling regimes.

og

The House of Obedience

The Incarceration of Women

On the one hand, there is the outward-facing world of the men, who still believe, explicitly or implicitly according to the degree of modernization, that women must be kept confined and submissive. On the other, there is the world of the women, codified to varying degrees in the different countries, with its own strength and autonomy vis-a-vis the specific prevailing conditions. Men have no access at all to the women’s world, but women, protected by the veil, hidden behind the mousharabiehs,* can slip through public places without being recognized, can look onto the street without being seen, can overhear men’s conversations in the courtyards or in the rooms next to the kitchens. The only condition is that they should be discreet, that they should pass unnoticed and unrecognized. They are excluded from all decisions, their advice is rarely asked, they are not even really supposed to exist as individuals; yet information is passed from neighbour to neighbour, from cousin to cousin. New arrivals have to follow the rules established by the iocal women themselves. Specific times are set aside when the women gather at the well or the spring, and the men know they have no business being around on such occasions. The women also meet once a week on average at the public baths. There they can wash, eat, rest, talk and discuss together. Potential daughters-iniaw are assessed, physically, with very precise gestures: the little girls are prodded and squeezed with almost professional interest. Fortunately, their mothers are there to reassure their daughters about this sudden curiosity: they realize that a possible marriage is being considered. Sometimes, thanks to the complicity and friendship between women, a young girl hidden behind her veil is allowed a glimpse of her suitor. He enjoys no such privilege, unless they are relatives and have known each other as children. In the towns, the public baths are one of the few places where women of different families can meet, even though they usually go in family groups or, at most, with a few neighbours. The bathroom of the modern flat is thus a very mixed blessing, in that it has contributed to the further isolation of the traditional petty bourgeoisie. In the past, friendships were usually established between women of the same family. More recently, especially in the towns. Wider contacts have become possible, notably at school, where little

40 |

* A kind of shutter which enables women to see what is going on without being seen themselves.

Everyday Forms of Oppression

syoup.

girls get their first opportunity to meet others from a different

Visits to the hospital or the dispensary are another way of setting out of the house. Of course, the women never attend such places alone. In the countries where these establishments have been set up, there are always long queues of women waiting to be treated for ailments which may be quite imaginary but which justify a brief escape from confinement. If the staff is any good, they use the opportunity to teach the women something about infant care and, if the law permits, about elementary birth control. The latter is always presented not as a way of avoiding pregnancy altogether but as means of ensuring the best possible conditions for pregnancy and of forestalling the endless miscarriages which are so frequent that they often lead to sterility. The international organizations, amongst others, have repeatedly sought to draw attention to the deplorable gynaecological state of these women, but there is still an enormous amount that needs to be done, if only because of the shortage of health centres and the women’s reluctance to seek advice over anything except sterility. The women also receive each other in their homes and visit each other, having obtained the prior consent of their fathers or husbands, of course. ‘They manage to create a society, even a culture of their own, in parallel, a world in which love between women and even homosexuality are not so rare. In the villages there is a high level of mutual aid between women, and solidarity against the men is well developed. A husband whose wife usually respects the rules of society will not be informed of any mistake she may have made. A father will not be told that his daughter came home late, even if the women themselves impose some punishment. Advice is constantly exchanged on how to run the household, pregnancy, children and women’s ailments, how to keep a husband and prevent repudiation or the introduction of a new wife, etc. In all these matters, matrons, wise women, matchmakers and fortune-tellers play a major role. Their skills are invoked to facilitate a pregnancy or a birth, to protect children from illness, or to secure some magical or religious-cum-magical means of acquiring or retaining influence over a husband. In these countries, where women are generally kept uneducated and confined, magic and superstition play a crucial role. In the poorer classes, exorcism is a common practice. I attended one such session in a working-class district of Cairo. It took place in a cheap tenement block (a couple and their two children were 41

The House of Obedience | living in a single room). The husband earned the family’s keep by playing in an orchestra specializing in exorcism seances, known as a zar. The audience was mainly made up of women who had heard about the coming event on the neighbourhood streets. The gestures _ they made as they stepped over a small incense-burner showed clearly that the problem they had come to resolve was a sexual one. Two of the women appeared to be members of the troupe, the older one assuming the role of master of ceremonies. According to a psychiatrist who showed me around, marabouts* also began to set up shop in the poorer areas of Algiers towards the late 60s. Once the tension of war had ended and disappointment with the achievements of independence began to set in, such practices became popular again. The marabouts had followed the rural exodus and could now rely on a regular clientele, prepared to pay their last dinars in the hope of improving their fate. But women were not the only clients. Men, too, came to consult the marabouts (in other countries as well as in Algeria); their main problems seemed to be psychosomatic disorders, depression and impotence. Marabouts ana fortune-tellers of all sorts have traditionally been the first people to turn to whenever one is facing a particularly difficult problem. Incarceration is often even more difficuit to bear in the towns: the young wife whose husband is well enough off to prevent her working finds herself brutally transplanted into her husband’s family, where she knows no one, and cannot even maintain close links with her own family. She may be alone amongst women who do not necessarily approve of her and who expect her to be obedient and retiring until she has children. If she has sons, it may enable her to gain greater respect from her husband and slightly reduce her mother-in-law’s influence over him. But the fact remains that, in any conflict between mother and daughter-in-law, the husband will almost always come down on his mother’s side; she is the one who really counts as far as he is concerned, especially as he barely knows his wife and will thus have no idea just how far he can trust her. Not to mention that agreeing with the mistress of the household is the safest way of ensuring an easy life for himself. As soon as she has had children, especially sons, the young wife will put strong pressure on her husband to set up a house of his own, where she will at last be mistress of her own household. * Hermits or holy men endowed with magical-religious powers.

42

Kveryday Forms of Oppression Aithough she will be locked up in the house, she can bring in a sister or a cousin, and, if her husband can afford it, hire some servants: her incarceration will then seem less onerous. When she is running a household and bringing up children, it will be easier for her to convince her husband to allow her to visit the various female members of their respective families. ven then, she wiil never go out alone. Should her husband go away for several days, his wife will invariably go to stay with his family until he returns. Even a woman who is not kept locked up will usually have her mother or her mother-in-law come to stay whenever her husband has to travel. The decision is generally taken at the instigation of the husband, but often the women themselves do not feel psychologically equipped to stay by themselves, even for a few days. A husband exercises both physical and psychological domination over his wife. He will frequently be extremely violent towards her, and will vent all his frustration upom her. Battered wives are very common, although the Koran gives physical violence as valid grounds for divorce. But it is so generally accepted that a husband may beat his wife, and the women are so unaware of their rights that they very rarely bring their husbands to court. Indeed, many women offer the fact that they are not beaten as proof that they have a good husband. Despite the constraints of a male-dominated society, women have developed all sorts of strategies to reduce the effects of this domination. Firstly, there is that parallel society we touched upon earlier, which is often very powerful especially in those countries where the tradition is respected. Neighbours and relatives play a considerable role in a woman’s life. Through gossip and intrigue, they can exercise a degree of control over the affairs of the men. A geoup of women will organize a sort of self-control over the behaviour of each individual woman and will sc arrange things that the men are totally unaware of what is going on amongst them. Although a Muslim woman barely exists before her marriage, onee she is married and has her own housenold her rule over it is undisputed. The house, and all it involves, is her domain. Within it, she enjoys considerable respect and real power in family matters. This is sometimes noticeable in her relations with her husband but more strikingly in the very strong influence she has over her children, even once they have become adults. Simply because she is a married woman and a mother, she acquires a specific position within the parental household; the roles she vlays, which she has been trained for and which are the very basis 43

The House of Obedience of her self-respect — her roles as wife and mother — can only be filled by women. She runs the family (although the patriarchal system favours male domination and control), while the men draw their power from the family’s prestige and from their activities in -

the outside world. | .

Within her home, a woman does not feel subordinate, oppressed, inferior or powerless compared to the men. She has her own tasks, which are hers alone. She watches over the smooth running of the household, and also all its inhabitants, including the men. She decides what domestic jobs need doing and how to do them. She can use the upkeep of the house as a weapon, by deliberately neglecting it for instance. She can take care that the food is of sood quality or abundant, or she can do the opposite, all of which adds up to a considerable range of indirect pressures she can exercise, providing she is sufficiently secure and need not fear

repudiation or the introduction of a second wife. | One of her main trump cards is manipulation of her husband’s sexuality. She will take good care of her appearance, remove all

her body hair, subtly and discreetly make herself desirable (but not directly, since virtue demands she take no interest in sexual matters), all in order to ‘keep’ her husband; or, on the contrary, she will ‘punish’ him by refusing her favours under various pretexts, depreciating his virility and rendering him incapable of any sexual activity whatsoever. Should this incapacity become known in the outside world — and we have seen how quickly news can travel — the man will immediately lose face, since his potency is one of the main

symbols of his pover. | In fact, this society has produced a specific mentality amongst

women, which is common to all subject creatures. Hypocrisy, deceit and duplicity are, in the end, the only weapons available, and many women do not hesitate to use them. Amongst the rich, who do not work, one might add arrogance, laziness and vanity. The women reflect the idea that male society has of them; the stronger the oppression, the more difficult liberation becomes. Given the framework of relationships defined by the system, no other behaviour is possible, since direct confrontation would be suicidal. This approach becomes second nature, to the point that even the least subordinate of women have recourse to it the moment they feel threatened. In this respect, Muslim women are often admirable tacticians. In geographical terms, there is greater rigidity concerning women in North Africa, especially in Algeria, Libya and Mauritania; also 44

| Everyday Forms of Oppression in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, with the exception of Kuwait. In these countries, if a man can afford not to have them work outside, the women will be particularly restricted. Their role will be confined to that laid down by the tradition: sexual objects, prolific mothers, and transmitters of the tradition. In the towns, unlike in the villages, they do not have the advantage of having friends and relatives nearby, people they can visit and the possibility of participating in various ceremonies, especially if they have come to the town from a village themselves. The transition is abrupt and often traumatic. But those who suffer most from traditionalism are the ones who have been sent to school and then abruptly withdrawn at the onset of puberty. They have enjoyed a relatively unconfined life, have been able to make projects and have benefited from a certain childish freedom; suddenly they find themselves at the mercy of tradition, married to men they do not know, subordinate to their husbands and mothers-in-law just like the women of days gone by. Because they have lived a different life, dreamed of a different future —- even if they always meant to be wives and mothers as well — they feel particularly frustrated by the fate which has befallen them. Being literate, they seek refuge in romantic novels or women’s magazines. Sometimes, on learning that they are about to be married off, they try to run away or commit suicide — individual responses to a collective problem. Working women form a particularly small minority in the Islamic world compared to the rest of the Third World. Even those who work outside the home still have to look after all the domestic chores, not to mention the education of the children if there is no other woman in the family who can look after them. Very few countries have developed child care facilities (creches, nurseries, ete.) to help working women. Finally, only women practising a liberal professional or whose husbands earn a high salary can afford to employ servants (of whom there are nonetheless great

numbers). In short, the idea that men might participate in domestic duties has not yet made any headway.

Immigrant Women | One might think that the social pressures would diminish once outside the country. Yet the position of most immigrant Arab women in Europe is much the same as in the Arab couniries, 45

The House of Obedience

despite some apparent adaptations to European life. We are, of course, talking about working-class immigration; the rich face no such problems, especially as in their case the process of Westernization will have already begun at home. As officials or intellectuals, they will already speak at least one foreign language; their women will be used to the Western lifestyle, will be free to go out, receive friends and even find work for themselves. The situation Is quite different for working-class women. Generally speaking, the man comes first, alone, and is only joined by his wife and children later. The family then reproduces the local traditions fairly faithfully, at least during their first few years abroad. In Europe, most Arab immigrants are from the Maghreb, mainly Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans. The undeniable and notable differences in the status of immigrant women from these three countries is merely an accurate reflection of their situation in their country of origin. This is particularly manifest when it comes to work. For instance, a lower percentage of Algerian women in France work than their Moroccan or Tunisian counterparts. None of them have to wear veiis, but many more of the Algerian women are kept locked up at home. They rarely go out and never alone, partly because the women of this social category speak little French (this is true also of women from the other parts of the Maghreb), partly because traditional ways, even attenuated by emigration, prevent them doing so. Women from the Maghreb are often helped and chaperoned by a neighbour or one of their children who speaks the language of the host country. But the point is that, unlike at home, they do have to go out. They do the shopping and other chores which their husband cannot carry out while he is working his shift. They have to learn to cope with the complexities of dealing with the administration and organizing the (compulsory) schooling of their children. Finally, the pressure of tradition lessens the longer they stay abroad; even if they continue to respect the forms laid down, they steadily acquire an increased autonomy, especially if they live apart from their community. It is more difficult to cloister a woman abroad, if only for purely material reasons. (The traditional structure persists much more in the immigrant shanty-towns where many families from the same country are housed next to each other.) The girls go to school quite normally, at least until 16, since they cannot legally be withdrawn before reaching a certain age. But their timetable and their friendships are very closely watched. They 46

Everyday Forms of Oppression

are rarely allowed to go out with European friends, even other sirls, who are seen as giving a bad example by associating with boys. ‘The tradition demands a strict separation between the sexes; for instance it shapes what happens during the holidays and major festivals (circumcision, marriage, religious festivals, the end of Ramadan, etc.) when men and women will each have their own separate celebration, dancing and singing. An adolescent gir] from the Maghreb will only be allowed to visit a classmate under the pretext that they intend to do their homework together. In many immigrant families, homework or even reading are a real problem given the overcrowding and noise in the home, furthermore, they are considered a waste of time for girls who could otherwise be helping their mothers with important domestic tasks. Permission to go out is not often granted. On top of all this, the girls’ education is frequently hindered unconsciously by the parents, who thereby sabotage the efforts that many of the girls make to be conscientious pupils and thus to escape the fate they know awaits them. The boys’ schooling also suffers, im that in this case the parents are too indulgent towards them, do not inculcate the idea of making an effort and do not put a high premium on academic success; and yet many families remain in Europe precisely because of the educational facilities available to their children. There are, of course, many other — institutional — obstacles which handicap immigrant children at school. lf an adolescent girl has learnt a trade, her parents will often insist that she practise it at home. She will then usually not be allowed to take the completed work (sewing, etc.) to the factory alone. However, economic pressures have forced more and more parents to let their daughters work in the outside world. Here, too, parental surveillance is strict, and workshops or offices staffed only by women are considered infinitely preferable. Naturally, the young pirl will bring all her salary home and will very rarely have much pocket money. Many do manage to keep a little aside, however, by not telling their parents about a rise or bonus. Most marriages are still decided by the parents, who choose a spouse amongst the immigrant community, unless arrangements have been made with correspondents in the home country. Both boys and girls are affected, but it is more difficult for the girls to sidestep the family’s decision. Once the girl is married, she usually stops work. Pregnancy soon follows, since the tradition according to which a wife is primarily a bearer of children still exercises a 47

