The female revolution

They have fought beside their male companions to liberate their countries from oppression, and now fear that their own liberation may be forgotten. Millions of Arab women have gone through- or are still going through- the popular rebellions in their respective countries with the double hope of achieving democracy, and at the same time winning freedom from the oppression they suffer as women. Many of these women are now voicing demands for social change.

The course of events, however, seems to point the way to disenchantment. The data that is currently available is not encouraging. The presidents of Tunisia and Egypt having now been dislodged from power, the new organs of power that are being set up to manage the transition to democracy are all dominated by men, with a non-existent or token presence of women. The same is the case in the zones conquered by the Libyan rebels.

The Arab world is known for its condescending attitude toward women. All the indicators (employment, political participation and salary ceiling) put it at the low end of the list, even behind sub-Saharan Africa. In some of the countries now rising in arms against their tyrants, women- many of them veiled- live under close constraints affecting their freedom of movement; suffer clitoral ablation (a practice that goes on in rural parts of Egypt); are forced to marry the man chosen by their families; and are, in many cases, relegated to illiteracy. In Egypt, some 83 percent of women have at some time suffered sexual harassment. A diabolical triangle formed by the general lack of liberty, religion (increasingly radicalized in association with anti-Western feeling) and culture has weighed upon Arab women like a crippling yoke for decades. This is viewed with indifference by their male compatriots and by the rest of the world. In this context, the fact that a quarter of the million or so demonstrators who occupied Liberation Square in Cairo every day were women, is a historic landmark that these democracies in the making cannot set aside and forget.

Nor can Western countries afford to disregard the yearning for liberty among Arab women, now that they have dared to voice this demand on a massive scale. Just as the revolts that have burst out in many of the Arab countries have overturned longstanding Western policies of cooperation with dictators who do not hesitate to rob and massacre their peoples, the discrimination suffered by women ought to mark an absolute red line in international relations, a proposal that has more than once been advanced by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Only an international policy consistently committed to human rights, including equality of opportunities regarding gender, can offer a breath of hope to the disappointed women of the Arab world. This week their demonstrations coincide with those being held throughout the world on the occasion of International Women's Day- a day intended to remind us that Western democracies, too, still have shortcomings in this respect, which are very much in need of correction.