Arab Women Eye Quotas re public life involvement

Arab Women Eye Quotas
Sanjay Suri - IPS 10/29/03

LONDON, Oct 29 (IPS) - A lot of women listened very seriously when Zahra Shojaie proposed a quota system for Arab women in public life.

Shojaie is advisor to Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and heads the Centre for Women's Participation in Iran. The Arab International Women's Forum now plans to take those suggestions forward after its meeting in London last week.

It is a forum with some political clout. Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Shaikha Sabeeka Ibrahim al Khalifa, wife of the King of Bahrain attended the meeting. Both take up women's issues, and as the forum takes up Shojaie's proposal, it could get a hearing at least in some of the right places.

Shojaie has strong credentials to back her plan. Fourteen political parties and organisations have been established in Iran by and for women, and she is closely involved with several. Women have been elected to the Islamic Consultative Assembly, and hundreds have been elected to rural and municipal assemblies in Iran. Several are mayors and governors.

Shojaie, if anyone, must know what she is talking about.

Quotas for women is central to her proposals. The percentage of women representatives in Iran is no more than 4.5 percent, she told the conference. She suggests something like 20 to 30 percent in political institutions, particularly parliaments.

This would mean effective participation and also "lead to a better image of Muslim countries at the world level," she said.

Shojaie came up with two other proposals. One, "changing the content of school textbooks to remove the negative stereotypes of women's roles," and then to influence the media to remove such negative stereotyping.

Nobody is expecting immediate action to result. But after its second annual conference, the Arab International Women's Forum (AIWF) believes it is taking some steps that could make a difference.

"One of these steps is to tell the world that there is a difference already between what is happening and what most people believe," AIWF chairman Haifa Fahoum Al Kaylani told IPS.

Women are increasingly taking up leadership positions in the Arab world, she says. Women are ministers in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and six other Arab countries, she says. Three ambassadors of Arab countries in Jordan are women, and six in France.

But are these symbolic appointments drawn from the elite?

Never mind for now, says Baria Alamuddin, foreign editor of the Al Hayat newspaper in London. "All Arab countries now want women ambassadors and judges and others, to show that we are catching up," she told IPS. "This competition to promote the development of women is wonderful, and we shall take advantage of it."

Alamuddin says men really have no choice. "Economic factors are forcing women into work," she says. "Traditional tribesmen cannot cope on their own. They are sending their girls to secondary school and university. This is leading to a domino effect, and to the empowerment of women."

Kaylani insists that the developments are more than elitist. In Saudi Arabia, she says 51 percent of all graduates are female. In Egypt 31 percent of the government workforce is women, she says.

An AIWF report points to a strong women's role in business. "Women who run their own businesses in Jordan comprise 2.5 percent of the working women," the report says.

More startling is a claim that in Saudi Arabia 25 percent of businesses are owned by women. A Saudi businesswoman disputes this figure. "It is more like 1 per cent or so," she told IPS. "Maybe 25 percent is the number of businesses registered in women's name but run by men."

But Arab women are seeing the beginning of some official push forward. The Arab League had decided to establish an Arab Organisation for Women at its meeting in September 2001. "That decision has now been ratified, and it will now start working from Cairo very soon," Kaylani says.

The Arab League had set up a Council for Arab Business Women in 1999. This group held a conference in Abu Dhabi a month ago, Kaylani says. Results are hard to come by, but these groups are showing some signs of life at last.

The position of women in government and business varies greatly of course across the Arab world, Kaylani says. "Tunisia and Egypt of course have a long- standing tradition of women's reforms," she says. "But that is now beginning to happen in other places as well."

Kalylani is quick to acknowledge that the move to empower Arab women has a long way to go. Quotas would be a quick leap forward, but no Arab government is about to introduce those in a hurry.

Kaylani is trying to get people to look in the meanwhile at the half full part of the glass - or at least one that is not entirely empty.