The House of Obedience | considerable hold over both men and women, despite the opportunities for birth control which exist in Europe. Requests for family planning advice are only made once three or four children have been born (not to mention any miscarriages), and even then only by the women, never by the men. A husband will rarely allow his wife to use contraception unless her health is suffering or the

family is in dire financial straits. |

Finally, ‘mixed’ marriages, which are generally disapproved of, are often kept secret from his parents by the young man involved. As far as girls are concerned, the civil law of most Arab countries, following in this the religious law, forbids them to marry a nonMuslim. If they do not comply, they can find themselves in serious trouble, especially as the children — who actually belong

to the husband — will not be considered part of the ‘tribe’. | It is customary for a young man who has emigrated by himself to come home once he has saved enough for the bride-price; his family will then marry him to a girl he may never have seen. He will stay with her for a few months and then go back alone, to avoid forcing her to share the living conditions he has to put up with in Kurope. In the meantime, he will entrust her to his family and arrange to rejoin her during the holidays. Only if his parents have emigrated with him will he take his bride back to Europe: a woman is thought unlikely to be equipped to confront the unknown — in this case a foreign country — without the support of a family framework. Faced with the range of problems posed by the arrival of his wife and children, the husband often hesitates to bring them to Europe, preferring to leave them under his parents’ watchful eyes. Loneliness, isolation and a desire to be with his children, whom he would otherwise only see during brief holidays, may nonetheless convince him that he needs them with him, even though he knows that the inevitable changes which Arab women, especially the younger ones, go through in Europe could threaten his very status as father and husband. Children who have been to a European school and who have absorbed and learnt to value the Western lifestyle may no longer recognize their father’s absolute | authority as self-evident. As for his wife, she will discover with some astonishment the powerlessness of her husband in Western society, and may come to look upon him in a less flattering light. The old frameworks break down, but there are no new ones to replace them. In fact, an attachment to the code of the Muslim world persists, since the Western lifestyle is judged too lax and therefore cannot be adopted. The families feel torn between two 48

Everyday Forms of Oppression civilizations and are confronted with choices nothing has ever prepared them for. All of which often leads to serious trouble within the family with grave consequences for the children. The

disequilibrium between the demands of tradition and reality, | between the desirable and the feasible is too.great, especially as many immigrants come from rural areas which are still very traditionally oriented. Under such conditions, many women, especially the older ones, would prefer to go home, to regain the moral comfort of the traditional family, with its constraints and security. In any case, there is one domain in which even the most ‘liberated’ young men will usually give way, even if they are students who drink alcohol, eat pork and have lived with European girlfriends. They wili let their parents arrange their marriage. Events may not follow an absolutely classical course; the fiance’s will possibly be allowed to see each other before the wedding (a major concession); they may even refuse to go ahead with it. But the principle will be accepted. Very few will actually refuse to comply with a tradition which ts still too deeply rooted to be totally rejected. The young man may immediately start planning future adultery, but he will eventually let his parents marry him off. After all, his education predisposes him to accept a code which supposedly guarantees him an untroublesome wife, a guarantee which is im some sense piven by his parents, whom he usually wishes to please. Two Symbols of Women’s Oppression The Veil

The veil is one of the key symbols of women’s position in the Muslim world. Yet it is worth remembering that many societies, from antiquity to the present day, have veiled their women. ‘The practice has persisted mainly in the Islamic areas, except among the Kurds whose women go unveiled. The eternal black scarf worn by Sardinian, Corsican, Sicilian and other women of the Christian Mediterranean is a vestige of what was once a very widespread accoutrement. In fact, Arab women have not always been veiled. The aristocracy insisted upon it, but as long as the village or tribe managed to preserve its old endogamous structure, the veil was not essential for ordinary women. Furthermore, the strict separation between the sexes meant that women had no need to hide their faces. They only wore a veil when they had to leave

49

The House of Obedience

the village to go to town, where they had to be hidden from strangers. The practice spread and became more or less strict when the village economy was transformed by the introduction of Western manufactured products which sold at cheap prices and ruined the old pattern of local production which had, until then, enabled village societies to be almost self-sufficient. The econom}cally disrupted villages began to empty as their inhabitants flooded into the towns. As this anarchic urbanization progressed, the market economy accentuated class stratification; the model laid down by the urban bourgeoisie gradually became more general. The richer villages began to ape the great families of the towns who veiled their women. And in the towns, where the traditional society was threatened by the prevailing conditions, the veil became a way of preserving the old structures. In many areas, the practice of veiling women spread as the © traditional structure was modified and the urban way of life became the recognized pattern. The phenomenon gradually affected every social category which could imitate the urban bourgeolsie. In the meantime, of course, the women of the bourgeoisie, who were in contact with the West, began to question not only the veil but their confined lifestyle and even the basic principles of Koranic law. In the face of such ‘decadence’, the veil gained additional importance as a means for many poor families to defend the traditional Islamic values against Western incursions, cultural depersonalization and the supposed or real moral laxity of Westernized women. The strictness with which the veil is worn varies from place to place. In some countries, such as Egypt, traditional women wear only what is known as the Islamic veil, a sort of hood which surrounds the face without covering it, but which hides their hair; also a long dress, which covers their arms and legs but does not restrict their movement. Elsewhere, in the outlying provinces of rag, for instance, women are completely hidden under the abuy‘a. Algerian women wear the white haik, a long cloth thrown over the hair and sometimes held with the teeth, when the women’s arms are full. The lower half of the face is hidden behind a handkerchief. Certain eastern regions of Algeria favour the black veil, a long cloak which covers the entire face and body except for one eye. In the Mzab, the custom is even stricter, the women are not only totally veiled, they turn their head away when they pass a

man in the street. | | | | In Dhofar, women hide their faces behind little masks, often

50

Hveryday Forms of Oppression

made out of leather and prettily decorated but which are torture to wear in the boiling heat. In Yemen too, the veil is widespread, but itis lighter and women play with it with a certain coquettishness. In some of the less puritanical countries, the veil actually enables certain women to carry on illicit amorous intrigues without running the risk of being recognized. Morocco Is often mentioned in this context. As more and more girls go to school, however, they may come to abandon this cumbersome garment which symbolizes their subjection. In fact, there are two contradictory tendencies. On the one hand, the veil is falling into disuse as a result of women’s schooling, work and preater participation in public life. On the other, and in the same countries, some women are ostentatiously taking up the

veil for political reasons, as a matter of choice rather than in | response to family or social pressures. [t symbolizes their demand for a more ‘moral’ economic, political and social life, as prescribed by Islam; a return to the wellsprings of Muslim identity and a new fundamentalism, exemplified today by Iran. Circumcision of Women*

{ was six years old that night when I lay in my bed, warm and peaceful in that pleasurable state which les half way between wakefulness and sleep, with the rosy dreams of childhood flitting by, like gentle fairies in quick succession. I felt something move under the blankets, something like a huge hand, cold and rough, fumbling over my body, as though looking for something. Almost simultaneously another hand, as cold and as rough and as big as the first one, was clapped over my mouth, to prevent me from screaming. They carried me to the bathroom. I do not know how many of them there were, nor do I remember their faces, or whether they were men or women. The world to me seemed enveloped in a dark fog which prevented me from seeing. Or perhaps they put some kind of a cover over my eyes. All I remember is that [ was frightened and that there were many of them, and that something like an iron grasp caught hold of * A common practice in Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq to some extent Jordan; less so in Syria. It is also widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Ethiopia and Somalia.

ol

The House of Obedience — my hand and my arms and my thighs, so that I became unable to resist or even to move. I also remember the icy touch of the bathroom tiles under my naked body, and unknown voices and humming sounds interrupted now and again by a rasping metallic sound which reminded me of the butcher when he used to sharpen his knife before slaughtering | a sheep for the Lid. My blood was frozen in my veins. It looked to me as though some thieves had broken into my room and kidnapped me from my bed. They were getting ready to cut my throat which was always what happened with disobedient girls like

myself in the stories that my old rural grandmother was so |

fond of telling me. |

I strained my ears trying to catch the rasp of the metallic sound. The moment it ceased, it was as though my heart stopped beating with it. 1 was unable to see, and somehow my breathing seemed also to have stopped. Yet I imagined the thing that was making the rasping sound coming closer and closer to me: Somehow it was not approaching my neck as I had expected but another part of my body. Somewhere below my belly, as though seeking something buried between my thighs. At that very moment I realized that my thighs had been pulled wide apart, and that each of my lower limbs was being held as far away from the other as possible, gripped by steel fingers that never relinquished their pressure. I felt that the rasping knife or blade was heading straight down towards my throat. Then suddenly the sharp metallic edge seemed to. drop between my thighs and there cut off a piece of flesh

from my body. , | I screamed with pain despite the tight hand held over my

mouth, for the pain was not just a pain, it was like a , searing flame that went through my whole body. After a few moments, I saw a red pool of blood around my hips. I did not know what they had cut off from my body, and I did not try to find out. I just wept, and called out to my mother for help. But the worst shock of all was when I looked around and found her standing by my side. Yes, it was her, I could not be mistaken, in flesh and blood, right in the midst of these strangers, talking to them and smiling at them, as though they had not participated in slaughtering her daughter just a few moments ago. They carried me to my bed. I saw them catch hold of my BZ

Everyday Forms of Oppression sister, who was two years younger, in exactly the same way they had caught hold of me a few minutes earlier. I cried out with all my might. No! No! I could see my sister’s face held between the big rough hands. It had a deathly pallor and her wide black eyes met mine for a split second, a glance of dark terror which I can never forget. A moment later and she was gone, behind the door of the bathroom where I had just

been. * |

The description above is by an Egyptian woman doctor and writer, recalling her own circumcision. In her case, there were no festivities to attenuate the shock of the operation. This particularly barbaric custom is pre-Islamic in origin, although it is practised in many Muslim countries of the Near East and especially Black

Africa under the name of Islam. |

There are three different types of circumcision or clitoridectomy. The most benign form is ‘Sunnite’ circumcision, which does not necessarily sexually cripple the woman providing she manages to overcome the psychological trauma; it consists in the removal of the clitoral hood, and is thus akin to the circumcision of boys. In the towns, this is the most current method amongst the more enlightened of the social strata who have not yet abandoned the

practice altogether. |

| Excision proper is a different matter, involving the amputation of the clitoral glans, or even of the entire clitoris. This form is practised mainly in Egypt. In other areas, they also cut off the adjacent parts of the minor inner lips (labia minora), or even the

lips themselves. _ The third type of clitoridectomy, infibulation, is practised notably in the Sudan, Tropical Africa, Eritrea and Somalia. It is known as the ‘Pharaonic’ circumcision and involves the amputation of the clitoris, the minor inner lips and most of the major outer lips. The two parts of the vulva are then stitched together. Only a small vaginal opening is left to allow urine and menstrual blood to be evacuated. While the scar tissue is forming, this small orifice is kept open with a shard of wood, and on the girl’s wedding night, it is widened with a razor or a scalpel. Each time the woman

* Nawal Dp. f-o. el Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve, Zed Press, London, 1980,

0d

The House of Obedience is about to give birth, the stitches are removed, and then she is sewn up again. Leaving aside the pain and fear which must, in themselves, cause a permanent trauma, infibulation has very serious physiological repercussions. Apart from permanent frigidity, it often leads to urinary or gynaecological infections, abortions or sterility, painful menstrual periods, cysts, abscesses in the vulva and even cancers. The narrowing of the vaginal orifice alone can cause sterility, not to mention obstetric complications. The reasons given to justify this practice centre on respect for the custom and the prevention of sexual immorality, since excision is supposed to quell girls’ sexual desires. In certain countries, notably parts of Ethiopia, there is also a widespread fear that an unmutilated girl will not be able to find a husband. Finally, in rural areas throughout the Arab world, excision is considered as an obligation which every little girl must submit to.

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The Legal Status of Women: Reforms and Social Inertia Despite the undeniable strength of traditional Islam today, both as a religion and as a font of legislative and judicial authority, a number of legal reforms have been introduced in the Muslim countries. These bear essentially on the family, which is in fact why they have had so little effect, especially outside the major towns. in any case, the reforms are always expressed in terms of an Islamic framework, not in terms of a secularization. No Arab country has created a non-confessional state. Islam is the state religion every where except in Lebanon. What reforms have been adopted are always presented by the legislators themselves as new interpretations of the Sharia, an adaptation of Holy Law to the modern conditions which have so transformed the family, especially in the towns where the extended agnatic family group has given way to the nuclear family. Although women are still dominated — within the new unit, they do occupy a more important position. The reforms are thus a belated and timid acknowledgement of what has already happened. As we have seen, the political and economic influence of the Western world and its mode of production has led to a transfor-mation of the traditional activities of both men and women. The West introduced new products, which were far more competitive in price than the old range of goods manufactured at home; the domestic craft economy which often employed women and girls was ruined as a result. The new Western goods also paved the way for a minimal level of industrialization, which gradually changed people’s entrenched attitudes. New needs and habits of consumption arose as the old mode of production fell apart. Schooling became a necessity, even for women. New social classes emerged, notably those linked to the Western world by trade or business. 57

The House of Obedience

Industrialization required a new kind of workforce, with a different attitude to time, work and living space. More rational attitudes developed; superstition and even religious practices were displaced from the centre of things. Working in a chemicals factory, for instance, demands manipulation of products which were once considered unclean. Indeed the new rhythms of factory production are not really compatible with the requirement to pray five times a day. The rural exodus and male emigration forced women to take charge of their own lives and assert themselves much more in the new context which had been established. Gradually the climate of opinion shifted in favour of some improvement in the legal status of women, to bring it more into line with the new role they were expected to play in society. These reforms concerned the age of consent, compulsory education, an end to forced marriages, access to paid work, child care, the right to vote, etc. Over the last 50 years, many of these reforms have been adopted, although some of the more traditionalist countries did not see the necessity. It is noticeable that those countries which were most exposed to direct European influence, through colonization or mandates, have implemented the more far-reaching reforms; the Gulf states have not. The most advanced countries as far as reform of the status of women is concerned are, first, Tunisia, then irag, Svria and Egypt. Elsewhere — and Iran is a good illustration foy all that it is not an Arab country -- the reforms have had a negative effect, as we shail see. Wherever they have been seen as a rejection of Islam, a corruption of public morals and an attack on people’s identity, they have provoked violent fundamentalist reactions. Egypt in recent years is a case in poimt. In a country like Algeria, which defines itself as revolutionary, two elements have combined to relegate women’s problems to the background: namely, constant power struggles and, secondly, the quest for an identity after the disturbing experience of colonization. The new Family Code which had been promised ever since independence was achieved in 1962 is still only a project. Indeed it would seem that really important changes have only been implemented in those few Arab countries where there have been social revolutions under the aegis of a mass revolutionary party, as in South Yemen for example.

