Zainah Anwar: Arab Spring opens window of opportunity for women in Mideast

[NY_BX 397]

It's great that there are extraordinary ppl doing extraordinary things. That's the best that we can hope for, unfortunately.

"This day and age" only applies to progressive thinkers and unfortunately, there aren't a whole lot of progressive thinkers in MENA.

I'm not taking the mens' side here but it does take two to make a baby. The women shouldn't be participating in out of wedlock sex either because they know the outcome should an illegitimate child be born. The innocent children are the victims.

I agree with you. However, if you're engaging in sexual activity, protect yourself. I wonder how men feel about wearing condoms, let alone women taking contraceptives.

But, yes, bottom line, the responsibility falls on both. The issue then is, if a woman wants to take responsibility, why aren't they allowed to register her child and raise him/ her as a single mom? Now that's another problem.

Edited May 24, 2012 by NY_BX

[Mithra 1,185]

Because women, especially, aren't individuals in the way we are here. They have family pressure and community pressure. Like Ihavequestions has stated before, you can't put your culture on them.

About condoms and birth control - they sell condoms in Egypt but it's shameful to go buy them if you're not married. A single, unmarried woman is not going to march into an OBGYN's office and ask for birth control like we do here. It's just not going to happen. The best way to prevent illegitimate children is to refrain from premarital sex. It's against Islam to have premarital sex anyways. Why can't unmarried people just keep it in their pants?

[NY_BX 397]

Because women, especially, aren't individuals in the way we are here. They have family pressure and community pressure. Like Ihavequestions has stated before, you can't put your culture on them.

About condoms and birth control - they sell condoms in Egypt but it's shameful to go buy them if you're not married. A single, unmarried woman is not going to march into an OBGYN's office and ask for birth control like we do here. It's just not going to happen. The best way to prevent illegitimate children is to refrain from premarital sex. It's against Islam to have premarital sex anyways. Why can't unmarried people just keep it in their pants?

I understand but you just stated the problem: it is against Islam. What about the very few that do not follow any religion? I know, I know, I'm thinking too progressive, I get it. I do understand. That doesn't make it fair, however. I really feel terrible for "minority groups" in the region.

Half of these issues would go away once there's separation of state and religion- which I doubt we'll se happen in our lifetime.

[Ihavequestions 419]

I understand but you just stated the problem: it is against Islam. What about the very few that do not follow any religion? I know, I know, I'm thinking too progressive, I get it. I do understand. That doesn't make it fair, however. I really feel terrible for "minority groups" in the region.

Half of these issues would go away once there's separation of state and religion- which I doubt we'll se happen in our lifetime.

It has nothing to do with religion.

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

It's a legal issue.

Unmarried sex is illegal.

A baby is evidence of unmarried sex.

It's the father's job to register his child's birth.

He's not going to register a birth and implicate himself in a crime.

[NY_BX 397]

It has nothing to do with religion.

Zip. Zero. Zilch.

It's a legal issue.

Unmarried sex is illegal.

A baby is evidence of unmarried sex.

It's the father's job to register his child's birth.

He's not going to register a birth and implicate himself in a crime.

It is a legal issue based on a religious belief.

[Ihavequestions 419]

It is a legal issue based on a religious belief.

What religious belief is that?

[NY_BX 397]

What religious belief is that?

That you shouldn't engage in sexual activity prior to marriage. Monotheistic religions preach this.

No one should care about sexual activity between two consenting adults. The law should cover sex crimes and, of course, children.

[Beauty for Ashes 257]

It is a legal issue based on a religious belief.

I don't think IHQ is saying she necessarily believes in all of this. I think she is just explaining it from a religious point of view. However while the adults are getting hot and heavy, I don't think anyone had religion in the forefront of their minds. In the west we have choices. However, over there, when a girl goes wrong, she has to either, straighten up, cover up and hide and have an abortion no matter how late in the pregnancy OR have the baby and put it in an orphanage. Its not 16 and pregnant like the states or open like France. Here you can have a kid out of wedlock and kind of join a club of unmarried mothers. It doesnt make it right. Its just how it is.

What happens to bad girls in mena? They go to work in clubs, they become hookers in brothels or they move to a city where no one knows them like a big city and feebly attempt to start their life again. It is not an episode of mamma mia by the way where all the days vie for the hand of the mom of the illegitamate kids.

IHQ is not saying its right. She is saying how it is.. Which is another inconvenient truth of life in mena that somehow never gets discussed.

Edited May 24, 2012 by Beauty for Ashes

[Beauty for Ashes 257]

That you shouldn't engage in sexual activity prior to marriage. Monotheistic religions preach this.

