By Isobel Coleman

As protests have swept across the Arab world in recent months, women have been on the front lines of change. Yet even as women have participated and exulted in the fall of authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, there is anxiety among more secular segments of society that greater democracy in these countries could actually erode women's rights.

Long-suppressed Islamist groups are now in the political mainstream. Given their appeal, they will undoubtedly achieve significant gains in upcoming elections this fall. The reconciliation of Islamist demands for the implementation of Sharia (Islamic law) with women's rights, and more broadly human rights, will be an important determinant of how democracy and law evolve in these countries. In recent months, there have been some troubling incidents underscoring the risks inherent for women during these turbulent times.

At the end of January, Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia's main Islamist party, Ennahda, returned to Tunis after twenty-two years of exile. Thousands of his supporters, including many veiled women, cheered him at the airport. It was weeks after the fall of President Ben Ali, and the interim government had just lifted media restrictions and allowed banned political parties like Ennahda to register. Alongside Ghannouchi's supporters at the airport was a small group of protesters carrying signs saying, 'No Islamism, No Theocracy, No Sharia and No Stupidity!'

Tensions over the role of religion in society have been a fault-line in Tunisian society for decades, with the country's hard-fisted authoritarian leader Ben Ali - and Habib Bourguiba before him - harshly suppressing Islamist groups and imposing a secular system on the country. Women's rights have long been one of the more divisive issues between secularists and Islamists, so Ghannouchi's critics listen carefully to what he has to say on this topic. In the past, Ghannouchi has denounced Tunisia's relatively progressive Personal Status Code on religious grounds. Over the years, the code has been reformed to give women more rights in marriage, divorce and custody, and greater protections against domestic violence. Now, he mildly affirms women's rights as a fact of life in Tunisia. Still, his secular critics remain suspicious. They contend that Ghannouchi's 'liberal makeover' is a tactic to appeal to moderates and gain votes. Their concerns were heightened when he verbally attacked feminist Raja bin Salama this past winter. Ghannouchi threatened to hang her in Tunis' Basij Square for demanding that Tunisia's new laws be based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (as opposed to Sharia). Ghannouchi remains coy on whether he will run for president, but polls show he has considerable support. Undoubtedly his Ennahda party will emerge from the parliamentary elections as an influential political force, and secular women's groups will have to navigate carefully around its demands for Sharia.

Various secular women's groups continue to hold public protests to highlight their demands for rights in Tunisia's new political system. At times, hostile mobs of men counter them, insisting that women's rights are against Islam. Despite these angry political currents, it is unlikely that women's rights will erode in Tunisia in a significant way. Ghannouchi is correct in that women's active role in society is a fact of life in Tunisia. Given the country's relatively high rate of female literacy and school enrolment, low fertility and high workforce participation (at 30 percent, Tunisian women have the highest workforce participation rate in the Arab world), a roll-back in women's rights is simply impractical. However, women's rights activists need to remain vigilant in making sure that the actions of Islamist leaders like Ghannouchi match their moderate rhetoric.

Women's rights face even deeper-seated challenges in Egypt, where women's educational, workplace and legal gains are more recent and less widespread, and the general population is more conservative and religiously oriented than in Tunisia. The inspirational images of gender solidarity in Tahrir Square in the early days of Egypt's revolution gave way quickly to ugly episodes of targeted harassment of women. A hastily planned march in Tahrir Square on March 8, International Women's Day, attracted a few hundred women, but was marred by violence. Men shoved the demonstrators and denounced their demands as against Islam. Around the same time, the Egyptian military rounded up scores of women protesters, and in a show of raw intimidation, subjected many of them to virginity tests. The Egyptian Constitutional Committee, appointed by the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces (SCAF), included no women and the interim government has only one female cabinet minister--a crony of the Mubarak regime. The new electoral amendments, announced on July 20, eliminated a quota that had previously reserved some 12 percent of seats in parliament for women. Moreover, while some Islamist leaders have adopted a moderate rhetoric on women's rights, others ascribe to a far more conservative set of religious principles that leave little room for women's rights, or human rights in general.

Within Egypt's leading Islamist group itself, the Muslim Brotherhood, women's rights are a contentious issue. After winning about twenty percent of the seats in the 2005 election, the Brotherhood came under public pressure to articulate its positions. In 2007, it published a party platform that, among other controversial provisions, stated that neither a non-Muslim nor a woman could be president of the country. For its critics, this confirmed the Brotherhood's intolerance. It also launched an ongoing debate within the organisation over women's rights and religious freedom, with younger members of the Brotherhood arguing for a more progressive stance. Hundreds of these younger members have been gathering this spring, in meetings unsanctioned by the senior leadership, to discuss ways to democratise the Brotherhood and create more space for women.

In early July, the Brotherhood held an official conference for its female members, the first such gathering in sixty years. Two thousand Muslim Sisters attended. While ostensibly the purpose of the meeting was to help revive the role of women in post-revolutionary Egypt, and to give women a more prominent role in the Brotherhood itself, critics dismiss the conference as purely cosmetic, a public relations attempt to assuage concerns about the group's influence. Deep divisions in the Brotherhood remain with respect to women's rights, and on other thorny issues such as its stance on extremism and willingness to engage with the west. In many ways, how the Brotherhood's attitudes toward women evolve will be an important litmus test of whether the group chooses pragmatism over ideology. Tolerance for women's rights is likely to go hand-in-hand with acceptance of political inclusion and broad-based human rights, including religious minority rights.

Far more of a threat to women's rights, and individual rights in general, than the Brotherhood is the rise of Egypt's harsh and intolerant Salafi movement. The Salafis, and their ideological bedmates, the jihadis, are committed to establishing a severe Islamic state in Egypt which would make no accommodation for women's rights. The political reality on the ground, however, is that while a majority of Egyptians are conservative with traditional views, they are wary of theocracy. According to a recent Gallop poll, 69 percent of respondents agreed that 'religious leaders should advise those in authority with writing national legislation' but only 14 percent agreed that 'religious leaders should have full authority' to set the country's laws.

Women's groups rightly remain wary of losing ground during Egypt's fluid transition. Their exclusion from the political process so far is not reassuring. In early June, a coalition of women's groups held a national convention to present their demands. Their charter calls for increased political representation for women (including a specific demand for forty percent of ministerial positions); an adherence to all international human rights conventions; increased social and economic rights for women; a review of all discriminatory legislation; the establishment of strong gender committees within government; and a call for more balanced reporting by media on women's issues. Given the tenuousness of women's rights in Egypt today, it is unlikely that any government will emerge from the transition to meet these demands, but it is a positive sign that women's groups have coalesced around an aspirational set of goals.

Women's rights in the region will remain a contentious issue for years to come. Progress will require a broad coalition of civil society leaders, including moderate religious leaders, who recognise the centrality of women's rights to economic and political development. Advocates of reform have basic demographics on their side: rising female education across the Arab world is feeding women's demands for a greater role in society. Even in conservative Saudi Arabia there is a nascent women's movement that most recently erupted in a right-to-drive demonstration. Still, the potential for backsliding is very real in Tunisia and Egypt, where women can no longer count on authoritarian rulers to hold the line on women's rights in the face of Islamist pressures. But if true democracy emerges in these countries, then women's rights will undoubtedly be more secure over the long term.

(Isobel Coleman is a Senior Fellow in US Foreign Policy at the Council of Foreign Relations.)

 

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Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World

Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (The Contemporary Middle East)

Enemies of Intelligence

The End of History and the Last Man

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

 

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