Despite women’s widespread participation in the “Arab Spring”, perhaps most notably in Egypt, many activists point out that women have been sidelined by the new political systems. The new governments created after the fall of regimes rarely feature prominent women and their agendas almost never champion women’s concerns. Women have been left out of the political dialogue since Mubarak was ousted and the committee to redraft the constitution excluded women, even female legal experts. Many Arab feminists express concern over the situation of women in Iraq, where after the overthrow of a secular tyrant four-fifths of all female pupils and students have discontinued their education.
The exclusion of women in the post-revolution state-building efforts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya is partly a result of political and social factors and the speed at which these transitions are happening, which tends to favor groups that are already organized and seasoned in politics—mostly men. Traditional social and cultural norms have relegated Middle Eastern women,” said Mahnaz Afkhami, the founder and president of the Women’s Learning Partnership, an international NGO working on women’s leadership and empowerment issues across much of the Muslim world. “They often lack the social, economic, and political power they need to overcome antagonistic groups and aggressive policy.”
Human Rights Watch researcher Nadya Khalife argues that the political culture in many regions across the Middle East had yet to prioritize women’s rights, or take women’s voices seriously.
But it would be a mistake to put too much weight on the difficulties that Arab women face on their cultural background. It seems that all revolutions leave women behind. The peaceful transitions in Eastern Europe in the 1990ties hardly created more egalitarian societies. In fact, arguably, the generous provisions of the paternalistic state, such as free child care facilities, long and paid maternity leaves, free health care, have all been replaced with the market driven, capitalist policies. Even more dramatically, the right to abortion have been replaced by much stricter regulations and in some countries, like Poland, it was outlawed. The new leaders like Walesa or Havel certainly did not fight to implement gender equality provisions in the newly democratizing states. Notably, Walesa openly called for the return of traditional roles for women.
The impact of Catholicism on the new society was overwhelming in Poland, where the old dogmas were replaced by growing power of religious fundamentalism. The public space in these new democracies excluded many groups, namely women and sexual minorities. Finally, the public/private divisions continue to endure and the roles of women continue to be prescribed according to old, gendered scenarios.
The cultural wars in Poland intensified with the prospects of EU accession, perceived by some as a threat to existing social relations. But for a long time before the 2004 accession, one of the main characteristics of polarized Polish politics, particularly after 1989’s political opening, was the clash between conservatives promoting family values and defending tradition on one side, and emerging new social movements claiming citizenship rights and legal protection on the other. Gender roles played a special part in these conflicts, because they were perceived as constitutive to the character of the Polish nation. The earlier socialist state’s insistence on freeing women from home confinement and domesticity (albeit limited in scope, and often in name only) is now contrasted with a Catholic ideology that emphasizes women’s roles as mothers and caretakers. Religion took on a political role and dictates acceptable social norms, and has a big impact not just on public sphere but is reflected in legislation. Hitchens was definitely not a feminist but his assertions about the harmful effects of religious dogma played out in rather tragic ways for Polish women.
The accession to the EU in 2004 of a number of post-Soviet states, was a double edged sword for women’s rights advocated in countries like Poland. The EU economic policies in many cases forced the government to yield significant social policies to the EU demands, while forcing the respective governments to start taking seriously the EU’s demands for gender mainstreaming, and various equality measures already present in other member states.

The news from the EU has been gloomy lately, filled with reports of the euro crisis, debt burden, undisciplined spending. Many predict that to solve the growing financial crisis, the countries need to make drastic cuts in spending, curb social services, limit generous pensions and public employees’ entitlements. While the economic model of the EU is being questioned, the liberal democratic model that governs it seems safely entrenched, and the inequalities of the political system persist. The political identity of the EU is closely tied with the economic system. Some of the feminist critics if the EU have long warned that the punitive austerity measures will not affect male and female citizens of the in EU in the same way. For women, who lost much ground since 1989, further cuts in domestic spending and the dismantling of the welfare state, will have disastrous effects.
And so revolutions everywhere have a way to bypass women, and until we insist that women’s rights are a priority in every context and in every culture, it will continue to be so.











































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