58

The Legal Status of Women

Reproduction and Birth Control tn a system such as Islamic society, where the family is the keystone of the social structure, it is hardly surprising that women’s fertility should be higher than in other societies with the same level of development. Uhe birth rate in the Islamic countries is in fact 3.8% per annum which means that 1,000 women of childbearing age will, on average, have some 838 children in less than o years. The birth rate reaches 3.6% in Syria and Iraq (and in Pakistan), where fertility is even higher. The ratio of children to women is highest in Syria and Algeria, lowest in Turkey and ligypt. The same demographic features distinguish the Muslim from the non-Muslim populations of Europe and the USSR. One only has to compare Europeans of North African origin with the indigenous populations, Arab and Jewish Israelis, Muslim and Maronite Lebanese, Christian and Muslim Egyptians to confirm the point. On the other hand, it is difficult to establish any correlation between the level of economic development and the ratio of children to women. For instance, there is a very marked divergence in the ratios for Algeria and Turkey, although the two countries are similar in terms of Gross National Product. In other words, the birth rate in these countries is not directly linked to economic factors: 1t depends more on the status of women. la any case, as in all underdeveloped countries, the Gross National Product corresponds only very partially to reality. What really matters is the distribution of income. Inequality is the rule; the majority of the population, be it in the rich countries such as Libya, fran or Algeria or in a poor country such as Egypt, live on far less than the declared per capita income, while a tiny percentage of the population shares out the bulk of the national income amongst itself. This is, of course, just as true of Africa, Asia and Latin America. la principle, Islam does not reject birth control. No text in the Koran either authorizes or forbids it. The Holy Book advises the faithful to increase and multiply, but other verses recommend having fewer children, so that the family as a whole may enjoy a better standard of living. Similarly, attitudes to contraception vary enormously from country to country. There is no uniformity in the policy of the varlous states. Often, the legislators do not even bother to intervene. Obviously, there is also a great disparity between underhe,

The House of Obedience | populated countries such as Saudi Arabia and overpopulated ones such as Algeria and Egypt. Countries like Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, whose rate of population growth is very high, have created a network of family planning centres, with varying degrees of success. But the efforts that have © been made (they sometimes even include economic pressure upon couples with more than two children, as in Egypt where parents lose all maternity benefits for a third or subsequent child) bear relatively little fruit. They are blocked by the entrenched attitudes of both men and women, and by the population’s generally low

level of education. oe

Modern techniques of contraception are more usually used by the educated women of the bourgeoisie than by those of the proletariat or peasantry. But the poorer women do still use traditional methods which have been known for centuries, such as coitus interruptus, spermicidal concoctions and condoms: Avicenna, the sreat 11th Century thinker and man of science, described twenty

different contraceptive methods.

As for abortion, Islam allows it, providing the intervention takes place before the fourth month of pregnancy. In reality, however,

it is illegal everywhere except Tunisia. a 7

Marriage

place. |

All Muslim schools and sects traditionally recognize the right of a child’s guardian to commit the child, boy or girl, to a promise of marriage without his or her consent. However, the formal agreement of both spouses is required before the marriage itself can take

‘Traditional Hanafi* and Shia Law authorizes adult women — in other words women who have reached puberty — to contract their own marriage, without any need for a guardian to be involved. _ Nonetheless, many little girls are married off to adults, with all the psychological strains and physiological damage that may entail. Little girls reach puberty very early in the countries concerned, often at ten or eleven, and it is all too easy to imagine the effects

* The Hanafi School is one of the four schools of Sunni Islam. It is especially strong in Egypt. Sunnis form the majority of Muslims. Shia Islam is pre-

dominant in Iran and Iraq. ,

60

The Legal Status of Women

of a premature pregnancy on barely nubile children; frequent and repeated miscarriages, high infant mortality, not to mention often permanent gynaecological trauma. Although boys may also be married off very young, they do not run the same risks. Furthermore, boys who have been married off without their consent can later lead an extra-marital sexual life of their own choosing. According to the most recent statistics, about 45% of young girls between 15 and 19 are already married. In some countries, 0% are already divorced or widowed before the age of 20; there is often an enormous age difference between the spouses, since bride-price usually prevents very young men getting married, unless they come from relatively wealthy families. Very few women remain unmarried until they are 30 and only a tiny

minority never marry at all. | | | |

Recently, most Muslim countries have sought to limit the minimum age for marriage. Generally speaking, it has been set at 18 for boys, but varies from country to country as far as girls are concerned. In December 1972 during the Arab Women’s Conference held in Kuwait, the participants issued a unanimous appeal for governments to ban the marriage of girls under 16. The legal minimum age is 15 in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, 16 in Egypt, 17 in Syria and Jordan. Even some of the most religiously conservative countries, such as Libya, have introduced this kind of legislation. There is, however, very little official publicity to ensure that these measures are enforced.

| As not all births are registered, countries like Syria specify that both spouses should be healthy and past the age of puberty as well as laying down a legal age of consent. But in practice, here as ~ elsewhere, there are very few sanctions against early marriage. On the other hand, nearly ail countries now require marriages to be officially registered, which serves as a fairly effective counter to forced marriage. In Tunisia, the bride herself must draw up her

| own contract; elsewhere, in Morocco for example, a woman still needs the consent of her guardian to enter a contract of marriage. Although these reforms are a considerable step forward, not all countries are equally progressive and non-observance of what laws there are is frequent. This is especially so in countries with a predominantly rural population, where prenuptial medical examinations are rejected as a violation of the future bride’s modesty. It is also often difficult to ensure that the two fiances provide documents proving their age and identity. For many people, civil marriage and its registration are in any case of far less importance ~ 61

The House of Obedience | than the signature of a traditional marriage contract, a ceremony

which often long precedes the civil rite. |

Finally, the regulations for registration of civil marriages contains a clause stipulating that both fiances must officially give their consent to the proceedings. If the woman remains silent, this is considered as evidence of her acceptance. In societies where the social pressures are so considerable, ranging from psychological constraints to physical coercion, few girls dare express any opposition. The resulting scandal and its consequences would be too serious. Nonetheless, the reforms in question will perhaps improve the status of women by providing a legal basis on which they can defend their rights in matters of inheritance, divorce or guardian-

ship of children. |

Theoretically, the nikah (Islamic marriage contract) is supposed to protect the woman’s rights. But it is liable to different interpretations by often very traditionalist religious authorities. The fact remains, however, that it is thanks to this contract that women — or their guardians —- can introduce clauses which secure their rights as a wife. It usually specifies not only the sum of the bride-price and how the latter is to be paid, but also lays down the conditions under which the woman herself will be entitled to demand a divorce. In some cases a clause preventing the husband from taking a second wife is included in the contract. On the other hand, women have no protection against repudiation and should they themselves demand a divorce, they will generally have to forego any portion of the bride-price which is still unpaid at the time. The marriage contract can now also be drawn up to include clauses suaranteeing a woman the right to some freedom of movement and the right to work outside the home, two major departures from the old law. Polygamy

According to the Koran — which, in its time, put limits on polygamy — traditional Sunni law allows men to take up to four wives. If they belong to certain Shia sects, they can take as many ‘temporary wives’ as they choose, not to mention concubines. The law does not require the man to obtain either special permission from any court or even his existing wife’s consent before he contracts an additional marriage. He is responsible to his conscience

alone. |

62

The Legal Status of Women

In many very traditionalist countries, polygamy is considered as a husband’s right and is still prevalent. The practice is justified, once and for all, by the religious law and cannot be questioned or modified by the parties concerned, even in the marriage contract. For all that the practice is declining, mainly for economic reasons (less than 10% of marriages in most Arab countries are polygamous), the official acceptance of polygamy constitutes a permanent threat to married women. In order to avoid it happening to them, women feel constrained to be exemplary wives in every respect, to please their husbands at all times. The introduction of anew wife into the household means a division of material resources as weil as of affection. Polygamy also has a marked effect on the birth rate. In order to keep their husbands to themselves, women strive to give birth to as many sons as possible, whatever their own state of health, which is often already weakened by too closely spaced pregnancies. Nowadays polygamy is increasingly becoming a class phenomenon. Only a rich man can permit himself such a commitment in countries where, given the very unequal distribution of wealth, the poor get steadily poorer and the rich steadily richer. As for the middle classes, they live mainly in the towns, and urban living conditions have led them increasingly to adopt the nuclear family structure. What limitations there are on polygamy thus seem to flow more from economic conditions than from any reforming zeal aimed at reducing the inequalities suffered by women. For instance, in recent years several countries have tried to restrict the practice; Tunisia, Algeria and Iraq have actually banned it, as have two small but influential sects, the Druze and Ismaelis. Until 1977, in Iraq, if a man wanted to take a second wife he required the permission of a tribunal. This is still the case today in Syria, where the court will ask the husband to prove that he has the means required to maintain more than one wife. Elsewhere, in Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon, polygamy is not directly forbidden, but a woman can preclude it by including a special clause in the marriage contract. There is no legal restriction on polygamy itself, however. Moroccan law merely proscribes unequal treatment of the co-spouses and does not specify any criteria by which such inequality of treatment could be determined. President Sadat, in Egypt, has contented himself with a verbal ‘declaration of war’ upon polygamy, without any accompanying measures. Even in those countries where the practice has been restricted or outlawed, one cannot safely assert that it has disappeared. A union can effectively 63

The House of Obedience | be solemnized in a ceremony before a sympathetic cad (religious judge) and the marriage need never be registered by the civil authorities, although it will of course remain illegal in the eyes of the civil courts. Finally, even in those countries where polygamy is genuinely forbidden, offenders are rarely punished.

Divorce |

Traditionally, divorce was the husband’s inalienable right. He could repudiate his wife whenever he chose, without having to justify his decision in any way. Women, on the other hand, were required to prove the validity of their request for the dissolution of the marriage, and needed enormous courage to do so. Nothing prevented men taking such a step out of anger, spite or mere drunkenness. True, a divorce under such conditions would be considered morally reprehensible but it would remain a matter for the man’s conscience. The law would recognize his decision. Even threats of repudiation counted as effective repudiation, and women were denied all recourse. Sunni Islam recognizes two forms of talaq or repudiation. The first supposedly corresponds to the sunna;* the husband merely

has to speak the simple formula for renunciation before a witness. | However, the divorce will become effective only after a period corresponding to three of the wife’s menstrual cycles, or, if she is pregnant, after the child is born. The husband can also speak the | formula three times, in three successive months. After having adopted one of these procedures — both of which are fully in accord with the sunna — the husband can always change his mind. The parties concerned — the two families — are also free to intervene and to try to bring about a reconciliation. The most frequently used form, however, is the talag al bid’a or ‘innovatory’ divorce. It is generally considered to be a sin, but nonetheless has force of law. The husband simply has to repeat the formula for repudiation three times, in front of a witness, for the marriage to be immediately, definitely and irrevocably dissolved. The two spouses cannot then remarry each other, unless the repudiated woman contracts a second marriage and then divorces, in which case her first husband can take her back. The sects, notably * Muslim orthodoxy.

64

The Legal Status of Women

certain Shia sects, do not recognize this second form of repudiation. A divorced woman is entitled to demand any unpaid portion of the bride-price: should her ex-husband refuse, she can take him to court in a civil suit. As long as the ‘waiting period’ continues, her husband is obliged to provide maintenance, since the divorce is still theoretically revocable. On the other hand, if the divorce is irrevocable, there are divergent interpretations as to what she is owed. The Hanafi School (Sunni) grants women the right to maintenance payments in all cases; the other three Islamic schools do so only

ifFurthermore, she is apregnant. | divorced woman cannot appeal to a court to

obtain material help from her ex-husband. A man’s responsibility towards his ex-wife ceases as soon as she has been repudiated, or immediately the ‘waiting period’ is over, according to the formula used. The stipulation concerning the consequences of a divorce are thus particularly important, given the high number of legally dissolved marriages. Although it is always a dramatic event in the life of the woman concerned, divorce, according to Koranic Law, should not involve any serious economic repercussions, since everything was originally conceived in terms of the extended family or clan. The divorced woman’s family is bound by certain moral and material obligations towards her. She must be taken back into the family home and

supported financially. Her right to return to her parents’ house | and her right to be provided for are beyond question. Indeed the religious authorities cite it as a justification for the bride-price paid by the husband when the marriage contract is signed. The laws free the divorced woman of many of her responsibilities towards her children; the religious family code assigns the job of caring for them to the maternal or paternal grandparents, until the day their father exercises his prerogatives and takes his children back. In fact, everything is organized so as to facilitate the divorced woman’s speedy remarriage. This is even less of a problem since many divorced women are very young and there is no opprobrium attached to divorce, given the ease with which a man can repudiate his wife for no reason at all. In exchange, and to ensure that she has every chance of getting remarried, the divorced woman submits to the same constraints and draconian surveillance that are imposed upon a young girl: she will thus have the family’s reputation behind her when it comes to finding a new husband. Her status ag a divorcee is always seen as transitory; the idea is 65

The House of Obedience

that she should remarry and bear children again as quickly as

possible. A woman can therefore only pass from one form of | tutelage to another, from that of her father and brothers to that of her husband. Women are brought up to regard the divorcee as a bride-to-be, and the material support a woman receives from her family thanks to the bride-price system eliminates any need for her to concentrate on non-domestic activities which might secure her relative independence. Indeed such outside activities could delay her remarriage or condemn her to spinsterhood. Compared to a young girl, a divorced woman, especially if she is still young herself, often finds it easier to find a husband quickly, since the disadvantage of her age and her non-virgin state will make her family less demanding as to the bride-price to be paid by the eventual suitor. Obviously, the fact that she is not responsible for the children of her first marriage also facilitates remarriage. The same applies to the divorced man, who will often hand over responsibility for the children of his ex-wife to his parents or relatives.

