Dear Sticky Wicket,
I’ve always heard that Arab women are forced to be submissive to their husbands. Is this true?
~Wondering in Wichita
Dear Wondering in Wichita,
Yes and no. Submissiveness is an attitude and a frame of mind. Some Muslim women in Arab countries may choose to submit to religious, governmental, or traditional law. Other women may submit to these laws because they feel forced to do so. However, submissiveness is not an innate character trait of Arab women.
Movements to grant equal political and human rights for women have swept several Middle Eastern countries. Constitutions that declare, “All citizens are equal, and there shall be no discrimination among citizens on the basis of sex” have been adopted in Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Libya, Oman, Quatar, Syria, and Tunisia, according to a recent U.S. study.
A likely by product of such laws, women in many Arab countries have made significant historical gain in the political arena. An International Parliamentary Union survey reports that the percentage of female members of parliament in the Arab world has risen from 13.4 percent to 15.7 percent — crossing the 15 percent mark for the first time in history. Female enrollment in universities has risen in most Middle Eastern countries, with heavy concentration in literature, humanities, and social science.
In terms of political mobility, it would seem that women of these ethnic backgrounds are making great strides toward overall freedom and equal treatment. However, in terms of family/social relationships the opposite is true. Women in Middle Eastern countries have very few rights. With the exception of Tunisia and Egypt, a woman who marries a foreigner cannot pass her citizenship rights on to her children. In the United Arab Emirates, the law requires a woman to surrender her citizenship if she marries a man who is not a citizen of a Gulf State.
In Saudi Arabia, they legally forbid women to travel alone. In many cases, women are required to obtain the consent of their father, brother, or husband in order to leave the home. Failing to do so, can cause acts of physical violence at the hands of family members. “The man’s rights of disposal over her body, his watch over it, his use of it, his concealment, denial and punishment of it, all become more blatant,” according to the 2005 Arab Human Development report released by the United Nations Development Programme.