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

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

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

Ech-Channa is another great hero.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

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.

???

You think the same number of Egyptian children would be created out of wedlock if there were no such law (or cultural or religious more) against it?

[NY_BX 397]

???

You think the same number of Egyptian children would be created out of wedlock if there were no such law (or cultural or religious more) against it?

I don't know. Prohibition, at times, makes matters worse.