Despite the precautions laid down by the Sharia to protect divorced women, the fundamental inequality in this domain between the rights of men — which are absolute — and the rights of women -~ which are almost non-existent — has led several Arab countries to pass legislation to reform an unacceptably backward situation. Of the reforms introduced since the turn of the century, those touching upon a woman’s right to obtain a dissolution of her marriage — a right which had always been refused until then — are thus amongst the most important. Today, in most of the Islamic world, a woman can demand and obtain a divorce if she can prove that her husband is not of sound mind, or suffers from a disease liable to make conjugal life dangerous, or if he abandons her or is manifestly cruel towards her. This last notion is left rather vague; since a woman is supposed to obey her husband in many domains, he is entitled to use corporal punishment if dissatisfied, and this will not be considered evidence of cruelty. In Egypt, for example, a woman can obtain a divorce on the grounds of cruelty if the treatment she has received is deemed ‘intolerable for a person of her social status’. In other words, even the conception of cruelty has a class component: everybody knows that women of the poorer classes are used to being beaten! The idea of submitting a man’s motives for demanding divorce to a legal enquiry was first introduced in 1953, by Syria. The law stipulated that, if the man had no adequate grounds for divorce, he

66 :

The Legal Status of Women

could be required to pay his wife a sum equivalent to one year’s maintenance. In 1956, ‘Tunisia passed a similar law, but did not specify the legal limits for the maintenance payments. Iraq and South Yemen followed suit soon after. In all three countries, a demand for divorce must be brought before a court. In [raq, a man is required by law to appear in court if he wishes to repudiate his wife, but if this is awkward for one reason or another, he can have the repudiation registered during the ‘waiting period’. Finally, the courts have ruled that, even if the case has not been registered, the procedure remains valid nonetheless. A woman’s right to divorce has been most adequately recognized in Algeria and Tunisia, where she is no longer required to ‘justify’ her action providing she is prepared to pay her husband an indemnity for the broken marriage. The most frequently cited grounds for divorce is ‘desertion of family life’. Despite these reforms, which make repudiation by men a little less easy and which enable women as well as men to demand a divorce, the talaq is still very much in force. There was never any question of suppressing it. Rather, efforts have been made to provide a counterweight, while remaining within the framework of an interpretation of Islam. [t is still true that, in order to repudiate his wife, a husband merely has to repeat the talag formula, ‘I divorce you’, three times and then inform the authorities. He does not even have to tell his wife about it. A woman, on the other hand, has to present and justify her demand for divorce before a civil court. Furthermore, while all men, even the most ignorant, know that they can repudiate their wives, few women are aware of their own newly acquired rights. The new laws have not been widely publicized. Schooling for women is a relatively recent development in most of the countries concerned; illiteracy is so common amongst adult women that it is hard to see how women can be informed of their rights and given the confidence to use them. They are, of course, exposed to many social pressures which militate in favour of the traditional ways. The Koran’s prescriptions supposedly ensured that a repudiated woman was not left to fend for herself, since her family was obliged to take her back until she remarried. Current reality is a different matter altogether. For various economic and sociological reasons, family solidarity no longer comes into play so automatically. Apart from the tribes and less impoverished members of the peasantry, arepudiated woman who does not remarry very quickly rapidly 67

The House of Obedience

becomes a burden. According to the classical norms, a repudiated woman is a complete non-entity, just as a young girl does not really ‘exist’ until she becomes a wife and mother. A divorced woman is nonetheless relatively fortunate compared to a widow, who is expected to return to her family with her young children. She will be given economic support, but, unlike the divorcee, she is not expected to remarry. A widow, often an older woman who has to look after her children even though they belong to the father’s family by agnatic descent, is made to live a life of chastity, abstinence and isolation, dedicated to the memory of her iate husband and devoted to her children. Generally speaking, her chances of remarriage are poor, given the popular superstitions which suggest that widows bring bad luck. What statistics there are indicate a very low rate of remarriage. Custody of Children Traditional law is extremely rigid on the subject of who qualifies as a child’s guardian. Divorced or widowed women can only exercise the function for a limited period, after which the children come automatically under the guardianship of their father, in the case of a divorced woman, or the closest agnatic relative, in the case of a widow. The traditional majority view is that boys must be taken from their mother when weaned, in other words at two years of age, whilst little girls can stay with her till they are seven. More rarely, custody is granted to the mother until the boys are seven and the girls nine. Only the Malechite rite (one of the four schools of Sunni Islam) allows the mother to keep boys with her until the age of puberty and girls until they marry. Kiven during the period when the mother is responsible for

bringing up the children, they remain under the tutelage of their | father or closest agnatic relative. The latter not only has the right to determine the education they receive, he can also commit them to a marriage without even consulting their mother. Furthermore, a woman’s right to bring up hey children is not absolute. If she is deemed physically or morally unsuited to look after them (even though she usually has her. whole family behind her), they can be taken away. The same applies if she remarries a man who has no

68 | | connection with the children. _ |

Once her children have been taken away, she is given little opportunity to see them again. Visiting rights are limited, if only

The Legal Status of Women

because of the incarceration imposed upon women. Repudiation can thus be a considerable blow to a woman and illustrates the extent to which women are seen simply as instruments enabling their husbands to perpetuate or increase the male lineage. Indeed women are often referred to as “so-and-so’s mother’ rather than by

their own name. |

One can easily imagine the trauma that separation represents, both for the mother and the children, for all that the mother at least will have been expecting it. It is in fact one more reason which holds women back from exercising their right to divorce. These traditional rules concerning the guardianship of children have now been somewhat relaxed. What reforms have been passed concentrate essentially on the children’s well-being. In Egypt since 1929, a tribunal decides who will have custody of children from seven upwards for boys and nine upwards for girls. In Syria, Tunisia, lrag, Iran (until recently, since Ayatollah Khomeini has consistently opposed the 1967 law on family protection) and South Yemen, it is now stipulated that the interests of the children must come first and that either parent may be awarded custody by

the court. inheritance

Generally speaking, a woman is entitled to her share of an inheri- © tance and can use it as she sees fit and to her exclusive benefit. She is under no obligation to share her property or Income with her husband, even though he is bound by Koranic Law to provide for her and her children in every way, however rich she herself may be. In practice, a woman is often not entrusted with her share cf an inheritance, either because she allows her brothers to manage it for her or because it is simply never handed over to her. Before the introduction of Islam, women in Arabia were not entitled to inherit anything at all. Islam granted them that right, which was in itself a considerable step forward. But, as in other domains, inequality was the overall rule; the pretext given by some commentators was that, since women were provided for and protected throughout their lives under Koranic Law, they did not need access to assets in the same way as men did. In any case, the Koran specifies that a woman’s share of an inheritance must be half that of a man’s . In practice, things are more complicated. A childless widow may inherit one-quarter of her 69

The House of Obedience

late husband’s assets, or up to one-eighth if he leaves children. A widower inherits half his late wife’s assets if she dies childless, and one-quarter if she has children. In polygamous marriages, the widows receive equal shares of one-quarter of the assets if there are no children, or of one-eighth if there are. In many countries, women do not even receive the share of their parents’ legacy they are legally entitled to: the brothers usually find a good pretext for not breaking up the property. Legally, however, a daughter is entitled to up to half of her late parents’ assets. If there are several daughters, they are entitled to anything up to two-thirds. On the other hand, if the deceased had both a son and a daughter, the daughter ceases to be a ‘Koranic heiress’ and becomes a ‘residual heiress’. Her brother is entitled to twice as much as she Is. Furthermore, according to Sunni law, a will can only be drawn up in favour of a man and is only valid if the prior consent of the other heirs has been obtained. When a husband sees that what his wife stands to inherit when he dies is likely to be inadequate, he will in fact often bypass the law of inheritance by transferring assets to her in the form of gifts made during his lifetime. Generally speaking, Sunni Islam favours agnates in all questions of inheritance. For instance, if the only heirs are a daughter and a distant agnatic cousin, the inheritance will be shared equally between them, even if the cousin has never had the slightest personal contact with the deceased. Shia law is in one sense more equitable since it divides up ail heirs, excepting widows and widowers, into three clearly distinct categories. The first group includes the parents and all direct descendants. The second group covers grandparents, collaterals and their descendants. The third group is made up of uncles, aunts and their descendants. Any heir from the first group excludes ail those in group two, so that a daughter will take precedence over her parents’ brothers, uncles, grandparents and all other agnatic relatives. The laws on inheritance thus reflect the differing conceptions of the two main sects of Islam concerning the family. The Sunni idea is based on a tribal unity whilst in Shia thought the nuclear family made up of parents and their children is the basic unit. This latter concept is understandably more favour-

10 |

able to women in matters of inheritance. |

A few very timid reforms have been introduced. In Tunisia, girls now have priority over collateral cousins and other distant male agnates. In fact, the Koran stipulates that a brother has no claim on the inheritance when the deceased has a living direct

The Legal Status of Women

descendant, but traditional Sunni law added the rider that the descendant must be male. Tunisian law also insists that a surviving spouse must share the inheritance with all other legitimate heirs. In Iraq, the 1963 law is based on the Shia law, even though it applies to both the Sunni and Shia communities of that country. Any child, male or female, thus takes precedence over any collaterals and other distant relatives. In the Sudan, Egypt and Iraq, a husband or father can leave a larger portion of his assets to his wife or daughter if he so chooses. Education and Employment

There can be no doubt that, on paper at least, the reforms outlined above have greatly improved women’s status within the family. Unfortunately, it is also clear that the laws are far in advance of people’s thinking. Furthermore, the laws are not strictly enforced and those who break them are assured of the oven or covert support of the cadis and indeed of public opinion. Keeping women in a permanent state of dependency is still seen as the best guarantee against decadence. Most Muslims consider that it would be very dangerous to allow women to break out of their cloistered

lives and enjoy greater nights. | The development of schooling for children of both sexes is clearly one of the best available ways of changing people’s attitudes so that men and women can find fulfilment of sorts outside the narrow constraints of tradition. [t is not so much that more schools and more pupils are infallibie methods of changing archaic attitudes and adapting people’s ways of thought to the modern world. True, the school is an opening onto the outside world and can, in the particular context of the Arab world, serve as a vehicle for a different conception of humanity. But one should not be too utopian. Everything depends on the ideology the teachers transmit and the support they are given by political parties, associations, etc., especially if we are dealing with a reforming ideology. More than in any other societies with a similar level of development, the simple fact of allowing girls access to schools is a considerable step forwards, especially when one considers what it means in terms of the tradition. Not surprisingly, the countries that are most committed to retaining an unmodified Islamic tradition are precisely those where schooling has barely been developed, even for boys. Generally speaking, these are the countries which have 71

The House of Obedience

not yet gone through the economic transformation which makes

social change inevitable. Reforms of any sort are very rarely intro- | duced simply as a result of the benevolence of rulers. Schooling is no exception: in the West it became generalized in response to the needs of economies which were oriented towards the world market and geared to the development of the forces of production — in other words, when the country concerned needed a skilled workforce capable of coping with modern conditions. In this sense, the political will of the national leadership is

determinant. They do not have to be revolutionaries, as is clear when one compares Algeria with Tunisia, or Jordan with Egypt (Algeria and Nasser’s Kgypt do not, to be honest, really qualify as truly revolutionary countries, whatever they themselves may have declared to the contrary). The efforts that have been made to provide schooling for children and the adult literacy campaigns both make sense only in this context. The aim is to give girls the tools they will need to master the roles they will eventually be assigned as wives and mothers. Education will enable them to be — more competent in these functions, more aware of hygiene and less prone to the superstitions which are particularly rife amongst women. As elsewhere, it is the girls from the more liberal and well-todo backgrounds who draw most benefit from education, since they are the ones who can prolong their studies up to university level. This is in no way new. The modernist bourgeoisie has long allowed its daughters to pursue their studies in local schools, colleges or universities, or even abroad. These educated women, many of whom have acquired and practise a profession, also fill an economic and social need. ‘They often accomplish tasks which men cannot yet carry out in the Islamic countries, given the prevailing taboos and traditions: the tasks which concern women directly. They may be doctors (paediatricians, gynaecologists, etc.), lawyers, teachers, or journalists. Paradoxically, men are the more discriminated against in these professions, given the traditional structure which is still very much in force, especially in the countryside. In other words, in the professions, there is very little competition between men and women; each sex has its own delimited field of action, unlike in other underdeveloped countries. Nonetheless the number of these women

is still extremely restricted. oe

Of the great civilizations, it is the Islamic world, and the Arab world in particular, which has the highest rate of illiteracy amongst 72

The Legal Status of Women women, the lowest level of schooling for girls and, generally speaking, the smallest number of women in paid employment. In 1970, 85% of women were illiterate, as against 60% of men (UNESCO, 1972). The gap between the numbers of literate men and women is thus still large, and indeed grew by 5% between 1960 and 1970. as more schools, attended mainly by boys, were opened. studies of the literaey rate by age group illustrates just how stubborn are the traditions which restrict women’s access to education; illiteracy is almost as common amongst young women as amongst older women. For instance, in Libya in 1970, 84% of young girls between 10 and 14 were illiterate, as against 95% of women aged 60 years and over. THe same applies to many Arab countries where there have been no serious efforts to alter the situation. However, in recent years, the number of schools has increased considerably in several countries, even if the educational system remains unsatisfactory and the number of teachers inadequate, once again especially in the countryside. In a word, the struggle against illiteracy is not as advanced as in other Third World countries outside Black Africa. Even in those countries which have introduced reforms, considerable disparities in schooling persist between boys and girls, although the situation has improved somewhat over the years. It is in any case difficult to assess the true level of women’s schooling and education In the various Arab countries. The available statistics are not precise and are also relatively out of date. Part of the inaccuracy comes from the fact that some countries, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia, for example, are reticent about indicating how many girls and women there are in each family. Generally speaking, the statistics simply point to overall trends. (This is true for most underdeveloped countries.) One thing we do know: in most Arab countries, the level of schooling for girls is, on the whole, low. It varies considerably from country to country and also from area to area within a particular country. The most traditionalist countries have ‘resolved’ the problem thanks to television, Which enables little girls to oursue their studies without leaving the family home. Of course, television is not yet available to every family. The ¥esult is that, in some countries, fewer than 10% of little girls go to school. In a country like Tunisia, which has actively promoted girls’ education, 50% attend primary school at least. By contrast, in North Yemen, the 1973 figure was 3% (8% for boys). The percentage diminishes considerably when it comes to 13

The House of Obedience secondary education. As for the tertiary level, women are still a minority amongst the student population, although the number of women at university is increasing as the local bourgeoisies flourish In Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and more recently in Algeria and Tunisia, education for women has been relatively firmly established. ‘These countries have done a great deal to encourage parents to send their little girls to school, often in the face of a deep-seated popular antagonism to the idea. But even they have

run into the problem of the incarceration of women, a major | obstacle in all Muslim countries. A girl’s virginity is still greatly valued and people believe that the best way of preserving it is to keep the little girl locked up at home. Virginity is still usually considered far more important than education.