No one should care about sexual activity between two consenting adults. The law should cover sex crimes and, of course, children.

CASABLANCA — A warm mist and soothing aromas fill the air as water trickles into marble basins. Buckets are filled and the methodic drill of scrubbing and rinsing begins.

It is a place of serene cleansing that stands in stark contrast to the chaotic, dusty streets of Casablanca and serves as a weekly social ritual for the women who fill this steamy sanctuary. But nestled behind a tranquil street in the Quartier Palmier, the Solidarité Féminine Hammam and Health Center is more than a place of purification or socializing: It is a source of livelihood and empowerment for the unwed single mothers who work here.

In a country where unmarried mothers are condemned as prostitutes, rejected by their families and ostracized by society even in cases of rape, Solidarité Féminine, the nonprofit organization running the traditional Moroccan bath house, is fighting to improve the women’s social status.

“In the Arab world, it’s a taboo to talk about the single mother, and in Morocco we are confronting society and encouraging the mothers to stand up and say ‘I’m a mother and I’m proud to take care of my baby.”’ said Aïcha Ech-Channa, president and founder of Solidarité Féminine, which promotes the rights of unwed mothers and their children in Morocco. “This is how we are going to change the mentality.”

Through its social projects like the hammam, salon and adjacent fitness center, Solidarité Féminine provides the single mothers with job training, a small income, and offers legal, professional and psychological support.

As natural mud masks are applied and the bodies of female patrons roughly scrubbed using the methods of this centuries-old cultural tradition, the mothers can leave their children at the association’s crèche.

Apart from the hammam, Solidarité Féminine also runs two nearby restaurants where women are trained in cooking and baking. Sweet pastries are sold in the association’s four kiosks across the city, and in the culinary tradition of Morocco, guests flock to be served a meal of couscous after Friday Prayer.

“They teach us responsibility and care for us. This is something that we could get nowhere else,” said Saïda, 26, a single mother from Marrakesh, who greets customers at the restaurant. Still afraid to tell her family of her 6-month-old son Fehdi, her last name has been withheld to protect her identity. “I don’t know what I would do without them,” she said of Solidarité Féminine.

As Solidarité Féminine has led the way in improving the situation of mothers like Saïda, Mrs. Ech-Channa, 69, has been its driving force. A former nurse and social worker, she was compelled to begin the fight for unwed mothers and their children after witnessing their struggles first hand during the 1980s.

“I was working for the Moroccan Ministry of Social Affairs and a young girl, maybe 18 years old, came in to give up her baby boy,” Mrs. Ech-Channa said. “She was breast-feeding, which tells you she never wanted to give up the baby. She pulled the baby away from her breast to fingerprint the paperwork. Milk sprayed everywhere and the baby was screaming. He didn’t stop.”

“I went home and I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep,” added Mrs. Ech-Channa, a mother of four who at that time had recently returned from maternity leave and was still breast-feeding. “I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I had to do something.”

And so in 1985 Solidarité Féminine began. But in a conservative country, where sex outside of marriage remains a crime, Mrs. Ech-Channa’s journey has been anything but easy. A devout Muslim, she was harassed, condemned and accused by religious extremists of supporting prostitution.

“She told me, ‘If they come to you saying they are going to send me to jail, just tell them I’m crazy. You’re a doctor, they will believe you,”’ said Driss Moussaoui, professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Ibn Rushd University Psychiatric Center in Casablanca, who first met Mrs. Ech-Channa when they both worked in a hospital together in the early 1980s.

In 2002, things changed when Solidarité Féminine was officially recognized by the government as a charitable organization. With the support of King Mohammed VI, the harassment eased.

In 2004, the king’s wife, Princess Lalla Salma, attended the opening of the hammam. That same year, the government passed the Moudawana, a family law that became a model for the reform of women’s rights in the Arab world and praised by Western countries.

“Women across the region point to the Moudawana in Morocco, how it combined the top-down support from the king with the grassroots bottom-up mobilization of both women and men, as an inspiration for change,” said Isobel Coleman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “Paradise Beneath Her Feet: Women and Reform in the Middle East.”

But despite the praise, there remains a gap between de facto law and what the law says, she said. “The Moudawana changed a lot of things on paper, but it has yet to trickle down to practice, particularly in more conservative, rural areas throughout the country,” Ms. Coleman said.

A study published in May by the Institution Nationale de Solidarité avec les Femmes en Détresse, a Casablanca support group for single mothers, showed that the number of unmarried mothers in Morocco more than doubled to 27,200 in 2009 from 11,016 in 2008.

According to the report, the single mothers often come from vulnerable professions, like domestic housework.

