In 1776 Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband John and to
Congress: "Remember the ladies."
Dalila Mahdawi – Women News Network – WNN
Women carries book in Beirut, Lebanon. In a post 'Arab Spring'
Lebanese women want to move past fences, walls and chains. Image:
Salad Bar/FlickrCC
(WNN Opinion) Beirut: In 1776, the First Lady of the United States,
Abigail Adams, wrote a letter to her husband John and to Congress,
imploring her countrymen not to overlook women's interests.
"Remember the ladies," she urged, adding with considerable defiance:
"If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are
determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by
any laws in which we have no voice or representation."
More than 230 years later and thousands of miles away in tiny Lebanon,
Adams' words have gained renewed urgency. In mid-June, after five
months of intense negotiations, Prime Minister Najib Mikati finally
unveiled his new Cabinet. Not one of the 30 appointments he made is a
woman.
"Women hold up half the sky", as the Chinese proverb goes, but in many
parts of the world they are still forgotten by the governments that
are supposed to represent them.
While the absence of women from political life is less unusual in
other Arab countries, like Saudi Arabia, Lebanese women have enjoyed
at least symbolic representation in their government since being given
the right to vote in 1952. Before the previous government was brought
down in January, there were two women in Cabinet, holding the finance
and state portfolios, and four women among 128 parliamentarians.
Though this figure amounts to a paltry 3.1 per cent, most activists
were optimistic it would, with time, gradually increase.
If being deprived a share of the Cabinet wasn't bad enough for
Lebanese women, their role in society has been further called into
question by the disappointing comments of the country's most senior
Sunni leader. Grand Mufti Mohammad Qabbani recently condemned efforts
to introduce legislation protecting women from domestic violence as a
Western plot against Muslim family values.
These seem like strange words indeed when one recalls Lebanese citizen
Charles Malik's pioneering role in drafting the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights – a document firmly committed to ending
gender discrimination and one that the Lebanese have enshrined in
their Constitution. Qabbani seems to have overlooked the fact that
Lebanon helped articulate those very values he now accuses of being
foreign and which many other Muslim figures would call an integral
part of their religious beliefs.
Unfortunately, the masculinisation of Lebanon's government is just the
latest in a string of major blows to women's political participation
in the Arab world as a whole. Although women were at the helm of the
uprisings in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, only one has been appointed to
the new 27-member cabinet in Cairo and the plans for a woman's quota
introduced last year have been abandoned. In Tunisia, where women
formerly held over a quarter of parliamentary seats, they have also
been slighted, heading only two of 31 ministries now. Developments in
Lebanon thus may well herald the beginning of retrogressive steps on
women's rights throughout the region.
These steps backward, however, increasingly go against the grain of
global attitudes towards women, whose participation in decision-making
is now an internationally recognised marker of social progress and is
on the rise every year. The United Nations has, since 2000, led
initiatives to mainstream women's active role in the public life of
their countries, issuing several resolutions in this regard. Lebanon
should embrace its historical role as a defender of human rights and
implement those resolutions in good faith, especially at a time when
it is serving as a rotating member of the Security Council.
Without women, Lebanon's political jigsaw is glaringly incomplete and
calls for transformative change will go unanswered. As one local group
put it recently, "How can we arrive at social justice for all when we
exclude half of society in the decision-making process?" Women must
become an integral part of decision-making bodies if Lebanon wants to
enjoy real democracy and truly serve the needs and aspirations of its
people.
The political participation of women is a matter of justice, not a
privilege they should have to fight for. The sisters of Abigail Adams
must not wait any longer for their rights to be heeded.
http://womennewsnetwork.net/2011/10/06/first-lady-abigail-message-arab-sisters/
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