The general public also fears that prolonged education may | defeminize the girls, delay their marriage and therefore have repercussions on their fertility. The influence of education on young girls’ attitudes towards their parents is also feared. The obedience, docility and modesty which is demanded of them could be undermined by the acquisition of knowledge other than that which is traditionally passed on from mother to daughter. Merely attending a school is all too likely to increase their expectations from life, since they will discover that something other than what their parents have planned for them exists. Not to mention the danger that competition might develop between an educated woman and her husband, which would strike at the heart of the man’s prestige. In practice, these threats are not imminent. The education young girls receive at home — their conditioning — combined with social pressures leads most of them to conform to existing norms despite their schooling. Marriage remains the desired goal, the status which must be preserved. Nonetheless, young men are now far less hostile to the idea of marrying an educated girl, providing she conforms to the traditional norms in other ways. Even if she eventually goes out to work, her salary and resulting social recognition will not necessarily be seen as a threat to her husband’s status and | authority. Furthermore, education has a certain influence on non-agricultural employment. For instance, during the 1960s, less than 4% of women who had attended primary school were in paid jobs, but 21% of those who had been to secondary school were earning salaries. Two out of three women who had completed a university course had high-level posts, in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia at least. The entire traditional structure militates against uneducated 14

The Legal Status of Women

urban women working outside the home. There is a fear that they will come into contact with men, and that, by going out, they will acquire too preat a freedom. Men have little faith in their wives, because of the very nature of Arab marriapes. And there is also the fear that the men themselves will lose face if they are seen to be incapable of providing for their families on their own. Paradoxically, it is still amongst the poorest classes of society that the fewest women are in paid employment, although this is gradually ceasing to be the case. In the more educated social strata, economic pressures, often connected with the adoption of new patterns of consumption, have led young men to accept more readily the idea of.their wives going out to work; a second salary is often a very valuable addition to family income. In any case, it would be inaccurate to claim that women in the Arab world were not part of the economically active population. The statistics are often misleading, in that they rarely take into account women who practise a craft at home and whose husbands sell the product and keep the proceeds. Similarly, women apricultural workers are often left out of the statistics, even though in some sectors they play a crucial role. The fact remains, however, that the level of women’s employment in agriculture is lower amongst Muslim Arabs than amongst Christian Arabs or amongst the women of other rural societies (in Latin America, for example). As we have repeatedly pointed out, the ideal of most Muslim societies remains the incarceration of women. Although it has never been as strong in the countryside as in the towns, this ideal has gradually become a dominant model and it is only because of the prevailing economic conditions that it is not enforced to the letter. The low level of women’s participation in the workforce is seen as a brake on economic development in many countries, notably Tvag, Libya and Egypt. These countries believe that the main causes of the phenomenon are superstitions, social prejudice and the attitudes of the women themselves towards work and social dependency (United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 1970). Nonetheless, the economic importance of women’s labour should not be underestimated. They often work more than the men, since on top of working in the fields ov the factory they have to look after the house and children. In the countryside, women partici pate in all apriculfural activities, they look after the livestock and ave the main craft producers: they spin wool, make carpets and 19

The House of Obedience

tents, weave cloth, sew clothes, make baskets, etc. All these activities are taken completely for granted and are rarely recognized as work.

in the non-agricultural, non-traditional sectors, women with | some education have turned to activities which are akin to the traditional specifically ‘feminine’ tasks (teaching, midwifery, nursing, etc.). Many women are employed in the textile sector, which provides segregated workshops; others find jobs as housemaids, usherettes, etc. Amongst these workers there is a much higher percentage of divorcees than of widows or spinsters (three times higher in Kigypt, four times higher in Syria, for example). Probably divorced women who have not remarried quickly and are thus seen as not living up to the expectations of their family and of society at large are less subject to the restrictions imposed upon young girls and widows, who return to their family. Finally, except in the most highly qualified professions, women’s wages are invariably lower than men’s, even when there is a specific law to the contrary, as in Tunisia, Iraq and Egypt.

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Societies

The Maghreb: Algeria | In 1962. after eight years of armed struggle, Algeria freed itself from 130 years of colonization. Countless Algerian women of every social class had participated in the struggle and many had joined the maquis. They had acted as liaison agents and nurses, they had planted bombs, they had hidden, fed and protected resistance fighters. They themselves had been arrested, sometimes tortured and sent to detention camps. Just like the men. So much so that it seemed obvious to the outside world that Algeria’s independence would inevitably lead to the liberation of women and their recognition as persons by the men. Frantz Fanon’s theories*, according to which the experience of violence and armed struggle would bring about revolutionary changes in the condition of women and young people, supported this viewpoint. According to Fanon, the mere fact of having taken up arms and participated in violent action would make women conscious of their own alienation and induce them to fight for their own liberation. Similarly, the men, at long last aware of the injustice they had inflicted on women until then, would support their demands out of respect for the self-sacrifice and political maturity the women had shown. Fanon argued that armed struggle alone, with no aim other than national independence, would be enough to transform irreversibly people’s attitudes and hence the

status of women. ,

What he failed to take into account was, firstly, the underlying -motivations of the men and women engaged in the struggle, and * L’An V de la revolution algerienne, Maspero, Paris, 1960.

19

The House of Obedience

secondly, the nature of the FLN (National Liberation Front), the movement which had launched the insurrection on Ist November. 1954. He placed far too much emphasis on spontaneity and redemption through violence. Experience has shown that only a struggle backed up by a modernizing and revolutionary ideology with its own social objectives can pull the masses out of their social and cultural conservatism, by proposing a new form of society. Only if such an ideology enjoys massive support can it really change people’s attitudes. Unfortunately, projects of this kind, which are capable of changing the status of women, usually also introduce a kind of puritanism oriented towards accumulation and production. In the process, _ sexual and personal problems are relegated to the background in the name of a rejection of bourgeois decadence. The F LN was a populist nationalist movement dedicated to recovering Algeria’s independence. But the Front was always very vague whenever it came to defining the content of this independence. Militants were mobilized on a basis which really challenged only the colonial authorities, who were charged with having destructured the entire country. Once the FLN had launched the insurrection, it was soon joined by the various other nationalist tendencies who had until then failed in their more reformist attempts to secure equitable representation within the French | political system. The more populist groups were gradually suppianted by classical political parties, whose leaders eventually rose to the top of the FLN hierarchy. In any case, the aim was to secure the support of the popular masses, and especially the peasants, who had remained all the more attached to the Islamic tradition, given that it represented the main form of resistance to the colonial ideology. Religious practices were revived, even reimposed, which enabled certain advocates of a French Algeria to _ dismiss the resistance as a holy war. To tell the truth, Islam was indeed the mobilizing and unifying element, for lack of any other ideology to take its place. _ Algeria’s history and the nature of its colonization had endowed it with a very specific character, and unlike in many other countries of North Africa and the Near East, had led to a hardening of the tradition. The tradition had acquired a semi-mythical component, in which the precolonial period — about which the Muslim population actually knew very little -- was cast as a golden age which had to be recaptured. There could thus be no question of challenging _ the structures of society; on the contrary, they had to be re-established, 80

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since they had been undermined by colonization. Furthermore, colonial Algeria had been linked to France as a set of departements (counties) and this system had turned the country into one of the most politically, culturally and economically disinherited societies in the world. 'The indigenous population were thus particularly attached to the ancestral values which enabled them to distinguish themselves from the settlers. Administratively, Algeria had been part of France, but its entire economy was organized to meet the needs of the metropole or the pieds-noirs (settlers) rather than those of the Algerians. cllowing the Second World War, shortly before the insurrection broke out, the Algerian inhabitants of these french departements were undoubtedly second-class citizens: they carried less political weight than the 10% of Kuropean settlers. The ten million Algerians who were referred to as ‘Muslims’ were denied any representation or identity of their own. The study of Arabic, the language most | of them spoke, was forbidden in the state schools, which were conceived entirely in terms of the European population: all teaching was in French. As for the Koranic schools, they had steadily declined in number and quality since the 1920s. The teachers had received little training themselves and were content to have their pupils endlessly and mechanically recite verses from the Koran. In principle, the state schools were open to Algerian children, but in practice, it was almost only the offspring of the petty bourgeoisie who could attend. The rural population was too poor or lived too far away from the urban centres to send their children to school. In the towns, the children’s studies were usually cut short when they were put to work at an early age. And obviously, if a family could afford to have only one child educated, it was invariably a boy they chose. Nonetheless, between 1959 and 1962, the year independence was achieved, the number of ‘Muslim’ pupils had gone up from 600,000 to 1 million in the primary schools and from 10,000 to 21,000 in the secondary schools. Outside school, it was, of course, the women who were mainly responsible for transmitting knowledge, a difficult task since they themselves had never been to school. Their knowledge was based on traditions and customs, often amounting to little more than magico-religious precepts and codes of Muslim behaviour which gave the children, and especially the sirls, little opportunity to discover a broader social and political

life. |

| 81

A similar type of dispossession was taking place on the economic

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plane. Having dislodged the legitimate occupants, the settlers had monopolized three million hectares of prime land, on which they raised crops which in many cases the Algerian population never consumed, even though they provided the workforce in the fields. The vineyards are a typical example. On the eve of the insurrection, agriculture provided the 20,000 settlers with an income of 930 million francs, while a million Algerian peasants and their families earned a bare 1 million francs. For the rural unemployed, there was no work outside the agricultural sector: about 30% of economically active Algerians worked in agriculture. All the top administrative and service sector jobs were held by piedsnoirs, and so were most of the lower level posts. Consequently, unemployment was so widespread amongst the Algerian population that many families, or often just the head of the family, had to move to the cities or emigrate to France in order to find

work. | ,

When the insurrection broke out on 1 November 1954, under the leadership of a small handful of men, the peasant population was quick to provide active support, especially in Kabylia and the Aures region. The peasantry had been deeply affected by the colonial situation and had long been receptive to the nationalist slogans which had been circulating for years without ever really leading anywhere. But the uprising was not the expression of a homogeneous political movement organized around a political theory. Even the watchword of agrarian reform was not listed as one of the FLN’s main objectives once the country was liberated. From 1956 onwards, the influx of cadres from the various nationalist movements who joined the Front reinforced its pettybourgeois and often socially conservative character. In 1997, the repression in the urban centres became far more severe, especially during the Battle of Algiers; many resistance fighters had to seek refuge in the countryside; the leaders moved abroad and continued the struggle from there. In 1959, the French Army turned itself into a steamroller which crushed most of the opposition in the maguis. Nearly a million people, out of a total population of ten million, were detained in camps; hundreds of thousands had to flee to Tunisia or Morocco. From 1957 onwards, given what had already happened in the towns, the peasantry bore the brunt of the war. It was only when the countryside, which had been ravaged by the French Army’s ‘pacification’ and ‘population resroupment’ programmes, stopped fighting that the struggie moved back to the towns again, often without much contact with the 82

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leadership abroad. Throughout this period, women were just as active as men and just as committed to armed struggle. But this in no way changed

their status, and the fact that they were participating in one way or another in the war did nothing to free them from the patriarchal yoke. Like the men — and perhaps even more so, except in the case of young women students — they were not fighting for social change as well as national liberation. On the contrary, the whole idea of recovering national independence was to restore the old lifestyle which colonization had disrupted and which was remembered with great nostalgia. Identity could only be established through Islam. Although they were oppressed by the men, this oppression seemed easier to bear than that imposed by colonization. The structures of Muslim society were not open to question, since colonialism had sought to destroy them. In fact, the women were hardly aware of the double alienation they suffered. Women’s participation in political life had always been very limited. As in other countries, it was only the few who came from liberal families who had ever been able to pursue their studies in Algeria or in France. For this privileged minority, access to French society had opened up new ways of thinking, and when independence came, they made considerable advances. But the majority of women knew only the tradition. The life they led and the education they had received offered them no possibility of imapining that they could, ike the men, undertake autonomous political activity within an organization. That was seen as the men’s affair. When the repression became harsher and more efficient, the militants called on the women to carry out the tasks they themselves could no longer accomplish. It was not that the women had been in any way unwilling to participate before. Nonetheless, they were only called in now because there was no other way. In other words, in most cases women were used precisely because they were women: in the initial stages, they were less at risk than the men. It would appear that few women (except the students amongst them) joined the struggle on their own initiative. They always required the consent of a husband or brother. There were even cases of men sending thelr women into the maquls as nurses or liaison agents simply to keep them out of the way of the French soldiers, who were not averse to raping women in the villages they moved into. in the maquis, the women were ‘sisters’, and hence free from male importunities. ‘Those who did not participate cirectly in the struggle were expected to act as a sort of pressure 83

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group, harassing the administration and the prison authorities for information as to which camp or prison their relatives or husbands had been sent to, so that the prisoners would not become ‘missing persons’ and could be helped as must as possible. In the towns, women began to be used much more systematically when the FLN launched its terrorist bombing campaign. Hidden behind their veils and considered by the French authorities as too attached to traditional ways to take part in such activities, they were able to slip in everywhere where the men could no longer go. At first, women were never searched, while men regularly were; the authorities, concerned to ‘keep the peace’, did not wish to offend the susceptibilities of the ‘Muslims’ (most of whom were still believed to be pro-French) by openly laying hands on their women. The PLN took advantage of the fact and entrusted the

transport and placing of bombs to the women. The women’s | commitment was sincere and courageous, but it was always based on substitution. They committed themselves as the daughter, sister, wife or mother of an active male militant, especially amongst the poorer classes. The women only became really active when the men could simply not do without them. When they were arrested and tortured, they showed as much courage as the men. A few even became national heroines during the war, and were proclaimed as such by the FLN in its propaganda. The Front hoped that by publicly honouring women combatants it could convince world and especially French public opinion of the progressive nature of the struggle, and thereby win the support of anti-colonialist elements in France. The French Left was in fact very divided on the issue, and although the idea of ‘peace in Algeria’ had been widely adopted, only a small minority was speaking of

independence. |

One might think, like Fanon, that the women militants of Algeria, who had faced up to so much danger, would thereby have | become conscious of their own value, as individuals rather than simply as women, and of the autonomous role they could play.

What prevented them doing so? The fact was that, for them, and | for everybody else, the only reason for their intervention, (always at the men’s request) was the exceptional situation. They never saw the link between their actions and their own worth. Indeed the aims of the struggle in one sense further delayed the development of women’s consciousness. The struggle for national liberation was based entirely on demands for a fairer, more egalitarian society. The militants who wanted to go further, to 84

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develop plans for a new, economically and structurally different society, were physically liquidated by their own comrades in the underground, or discredited themselves by refusing, for ideological reasons, to participate in the armed struggle when it was launched. ‘This is what happened to the members of the Algerian Communist Party, for instance; although they later changed their minds and joined the struggle on an individual basis, they were too closely linked to the French Communist Party (PCF) to endorse fully an armed struggle which was not organized by Marxists and which was ‘only’ nationalist. Right up to 1956, the PCE was still arguing for a ‘genuine French union’ (the liberation of the working classes in the metropole would lead to the liberation of their counterparts in the colonies). After all, for many PCE militants, Algeria was still a part of France. Not surprisingly, the Algerian CP, which might otherwise have broadened the 'LN’s ideological base, suffered badly from its links with the PCF. The FLN was fighting precisely to ensure that Algeria should no longer be part of France. It was fighting to recover the country’s identity, to reject the products of colonization and restore the lifestyle which colonization had helped to destroy. In this sense, the presence of one million Westerners did little to modify the attitudes of the Algerian people. Perhaps, on the contrary, it provoked a certain hardening of support for the Islamic tradition, which was not quite so firm in the neighbouring countries which had escaped colonization on Algerian lines. Women saw their contribution to the struggle as a way of hastening a return to the old way by forcing a decolonization. Once the job was done, they firmly intended to return to their homes, their proper place which they should never have been forced to leave. Islam had retained its sway as an ideal to live by and as a means of resisting colonization. The form of Islam in question had to be all the more rigid in that it was threatened by the liberal temptations experienced both by Algerian emigres living in France and by urbanized Algerians, to whom French schooling had shown a different model of society or who had discovered notions such as trade unionism through © their work in the factories. True, this influence never went so far as to throw into question the status of women, the modalities of marriage, etc., but it had, in many cases, notably weakened religious observance, especially the dietarv interdicts and the period of abstinence during Ramadan. Kixcept for afew students, the women had never been exposed to this influence. They were not prepared to face the profound