“Abortion and adoption are illegal, and single mothers who get pregnant outside of marriage today have very little options available to them,” said Stephanie Willman Bordat, Maghreb regional director of Global Rights, an international human rights capacity-building organization. “They give birth and are socially stigmatized, rejected by their family, fired from their jobs, homeless and insulted.”

Apart from these challenges, the children born out of wedlock go unrecognized by law. While unwed mothers can obtain birth certificates for their children, they cannot obtain a Livre de Famille, the Moroccan legal document that lists family members and proves their civil status. The document can only be obtained by men upon marriage, systematically excluding unwed mothers.

In February, the struggles of unwed mothers in Morocco rose to dramatic prominence. To protest being turned down for social housing because she was an unwed mother, Fadwa Laroui doused herself with flammable liquids and set herself on fire in front of the city hall of Souk Sebt, in central Morocco.

In a video captured by a bystander and posted on YouTube, men are seen running to her rescue. But screaming and in pain, Ms. Laroui, 25, pushed them away. Two days later, the mother of two died in a Casablanca hospital.

The desperate act made Ms. Laroui the first Arab woman known to have died after setting herself on fire to protest social conditions after a Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, did the same, inciting a revolution that overthrew President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and spurred revolutions and calls for reform across the region.

So long as these struggles last, people like Mrs. Ech-Channa vow to continue their fight.

“Step back and ask yourself, ‘What if it were me?”’ she said. “No one chooses their family, no one, and every infant born into this world has the right to live with dignity.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 2, 2011, in The Int

[NY_BX 397]

I don't think IHQ is saying she necessarily believes in all of this. I think she is just explaining it from a religious point of view. However while the adults are getting hot and heavy, I don't think anyone had religion in the forefront of their minds. In the west we have choices. However, over there, when a girl goes wrong, she has to either, straighten up, cover up and hide and have an abortion no matter how late in the pregnancy OR have the baby and put it in an orphanage. Its not 16 and pregnant like the states or open like France. Here you can have a kid out of wedlock and kind of join a club of unmarried mothers. It doesnt make it right. Its just how it is.

What happens to bad girls in mena? They go to work in clubs, they become hookers in brothels or they move to a city where no one knows them like a big city and feebly attempt to start their life again. It is not an episode of mamma mia by the way where all the days vie for the hand of the mom of the illegitamate kids.

IHQ is not saying its right. She is saying how it is.. Which is another inconvenient truth of life in mena that somehow never gets discussed.

I got IHQ. I like the blunt objective truth posted by all of us....

[Ihavequestions 419]

That you shouldn't engage in sexual activity prior to marriage. Monotheistic religions preach this.

No one should care about sexual activity between two consenting adults. The law should cover sex crimes and, of course, children.

No. At a base level, it's about things - legitimizing who has a valid claim to money and property, the right to inherit.

What happens to bad girls in mena? They go to work in clubs, they become hookers in brothels or they move to a city where no one knows them like a big city and feebly attempt to start their life again.

Or their families kill them.

[NY_BX 397]

No. At a base level, it's about things - legitimizing who has a valid claim to money and property, the right to inherit.

Or their families kill them.

OMG!

Yes, you're right IHQ, there are inheritance issues, just like everywhere else in the world. But who started this was the catholic church since priests where *ahem* impregnating ladies out there and upon their deaths their illegitimate offspring went off to claim the churches possessions. So, no more gold for any of you... and no more sex for priests. (because, of course, that solved the problem permanently).

The far deep conservative behavior or belief system is little by little changing.

[Ihavequestions 419]

IHQ is not saying its right. She is saying how it is.. Which is another inconvenient truth of life in mena that somehow never gets discussed.

Oh, I'm certainly not saying it's right. No way.

The idea that, yes, it takes two to tango, yet men walk away blameless and shameless disgusts me.

[Ihavequestions 419]

OMG!

Yes, you're right IHQ, there are inheritance issues, just like everywhere else in the world. But who started this was the catholic church since priests where *ahem* impregnating ladies out there and upon their deaths their illegitimate offspring went off to claim the churches possessions. So, no more gold for any of you... and no more sex for priests. (because, of course, that solved the problem permanently).

The far deep conservative behavior or belief system is little by little changing.

The notion of marriage, legitimate heirs, and inheritance isn't exclusive to Abrahamic religions.

Greek women were sequestered for a reason.

[NY_BX 397]

The notion of marriage, legitimate heirs, and inheritance isn't exclusive to Abrahamic religions.

Greek women were sequestered for a reason.

That's true.

That hasn't diminished, let alone stopped, the procreation of children out of wedlock. So, the law has proven to be a total failure.