The House of Obedience | changes that building a new society would have involved; too many of them were illiterate, few were used to paid employment and almost none had been trained to act autonomously in personal and social matters. Even in the towns, most women were incapable of imagining a way of life different from the one they had learnt from their mothers. At most, they may have wished for a relaxation of

the restrictions imposed upon them. | Independence was finally won in July 1962, and the women were sent back to their homes. Some of them, usually the younger ones, had thought that their participation in the struggle entitled them to certain rights. They were soon disillusioned. Yet the first President of the Algerian Republic, Ben Bella paid homage to them before his overthrow, and even encouraged women to take a slightly more active role in public life; amongst other things, he was obviously concerned to reinforce his popularity. The new state had sranted women the right to vote. And in 1963 a law was passed fixing the minimum age for marriage at 18 for boys and 16 for girls, but the personal consent of the bride was still not required. Forced marriage, child marriage and polygamy were outlawed, but despite these reforms, women’s status and role barely changed. Indeed women have never campaigned for any modification of their status since. On the contrary, in the struggle for power between the President and the General Secretary of the Party which soon ensued, the latter used appeals to Islam to reinforce his support. For instance, in 19638, the head of the FLN decreed that whether or not somebody observed Ramadan was an appropriate criterion for determining how Algerian they were. Religious observance and nationalism went hand in hand, and many Algerians who had rather abandoned strict religious adherence felt obliged to respect Free Algeria’s first Ramadan, simply in order to prove the purity of their commitment to the country’s independence. Since then, things have become more institutionalized and the social pressures have grown so _ strong that even non-believers feel compelled to conform to the edicts of religion. From the beginning, the FLN and subsequently the Algerian state never sought to implement a policy geared to emancipating women. They argued that the people would reject such a move, | especially in the rural areas. Indeed it is fair to say that the emancipation of women has remained a taboo subject in Algeria. Although the initial independent regime had contented itself with proclamations, the coup d etat which brought Houari

The Maghreb: Algeria

Boumediene to power on 19 June 1965 was a definite step backwards for women. The new President’s punctilious nationalism and authoritarianism actively reinforced the conservatism of the people as a whole. There has been very little reform. The new Family Code which has been promised for years is still in the drafting stage. The laws against early or forced marriage are widely ignored. Custom and religious law prevail over the Civil Code: in order to marry a very young girl, all one needs to do is to lie about the birth dates or find an accommodating cadi — of whom there is no shortage in the countryside. Although women now have the right to divorce, they have little protection against repudiation. Polygamy has died out of its own accord, mainly due to economic factors. Women have been granted the right to work and many now earn salaries, but they still represent only about 6% of the urban employed population. Unemployment in the country is so high that it is almost considered indecent for a woman to go looking for a job. Most working women occupy subordinate positions (nurses, cleaning ladies, typists, textile or electronics workers, etc.); at best they can become secretaries in the administration. An increasing number are gaining access to the liberal professions. But the fact is that at the moment the Algerian economy needs women to stay at home. Out of an active population of six million people aged from 19 to 65, 45% of men are more or less unemployed, and 97.5% of women are without paid work. The total population is over 18 million (1979 census) and the growth rate is of the order of 300,000 people a year. From 1965 to 1975 only 60,000 jobs were created in industry, which is more oriented towards capital accumulation than job creation. In 1978 there were about 800,000 registered unemployed (a figure which by no means represents all the under- or unemployed people in the country), and nearly a million people working abroad. It is worth noting that the safety _ valve which emigration once provided for the Algerian economy has ceased to function since 1974, when nearly all the countries, who were taking immigrant workers, including France, closed their frontiers. The Algerian Government had, in any case, suspended the emigration of its workers to France shortly beforehand. The economically active population is now growing by 175,000 people a year. However, we should bear in mind that most working women are employed in the agricultural sector or as servants, and thus do not appear in the census figures for the working population. A fair estimate would be that there are around 100,000

re

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women working outside the agricultural sector. In other words, employment for women is more readily available in Tunisia or Morocco than in revolutionary Algeria. Yet it is generally recognized, in Algeria as elsewhere, that paid employment is one of the most likely routes to women’s liberation. Given the high general rate of unemployment as well as underemployment, priority is naturally given to finding and creating jobs for men. Women’s liberation through payed work is thus still far off in the future. On the political level, the traditionalist groups are still extremely influential, representing a source of pressure that those in power cannot afford to disregard. Indeed it is on such groups that the government relies for support for many of its decisions, including the fact that Algeria is a confessional state. The three successive governments since independence have all turned to the most backward traditions in order to dismantle any opposition movements or even any trade unions who sought to change the social structures or simply apply the oft-repeated slogan ‘For the People, By the People’. The reality is that, under a single-party state party which is constantly being restructured and which is essentially made up of notables and petty opportunists, there has been constant official reinforcement of the most reactionary aspects of Islamic ideology. The rural exodus continues, despite an agrarian reform prosramme which cannot be considered a success. ‘The towns are overcrowded and surrounded by shanty-towns. Destitution, unemployment and poverty, highlighted by the indecent enrichment of the new classes, have led to a pronounced feeling of insecurity in the _ towns, where delinquency is growing amongst the young, as is prostitution, a relatively unknown phenomenon until recently. Kspecially in the towns, the nuclear family is replacing the extended family, with all the new problems that implies: for instance, the new pattern is poorly suited to ensuring strict adherence to all the religious principles, especially as far as women are concerned. The social pressure of the neighbourhood remains asa_ factor, but the constraints are far less intense than when they are exercised by all the members of the extended family as a whole. The media, the Party, the authorities and the schools are thus constantly required to reiterate and strengthen Islamic values. Central authority takes over where the extended family can no longer play its part. As time passes, there are more and more young people who have spent at least some time in schools. Increasingly, their demands for an end to unemployment and for a more modern lifestyle 88

The Maghreb: Algeria

(iurope and the example of a different pattern of consumption are close at hand) constitute a threat to the traditional values. So much so that, in recent years, an Association of the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged, for the first time ever in the Maghreb. Although officially the movement is condemned as too reactionary vis-a-vis many of Algeria’s economic goals, its political views are in fact fairly close to what the regime believes is good for the population as a whole. If the present ruling class is to stay in power, there must not be any possibility of a growth of political awareness. ‘lhe underlying structures and deep-seated attitudes of the country must remain unaltered. Indeed the testy nationalism of the Algerian authorities, which still finds a ready echo in the countryside whenever it is a question of maintaining the traditional structures, serves as a means with which to deny young people’s aspirations to a more Western social model, under the pretext that such aspirations are incompatible with an Islamic society, even one which aims to be socialist. As for the women, in the countryside and small towns especially, if they want to be respected they have to conform to the rules. The use of the veil has grown in the towns; many women accept it in-order not to be importuned when they go out. The influx of impoverished and traditionalist peasants has increased the pressure on urban women; the new arrivals are shocked by the opulence and relative liberty of the bourgeoisie. A woman without a veil is immediately regarded as immodest and will be constantly attacked, verbally or even physically. Consequently, except amongst the ruling classes, many women prefer to re-adopt the traditional costume ~~ in the streets at least — to protect themselves. The model of the Western woman, which was the ideal of the young bourgeois, is still universally rejected by all the other classes,

including the women. |

Nonetheless, more and more young women are trying to free themselves from the tutelage of their in-laws, at least. Unfortunately, Algerian women are considered incapable of behaving ‘decently’ once ‘liberated’. The most common argument is based on the idea that women are not ready, not educated or mature enough to live in freedom with dignity and a sense of proportion. In other words,

women are still seen as children. |

Yet the female population represents a little over half the Algerian total. When national independence was achieved, women

were granted full civic rights: they can vote and can stand for | election to all the offices of state (parliament, management 89

The House of Obedience

committees, co-operatives etc.). But they still often require their father’s or husband’s authorization before doing so. A woman remains subject to male tutelage, not just in everyday life but also legally (certain steps can only be taken with the permission of a woman’s husband or father). This is the case unless she is herself the head of the family Gif the husband is dead) and has to work because the men of her family can no longer provide for her. Furthermore, there are no institutions to which women or girls who find themselves in difficulty can turn. Most magistrates and lawyers are men. Social workers are few and far between, and are mainly in the towns; their powers of intervention are in case very limited. Algeria’s political structures do not allow for any groups to be formed outside the framework of the only legal party; consequently, there is no autonomous women’s organization. The National Union of Algerian Women (NUAW), the only women’s movement in the country, is simply a vehicle for the FLN. Its membership is less than 160,000 and its leadership pays little attention to the real problems women face. How could it? Its allotted role is to tempor ize, not to mobilize women around feminist slogans. It has to be said that even the NUAW constantly runs into opposition from men, who are reluctant to allow their wives or sisters or daughters to participate in its activities. But its impact is too weak to be able to change this subordination of women, especially as the higher echelons of the Party frequentiy intervene to block any incipient activism. For instance, at the last NUAW congress (in September 1978), the FLN co-ordinator presiding over the opening session declared that the movement’s militants should be working ‘to free Algerian society from ignorance, illness, superstition, the various social ilis and harmful habits of consumption’. Later, alluding to the ‘preoccupations of contemporary women’, he suggested that: Some women express themselves through demands for freedom, equality at work and equal wages, as well as in communal discussion of problems such as divorce, marriage or participation in political affairs. This kind of preoccupation, which is so current in the capitalist world, really stems from bourgeois attitudes lacking any social dimension and based entirely on individualism and selfishness. |My italics. J.M. | ‘The speaker made no reference to the Family Code, which was supposed to define the personal and matrimonial status of Algerian 90

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women. The Party co-ordinator was simply reiterating the official FLN line, from which one may deduce that any attempt by women to organize against the injustices they are constantly subjected to would be repressed. Under such conditions, there is little hope of collective efforts to change society. Emancipation of women is simply not on the agenda. Only individual solutions can be envisaged, usually involving great isolation; fleeing the home or even suicides are strikingly frequent amongst women. Although the National Charter (adopted June 1976) and the Constitution proclaim the principle of equality between the sexes, this remains a dead letter in many cases. The National Charter has little to say about women anyway; a single page concerning the National Union of Algerian Women. One passage reads:

The Algerian Revolution must answer the hopes of the women of the country by creating the conditions necessary for their emancipation. The Revolution would not be fulfilling its aims if millions of Algerian women, who constitute an immense potential force for social change, were to be left out of the revolutionary process. ...The NUAW must adapt its actions to the specific problems of integrating women into modern life. /f must be conscious that the emancipation of women does not imply a rejection of the ethic with which our people is so deeply impregnated. [My italics. J.M.] Further on, under the heading ‘Advancement of Algerian Women’ the text runs: ‘Improving the fate of women often involves transforming a negative judicial and mental environment which Is prejudicial to the exercise of a woman’s recognized rights as a wife and mother and to her material and psychological security.’ [ My italics. The National Charter goes on to criticize

Exorbitant and ruinous dowries, unscrupulous husbands who desert their wives and children, and leave them penniless, the unjustifiable removal of children from the mother’s loving care, unmotivated divorces in which no provision is made for the woman’s maintenance, violence against women, which so often passes unpunished, and exploitation of women by anti-

social elements. ...

91

The House of Obedience | _ All this constitutes a fairly accurate description of the conditions most women in Algeria live under. The problem is that nowhere in the National Charter, or elsewhere, are the means by which the state intends to remedy the situation ever specified. These three quotes from official speeches (made at different times) illustrate the major contradiction which afflicts a regime torn between modernism (which the young people want) and tradition. The rift is so great that one can in fact speak of two |

Algerias, the one traditional in every respect, right down to its : mode of production, the other turned towards the West, which serves as an ever-present model of consumption if not of behaviour. This is the real stumbling block of ‘Algerian specificity’, a Western technocratic and authoritarian model of economic development, endorsed by the ruling classes and many of the young people, coming up against the fact that the countryside remains firmly committed to tradition. In this contradictory context, women are supposed to emancipate themselves without abandoning the moral code which is primarily traditionalist: efforts towards emancipation within the traditionalist framework are, of course, as likely to succeed as attempts to square a circle. The reality is that women’s lot is marginally improved only in order that they may fulfil their allotted role as wives and mothers. In other words, women’s political and economic role in Algerian society is still extremely limited. Decisions continue to be a masculine prerogative, even though women are legally full citizens with the right to vote. The influence of husbands, fathers and brothers remains predominant, in a negative sense. It was no coincidence that in the last National Assembly elections (February 1977) only nine women were elected to the 261-seat Assembly. Thirty-four women were candidates; four of those elected stood in Algiers. It would seem that, generally speaking, women have little confidence in themselves or in their ‘sisters’. In recent years, however, special efforts have been made in education; the authorities are relying on the schools to change people’s attitudes. In 1971-72, nearly 60% of children were attending school; in 1975 the figure was 73%. School is compulsory up to age 14. There are, unfortunately, very great regional disparities, and girls get little schooling in the countryside, where tradition prevails over the requirements of modernization. While 85% of girls attended schools in Algiers during 1975, in Medea the figure was only 28% and in Mostaganem it was only 32%. These 92

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percentages do not indicate the relative duration of boys’ and girls’ education. It is well known, however, that the latter are often withdrawn from school very early. True, the number of girl students is increasing: women constituted 18% of the student population in 1971-72 and 23.3% in 1977-78. The figure was around 37% in medicine, a discipline particularly favoured by girls; the young men continue to prefer literary and legal studies. Within the bourgeoisie, degrees have become a guaranteed path to a better marriage. The young graduate thus acquires extra merit which reflects favourably on the family as a whole. But one may justifiably ask what impact schooling can have on young people’s attitudes and conception of womanhood, given the enormous pressure which is put on young girls by society and especially by their families, through the education they receive at home. We know from the example of _ Western societies that such changes only occur if the appropriate social structures have been set up and if the political will to bring about change is really there. The actual content of the education dispensed in the schools obviously plays an important role. Yet there is nothing particularly reformist in the Algerian curriculum. Sexual constraints are equally manifest in schools and universities. Even in mixed schools, sepregation between little boys and little girls establishes itself ‘quite naturally’. As for the universities, women students can find that they are required to produce a certificate of virginity, at the behest of the Rector, as happened in Algiers in 1972 for instance. Many young women who have qualified for university entrance are kept at home by their families until they marry. Nonetheless there have been changes. Many educated young women now refuse to live with their in-laws, and make this a precondition of accepting a suitor’s offer of marriage. If their demand is met, marriage becomes, for them, a form of semi-liberation compared to the life they had to lead in their parents’ home where everybody was so anxious to preserve the family’s reputation and honour, which are so dependent upon the daughters’ virginity. However, it is also worth recalling that, as in most Arab countries, Algerian women are not legally entitled to marry non-Muslims

(the law does not apply to men, however). : |

On the whole, married women still suffer the same constraints as before, especiaily in terms of their freedom of movement. Women may be allowed to go to work or to school, since these are necessities, but going for walks, to do the shopping or simply for 93

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relaxation, is still frowned upon. However, married women are moving about more these days, providing they wear a veil. They can even be seen at the cinema, accompanied by their husbands. But their mere presence, even when veiled, provokes an unpleasant reaction from unaccompanied male spectators. The young men’s attitude towards women may seem less rigid than their fathers’ but it has not fundamentally changed. Increasingly, they want a wife who will also be a companion, but rather as in the colonial system, she is expected to be a secondclass citizen. This companion must be able to work (economic constraints make this increasingly essential, especially as the young have developed expensive consumer tastes) but this relatively recent role has not brought any real modification to her tradit- — ional status. Most young women still see their real function in life as marriage and caring for children, to which they would dedicate themselves full-time if only their husbands’ means permitted. What changes there have been in young women’s attitudes only really emerges in their choice of husband. Not that young Algerian women will go so far as to force the man of their choice upon their families, but they are beginning to learn how to say “No’ if the man suggested to them is not to their liking. The families of the more educated girls are also beginning to accept their daughters’ right to reject suitors, providing such a refusal does not imply a systematic opposition to marriage, which remains the key to the whole system. If a young girl is slow to marry, it will generally be thought that she suffers from some handicap which has discouraged potential suitors. People still find it very difficult to conceive that a woman could actually refuse marriage in itself. In any case, few women deliberately remain spinsters, and those who do are usually disapproved of. Basically, Algerian men simply cannot imagine a woman living free from all tutelage. A woman can only be so-and-so’s daughter,

sister, mother or wife.

It would seem that the ‘socialist’ Algerian Revolution refuses to face up to the problem of women’s status, both within the family and in society at large. Nothing is being done to change people’s fundamental attitudes, and the justifications offered for this inertia are framed in terms of the traditional Islamic values, which the need for an identity constantly reinforces.

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The Near East: Egypt The Near East: Egypt

Unlike that of Algeria, Egypt’s recent history does not consist of settler colonization, years of national liberation struggle and foreign destruction of the national personality. And unlike both Algeria and most other Arab countries, Egypt is an old nation, whose identity has never really been threatened, despite the Ottoman, French and British presences. This is probably why, as early as the turn of the century, Egypt developed an enlightened intelligentsia who broke away from the doctrinaire teachings of Al Azhar, the great Islamic university, and turned to study the new _ thinking from the West, which they eventually adopted as their own. Early in the century (1923), a woman member of this intellisentsia, Hoda Sha’raoui, publicly removed her veil and established a feminist movement which enjoyed the support of political, social and even religious reformers. The latter felt that the ‘degradation’ of Egyptian society stemmed from the incarceration of women. The movement’s actions were entirely oriented towards the emancipation of women, with the removal of the veil as its symbol. In the early 1940s Hoda Sha’raoui founded the National Union of Arab Women. liven earlier, in 1920, working women had organized themselves ana forced the government to pass the first laws regulating women’s employment in the factories (mainly textiles) and commercial establishments. Until then they had been made to work 15 to 16 hours at a stretch, for derisory wages. ‘Thanks to their struggles, they obtained better working conditions and salaries.

‘The same feminist movement called for the creation of schools and the development of education for girls. By 1928, despite public opposition, young women were admitted to the University. Similarly, as early as 1925, the traditional Egyptian form of repudiation, namely conditional repudiation, was outlawed. From that time onwards, all the legislation has been geared to discourage repudiation and divorce. The Egyptian legislature was also quick to ban forced or early marriage, and young people having reached the age of consent were allowed to marry without requiring the permission of a guardian or parent. In other words, Egypt reformed its laws to bring about a gradual recognition of women’s rights long before most other Arab countries. The new reforming legislation nonetheless remained firmly within an Islamic framework. Without going into details, it is worth noting that Nasser’s rise to power reinforced the reformist 95

The House of Obedience | tendency and that by 1956 women had been granted full political rights. That same year, free education was instituted for both boys and girls. Due to the shortages of teachers and buildings, mixed education became the rule in state schools: later, co-education, which had originally been prompted by lack of facilities, became

Ministry of Education policy, in an attempt to change and | ‘modernize’ the attitudes of both men and women. | It is undeniable that, in the towns at least, the atmosphere is infinitely more relaxed than in the rest of the Arab world. Men and women move about side by side without any apparent problems, even at work, and one gets the impression that the evolution of the tradition has been smooth and unbroken, even amongst the proletarianized strata of society. However, despite the reforming legislation, women used to complain that the long-promised improvement of women’s status had not been properly implemented. Their demands were finally met in June 1979, despite the strong opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is particularly —

powerful in Egypt. |

The new reform further restricts men’s rights to repudiate their wives. From now on, a man is required to inform his wife that she has been repudiated, which was not the case before. Similarly, a man must inform his spouse if he takes a second wife. The economic constraints imposed by the new law are also likely to discourage men who are thinking of repudiating their wives or taking a second bride. If a man repudiates his wife, he will be obliged to pay her maintenance and indemnity; for instance a wife with children can expect to retain occupancy of the family home. Furthermore, the State Bank will provide financial support to the repudiated spouse by paying her advances on the maintenance payments which will later be deducted from the ex-husband’s salary.

Custody of the children, which used to be granted to the mother only until the age of 10 for little girls and 7 for little boys, has been extended. Girls now stay with their mother until marriage, and boys until they are 15 years old, providing the repudiated wife is deemed blameless. However, the legislators did not insist that divorces be decreed by a tribunal. They accepted the 1931 law which required that the proceedings be registered by a departmental official; this was a major advance at the time but seems sadly

out of date nowadays. |

When it comes to reforms of the marriage laws, to women’s right to divorce, to questions of repudiation, family law and 96

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contraception, Egypt certainly does not lag behind the other Arab countries. The legislation has long striven to keep abreast of social changes. True, polygamy is still allowed, unlike in Algeria: 3% of all marriages are polygamous. The justification offered is that polygamy is a lesser evil than divorce; the children continue to have a home and even the women are thought to prefer sharing a husband to not having a husband at all. The reality of everyday life is, of course, somewhat different. The laws are often ignored, and are far in advance of people’s attitudes. Yet one is always struck by the tremendous diversity of lifestyles in Egypt, where the most traditional and the most ‘modern’ types of behaviour exist simultaneously. Many women of the ruling classes, educated multilingual women, work and have responsibilities equivalent to the men’s, without it being seen as a problem at all. Working-class women, even if they still represent only a small proportion of the total female population (only about 3% of women are wage-earners, and the number has been falling in recent years) have been granted equal rights with men, before the law at least. Unlike in many other Arab countries, the workshops of the big factories are not segregated. Unfortunately, the lack of creches and nurseries means that the women frequently have to stop work in order to look after young children. When they eventually go back to work, they often find they have lost eround. ‘We work like donkeys, and then our careers get disrupted for lack of proper social services,’ said one young woman. The collapse of the extended family, which used to provide the necessary social support, has created needs amongst the working population which an underdeveloped country cannot easily satisfy. However, in this proletarianized milieu, relations between men and women seem to be extraordinarily free: women do not hide themselves when a man approaches. Conversation between a man and a woman is not scandalous or odd, and the women easily hold their own when it comes to jokes and repartee. The intellectuals’ explanation for this attitude is that education, the right to work and the habit of paid employment have enabled women to acquire more self-confidence and have gradually changed individual behaviour; a woman who is earning her own wages will not be so dependent upon men. (Yet despite the schools, illiteracy is still rampant: nearly 80% of the total population is illiterate. ) In the countryside, things have changed little, despite the efforts of the state. Women still wear the veil (especially in the south) and 97

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those who do not work in the fields are kept at home. ‘Crimes of honour’ are common. Women remain economically dependent, unless they have property of their own, in which case they can manage it themselves and receive all the revenues. Their fate is very much that of their mothers before them. Marriages are still frequently contracted between cousins, according to paternal decisions. As one village teacher told me: ‘Here, emotions are stifled, and the choice of marriage partners is very limited, even for the parents, because the communities are so small. The worst thing is when an adolescent is married off to an old man. But the women are all convinced that they must abide by the customs. It seems perfectly natural to them.’ Progress in the countryside clearly still

has a long way to go. |

The various regimes, of both left and right, which have succeeded one another in Egypt over the last 20 years, have all sought to modernize structures and attitudes by passing laws or decrees, including some which have allowed women greater autonomy visa-vis the family and men in general. The real problem has been one of information, of making sure that the laws were known and enforced. This modernization, from which the notables and their wives have benefited most, was clearly the product of the West’s impact on the Egyptian ruling classes, who saw it as a new means of enriching themselves and, eventually, of developing the country. The early feminist movement, for example, addressed itself to the women of the most privileged classes and reached only a cultured public who had already been seduced by the Western ideology. The enlightened strata believed that only this ideology could ‘liberate’ the individual, free the country from destitution and remove the traditional constraints. ‘Enlightenment’ came from the West, and nationalism did not yet necessarily involve the strict application of Islam. The presence of Copts (Egyptian Christians) and the foreign colonies (Greek and Jewish, amongst others) facilitated the introduction of ideas from the West. It is no coincidence that a modern party such as the Wafd emerged in Egypt, which was faster to adapt to the new circumstances than any other Near Eastern

society (except Turkey). |

This ‘cosmopolitan’ intelligentsia, for whom Islam was not the definitive code, although they did not reject it, were open to all sorts of influences, since they were confident that whatever happened they would remain primarily Egyptian. Such an attitude may well have existed in other social strata as well, even those 98

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whose attachment to tradition was much stronger. To the Egyptians except for the Muslim Brotherhood of course, the tradition, even when dressed up in Islamic garb, remained just that, a tradition. Islam itself does not seem to have that total mobilizing force which characterizes it in other Arab countries. In Egypt, Islam is not the only source of identity. An Egyptian’s primary identity is always the fact that he or she is Egyptian. Perhaps that is the explanation for this reforming tendency which has lasted for nearly a century and which has been so influential. After all, the regimes that ruled Egypt before Nasser were in no way revolutionary. What is interesting is that these reforms were instituted in Egypt so long before anywhere else in the Arab world; in fact, that is their only distinguishing feature. Women do not enjoy ereater legal rights in Egypt than in the towns of Iraq, Syria or Tunisia. But the fact that these reforms were passed so long ago can undeniably be felt in everyday life. Emancipated women are more easily accepted; there is less hostility to spinsters; women are even allowed to have a personal and sexual life of their own, at least in the towns. There is a feeling of goodwill, of tolerance towards those who no longer respect the tradition, providing their behaviour is not ostentatiously provocative. On the other hand, the new very Westernized bourgeoisie, with their women draped in furs and jewels, are the real provocation, the real insult to the impoverished classes, who do not hide their judgement. What ts disliked about the rich is not that they do not conform to Islam but that they have grabbed all the wealth in a country where the working class and peasant population are terribly poor. In fact, poverty in Egypt has increased, and the indecency of these fortunes too rapidly acquired by the new class contrasts starkly with the physical deterioration of the towns, the destitution of the people and the high prices of essential foodstuffs. The Israeli-Arab conflict is no longer a sufficient explanation for the incredible disproportion between the misery of the many and the wealth of the few. As a trade unionist put it, ‘For the first time, one can say that people in Egypt are hungry.’ Oniy the fundamentalist movements, which are in fact relatively powerful, display explicit hostility to anything which is not in strict conformity with Koranic principles (interpreted in the most reactionary way possible). Although these movements, notably the Muslin Brotherhood, have not managed to take over the government of the country, they do represent a considerable political force precisely because by preaching the traditional values they 99

The House of Obedience

can attack the Westernization of the ruling classes which, they claim, is the root cause of the country’s economic difficulties and falling moral standards. In recent years, they have made many converts, even amongst educated women. Although the general | trend is towards women’s liberation and greater equality between men and women, many active, educated young women are putting

on the veil again, of their own free will. Visitors to Cairo are | usually intrigued by this curious phenomenon. It is not often you see women who have only just escaped from an almost complete subordination, of which the veil and the traditional costume were the symbol, returning to that subordination quite willingly. In - fact, this new behaviour, which might be called ‘anti-feminist’, may well turn out to be a sort of “feminism in reverse’, with a political connotation as well as a moral one. The political aspect of these women’s attitude is clear. Their position is similar to that of the Muslim Brotherhood, to whom they are in no way hostile. As for the moralistic connotation, it is a reaction to the changing morals of the daughters of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. Many of these young women lead a very free life and, as in all societies where sexual repression has been intense, their behaviour can be extreme: naturally, some people are shocked. There 1s talk of student prostitution, a new phenomenon engendered by a certain democratization of higher education. In the universities, the daughters of very wealthy families rub shoulders with girls from much more modest backgrounds who can only ‘keep up’ by engaging in prostitution. One should always bear in mind that in these circles consumer tastes are as developed as in the industrialized countries. No doubt the phenomenon has been exaggerated,

but it is nonetheless an indicator of the corruption which has | spread through every domain in the country. The veil is a very | clear symbol of demarcation from the corrupt morals of the ruling classes: it indicates a ‘purity’, a desire to return to an original

inspiration and to be a woman without being a prostitute. | Female circumcision is also part of the tradition, and remains the taboo subject par excellence. Although it was outlawed in 1959, it is still a widespread practice, even amongst families who will | subsequently send their daughters to university. The women themselves are reluctant to discuss it, except perhaps a few intellectuals,

mostly doctors. The question never arises spontaneously in | discussions on the condition of women. People will stress marriage, repudiation, child care, the backwardness of the countryside, the problems of women’s work, anything except female circumcision. 100

The Near East: Egypt

Yet nearly all the women I met in Egypt had been cut, whether they were students at university, teachers, trade union officials, cleaning ladies, workers or peasants. Many reject it for their daughters, but this attitude has not reached down into the popular strata. There, the girls still have to undergo the operation, since the religion — or the tradition, people are not too sure which — requires it. Usually this means sterring clear of the hospitals, calling in the midwife and using only a local anaesthetic. If a girl is to become a woman, it is something she just has to go through. In 1979, LT asked women from poor backgrounds why they wanted to impose such an ordeal on their daughters, given that they themselves had complained about the terrible pain. “That is not the point. It is the custom. God wills it.” One woman, an administrator who had refused to have her own daughter cut, nonetheless sought to avoid the question by concentrating on the festivities which surround the ceremony and which are supposed to make it less atrocious. Nobody seemed to realize that the practice itself had been illegal for 20 years. Indeed it is surprising how few women denounce what is going on. Female circumcision in Egypt is less of a mutilation than in some other parts of Africa (amputation of the labia, infibulation) but I still find it quite astonishing that people tolerate what is being perpetrated upon little girls and do nothing to prevent it. The inaction of the Left is particularly | baffling. The Cairo intellectuals that I met no longer have their daughters cut, but it seems that nothing is being done to explain to more traditional families just how noxious a practice it is. And yet there are perfectly adequate centres from which such an education campaign could be based: the village family planning clinics

_ for example. ,

In 1965, the government launched a vast birth control campaign, as a response to an enormous growth in population which the Egyptian economy, weakened as it was by the war effort, simply could not cope with. The Ministry of Social Affairs created a special Committee on Women’s Problems, to deal with the difficulties encountered by women both within and without the family. Since 1964 this Committee has been training women volunteers, whose role in the villages includes the promotion of family planning. Birth control continues to run into great obstacles wherever polygamy and repudiation have not yet been abolished. As we have seen, the latter encourages procreation as a means of ensuring the stability of a marriage. Even where there are laws which effectively 101

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limit these two practices, most women, especially in the countryside, are not fully aware of the fact, or do not really trust the law. Uneducated women whose role is restricted to the family, who are dependent and devoid of all ambition, find the very idea of birth control difficult to grasp. Nonetheless the village centres offering free family planning services are increasingly being used by illiterate and very poor women. As in all Muslim countries where contraception is legal, these women only come to seek information after having already had several children. A big family is still the ideal of most women of the poorer classes. In practice, the centres have had only a small impact. But their existence familiarizes people with the concept of birth control. Thanks to the centres, people are increasingly beginning to accept the idea, especially as the centres also provide health care for mothers and children, creches and nurseries. [n this way, the workers in the centres try to inspire the mothers with new aspirations and put a new value upon each individual child. Traditionally, the individual does not really exist in him or herself, a child is a gift from God, and what God has given, He may take back. A child’s death is thus no great drama. This attitude, deemed fatalistic by Westerners, is actually quite normal given a very high rate of infant mortality and the fact that a dead child is quickly replaced by a new pregnancy. The idea of a unique and irreplaceable individual child does not make sense within the traditional family structure. This does not mean that children are not loved in these societies. On the contrary, the children are loved precisely because they are children, because of what they represent for the status of the family as a whole and of the mother in particular, but not primarily because they are individual people. The possibility of their death is accepted right from the start. By insisting on the need to control the birth rate, the staff in the centres put much greater stress on the value of each individual child and on the fact that infant mortality (which has already dropped considerably) is not some unavoidable product of destiny. The centres also point out that having too many children may damage the mother’s health, prevent her looking after the children properly and generally harm the well-being of the family as a whole. It is, of course, no easy matter to convince women to abandon such ancient beliefs, especially as the old system boosts the men’s egos and provides the women with a sense of security within the traditional framework. In 1964, the Ministry of Social Affairs launched a training

102 a

The Near East: Egypt programme for young village women to extend the scope of the old village community development scheme which dates back to the 1940s. Community development was intended as a way of mobilizing. the villagers to take the improvement of village living conditions into their own hands, with state aid. Villagers organized themselves to improve roads, build schools, introduce electricity, open youth clubs or village literacy centres, all with finance raised in the village. Until 1973, however, it was mainly men who were involved and who got the training, and the programme was not always a complete success. The new training scheme for young village women has worked well. In each village, young women volunteers are recruited and trained in several disciplines for a few months, before being sent back to their community to act as agents for social change. By 1965, about a thousand women had been trained, with UNICEF help. ‘The women had to meet certain specific requirements to qualify for the scheme and were asked for an undertaking to return to their village afterwards. Young women were chosen, preferably though not necessarily married so that they would have greater credibility when talking about birth control to other women in the village. Since 1967, the training of these young women has been severely reduced, for lack of funds. But the programme continues nonetheless, and in 1973, for example, 1,229 women were trained, of whom 968 returned to the village. Rural women’s clubs have also been established, but only a quarter of them (a mere fifty-eight) seem to be actually operating. The tasks the trainees faced were enormous. They were expected to act as technical advisers and propagandists for birth control, to promote increased consciousness amongst village women about the real needs of families, and to encourage the community to set up creches, women’s clubs and craft training centres which would then co-ordinate with existing local institutions. The project was too ambitious and soon ran up against its own limitations: too few volunteers, too low a level of education, etc. In the end, only 1,000 young women were trained under this particular scheme, for 4,000 villages. Where the project was put into practice, however, the results seem to have been excellent. Despite the existence of health centres in each village, where women can seek advice and obtain contraceptive pills and [UDs, (the two most commonly used methods), and despite active propaganda efforts by local government representatives, nurses and social workers, people’s attitudes have not evolved quickly 103

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enough and still constitute a major obstacle to the process of modernization. Ignorance of the new laws and the regulations, the influence of the village mosques (which are in effect local cultural centres) and the fact that those who disobey the law go unpunished has meant that in the countryside the family with many children continues to be most women’s idea. However, unlike in Algeria, there is room for a feminist movement in Egypt. Although it will inevitably develop first amongst the most privileged women, it can eventually spread, through the trade unions, the political parties and various other bodies, to reach the most dispossessed women and inform them of the possibilities opened up by the new reforms.

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omen: Basic

Bey woee meen Biman Poa?

Ambiguities

Whilst it is true that both in the Near East and in the Maghreb many countries have modernized their legislation, the everyday life of most women has barely been improved. The modernization has mainly affected those few women in the towns who have had access to genuine education and information, in other words those who belong to the so-called privileged classes. These women know the rights they have recently acquired and have been able to exercise them. But they still constitute only a tiny minority, a sort of display window that hides the misery of the rest, with whom they have little contact. The privileged few can lead a satisfying - personal life and engage in the complete range of professional activities, but most women are still subject to the full weight of the tradition. Their lack of knowledge about the outside world, and the difficulty they have in imagining a different status and different social relations mean that they hardly ever struggle to improve their lot. They still accept the heavy burden imposed upon them by the tradition. By the generally established norms of human rights, they are the most oppressed women in the Third World.

Fewer women are educated in the Arab world than elsewhere, even though schooling for girls has made some progress in most Arab countries. Admittedly, the absolute number of women with some education is increasing, and the gap which separates them from men 1s not as great as it once was, though it is far from closed.

The percentage of women wage-earners is probably the lowest in the world, and the birth-rate is the highest. In most Arab countries, very little has been done to transform the Family Code and people’s attitudes; and where it is legal, polygamy plays a key role in increasing the birth rate. Except in Tunisia, and more 107

The House of Obedience

recently Syria and Iraq, the laws concerning the family are amongst the most inequitable in the world. Most of the Arab countries are still confessional states, where the legislation is based on Koranic law reinterpreted, to varying extents, to suit local political needs. This law, which custom has rendered even harsher, is grossly unfavourable to women, in that it grants them no status outside the framework of the patriarchal family. In other words, reforms are always instituted within an Islamic framework and even when women are to some extent recognized as men’s equals in terms of civil rights, inequality remains the order of the day in practically every other domain. There have been a few adjustments but no real revolutions. Even the most extensively reformist legislation has done nothing to change either women’s personal status or the Family Code. Where the state has paid particular attention to women’s conditions, it was usually because demographic problems were becoming pressing and ~ urgently required a solution (as in Egypt). Once again, the real issue was an economic problem, not a desire to liberate women from the constraints and subordination imposed upon them. In all these countries, there is a widely held belief that what change is necessary will come about through schooling for girls and the inescapable effects of industrialization. Few states actually have any political will to promote women from their present status. Indeed the idea is that women’s status will only improve as the nuclear family becomes more widespread — once again, the family is the key — and as economic pressures force more and more women to go out to find work. Hopefully, the dishonour which today still attaches to a woman working in the outside world will diminish as the practice becomes more general. Some progress in this direction has already been made, especially under the Ba’athist regimes of Syria and Iraq, and in Egypt, mainly in the towns, of course. Naturally this is only possible if jobs are available _ in the first place. Unemployment, aggravated by a high birth-rate, is one of the major curses of all the predominantly rural under-

developed countries. |

Furthermore the process which supposedly enables women to liberate themselves through paid labour is very slow and, as in the West, is often hard for the women concerned, for whom work constitutes an extra burden rather than a liberation. They only shoulder this burden because economic circumstances leave them no other option, and it is all the harder to bear given that there are few social service provisions such as creches and nurseries. As for 108

The Future of Arab Women

the men, they have not given up their patriarchal attitudes, even if they are now forced to allow their women to go out to work. Women thus end up having to serve as producers on top of their | normal roles as wives and mothers, and there are no structures established to help them in this threefold task apart from the

traditional support provided by grandmothers. Infact, if one excludes the elite, very few women have really benefited from the ‘advantages’ of modernism such as paid labour. Modernism has simply disrupted the secure traditional family structure without providing any real compensation other than a meagre salary and

extra tasks for those who work. , ,

Finally, one has to recognize the obstacles to any progress that are put up by both men and women, even in countries where feminist dermnands are long established, such as Egypt. The demands stem essentially from the elites who have benefited from recent changes, and the obstacles are the invariable reaction of the traditional strata of Arab society, especially the peasantry. What seems new, and to an outside observer, relatively surprising, is that women belonging to these elites, educated women who are fully able to | lead an independent life, are deliberately turning back to the tradition, as in Egypt. This revivalism does not, of course, go so far as to demand incarceration: these women move about freely, | - alone or in groups, attend university and are intensely active. But their desire for a ‘return to the sources’ leads them to refuse any | modernization — even that already achieved in their social group — on the grounds that it is synonymous with Westernization, loss of identity and moral depravity. The ‘return to the sources’ represents an affirmation of Islamic values against Western values which are deemed unsuitable for the societies concerned. It is an essentially political stance which aims to prove that Islam is once again a possible alternative to the West. The goal is to recuperate {slamic values and endow them afresh with that prestige which they lost under the pressure of past political and economic dependency. It seems likely that the reinforced international influence of the oil-producing countries has been one of the determinant factors of this fundamentalist revivalism. The oil-producing countries have suddenly emerged as key elements in a world economic crisis: they are now actively courted by the great powers, including those who once oppressed them. This turnabout has naturally infused a new vitality into a society which had until then laboured under a sense of inferiority and whose values had been depreciated if not negated. The new role in the international balance of forces granted 109

The House of Obedience

by the great powers to the oil countries, notably those of the Arab world, has enabled that world to recover its identity and its pride, both of which are closely linked to Islam. The economic bargaining power of these countries is now so extensive as to have induced even the United States to modify its previously unconditional support for the Arab countries’ main enemy, Israel. Islam and the Islamic countries can no longer safely be ignored, especially as they are increasingly exercising an influence in areas which were once the private hunting grounds of the West, such as Black Africa. This is the essential background to any understanding of why the people still refuse Westernization, and of why certain charismatic leaders find such a ready audience (Khomeini in Iran, Ghaddafi in Libya, etc.) when they appeal to the masses in the name of nationalism and traditional values. In many countries this tendency is reinforced by the attitudes of compromised and corrupt ruling classes whom the people see as symbols of collaboration with the West and who are held responsible for the impoverishment and degeneration of Third World countries generally. The ground lost by feminist movements is one measure of this hostility. Socialism cannot be relied upon to hasten the necessary changes either, even if it does modify the status of women. Wherever the individual is seen primarily as a producer, an equally alienating puritanism is likely to develop. All the regimes claim that they have more urgent and important matters to attend to than women’s liberation as we understand it, i.e. a liberation which extends also to a personal, sexuai and familial level. Priority is invariably given to development, with the assumption that other problems can only be tackled once economic scarcity has been overcome. This is the usual argument used by all the existing regimes, whether of the right or of the left, to explain their slowness in changing the | conditions experienced by women. In any case, the women are themselves often not yet ready to accept these changes. Behind the apparently Westernized world of the towns, there is the solidly resistant core of the countryside, the shanty-towns and the petty bourgeoisie. The latter are the most frustrated, since they are aware of the need for change but cannot initiate it. The small | islands of emancipated, educated women who work in fulfilling occupations and have a certain influence in urban society offer no model for the broad masses. They are part of different world, a shadow of the West. Indeed, following recent events in Iran and other Islamic countries, 1t would seem that the whole issue calls for re-examination. 110

The Future of Arab Women What can notions of ‘modernity’, ‘equal rights’ and changing attitudes towards women really mean if these societies genuinely wish to remain confessional? Is there not some deep antinomy between this desire and the entire historical, ideological and

cultural import of what we call modernity? Is the very idea of ‘modernity’ not itself simply a product of the evolution of Western society? Can it be extended to other societies without causing an absolutely fundamental disruption? Can it co-exist happily with the fully justified desire to preserve one’s own identity? Is there only one form of modernity? The existing notion implies a new relationship to time, space, work and other people. More stress is placed on the role of the individual and less on that of all social groups except classes. But modernity is also the introduction and integration of capitalism, with its specific forms of exploitation and social categorization, which can put even more pressure on the masses. Since only the most developed countries can be consumer societies, the compensations offered the people of the 'hird World in exchange for accepting new constraints, which make the old ones even harder to cope with, are hardly satisfactory. The old model did at least allow the masses a certain stability and security based on family or eroup solidarity. Furthermore, the new stress on the individual makes it apparent that women too are individuals. ‘This is in very sharp contrast to the traditional education received by most women, which led them to sce themselves not as individuals but as fragments — albeit important ones ~ of a broader whole, outside of which they had no place and no purpose in life. For a woman who has been trained to be subordinate, it is not easy to imagine that she could partic pate fully and autonomously in making decisions concerning either her family life or her life as a citizen. In most cases, to live the ‘different’, ‘modern’ life, in which one is totally responsible for oneself, implies accepting isolation, solitude and separation from those one holds dear. As for proletarian wage-earning women, they bear a double handicap: that which is inherent to their own societies and that which is also borne by their supposedly better equipped Western counterparts. What room is there for ‘modernity’ in societies where the very notion of an individual remains vague and where the traditional structures, however dislocated, are still enormously powerful? Western women, the models of modernity, who are seen as free and independent, do not have a particularly good reputation.

1ii

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Furthermore, Western society itself is in the midst of a moral crisis in which its values are being thrown open to question as individuals search for a different lifestyle and new relationships, both within the couple and within society at large. Westerners are no longer complacent about their own conception of the family, individualism, sexuality and the organization of work. Yet although the Western notion is no longer seen as a sure road to fulfilment, _ the fact remains that no other ideology has established norms of modernity. These Western norms are perceived by most Arab and Muslim women (and men) as a danger, a threat. At the moment it is particularly difficult to find a way of instituting profound reforms without undermining a whole socio-cultural edifice based on Islam, which has many positive aspects. The people fear that any tampering with this edifice will lead to a disintegration of -

civilization itself. | |

It is thus hardly surprising that the fundamentalist religious | revival enjoys the support of many Muslim women who seek to mark themselves off from the behaviour of the ruling classes. Islam symbolizes the moral values by which Westernized corruption can be judged. It would seem that the moral crisis in the West can have similar effects. After all, is it unreasonable to interpret the popular enthusiasm for the conservative positions recently adopted by Pope John-Paul II as a return to comfortable and safe values,a __ response to the same needs as those animating the revival of Muslim

fundamentalism? , |

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= ee ee Bibliography Abd-el-Malek (Anouar): Anthologie de la litterature arabe contemporaine, (Le Seuil, Paris, 1970). Beck (Lois) and Keddie (Nikki): Women in the Muslim World, (Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1978). Benatia (Farouk): Le travail feminin en Algerie, (SNED, Alger, 1970). Berque (Jacques): Les Arabes d’hier a demain, (Seuil, Paris, 1960). Boudjedra (Rachid): La repudiation, (Les Lettres Nouvelles — Denoel, Paris, 19'70). Bouhdiba (Abdel Wahab): La sexualite en Islam, (PUF, Paris, 1975). Chaliand (Gerard) and Minces (Juliette): D’Algerie independante, (Maspero, Paris, 1972). Chater (Souad): La femme tunisienne: Citoyenne ou sujet, (Maison Tunisienne de |’Edition, Thesis, 1975). Debeche (Djamila): Les grandes etapes de l’evolution feminine en pays d’Islam.

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