Arab Women Tackle Inequities in Laws by Working Together

March 20, 2011

Amman, Jordan – Inequities in personal status laws, labor laws, and rights before the court continue to be a challenge to women throughout the Middle East and North Africa. 

This past weekend, the Arab Women's Leadership Institute hosted a group of women in Jordan to learn from one another about accomplishments in these laws other nations have made and to strategize on how to tackle common issues still outstanding.

“In my country, the state guarantees women equal rights as men in the workplace,” said Howaida Nagy Mohammad, a civil society leader from Egypt who has been working to increase women’s awareness of their rights in her country for 15 years.   “However, many of the laws guaranteeing this are not implemented, and women don’t know they can legally challenge their employers.”     

The AWLI training brought together government officials from the parliamentary and municipal levels, civil society advocates and young leaders from 10 nations.  Throughout the three-day event, representatives from each of the countries focused on the most pressing obstacles pertaining to women’s advancement in the Arab region, and left with communications and strategic action plans.

One such initiative, an anti-women trafficking campaign in Egypt, focuses on outlawing commercial marriages, which the women described as marriages frequently arranged by wealthy fathers who promise their daughters to business colleagues.  During the training, the Egyptian participants discussed effective communications messages for the campaign, and decided to advocate for increased penalties and encourage more lawsuits against fathers who break the already existing laws.

The discussions were based on presentations made by legal experts that the institute invited from Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.   AWLI members from Iraq, Morocco, Oman and Saudi Arabia also presented on effective awareness campaigns launched in their countries to inform women of the rights they do have.

“Learning of the important challenges women have in other countries will help me in developing creative ideas to address the inequities we face in my country,” remarked Dr.  Amira Al-Baldawi, a former Member of Parliament in Iraq who is now a civil society advocate.

This training coincided with 100^th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, which the United Nations dubbed this year, A Pathway to Decent Work for Women.

AWLI is an initiative started in 2008 by the International Republican Institute and is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.  AWLI offers trainings to increase political and social participation of Arab women in democracy-building in the Middle East and North Africa.  Training topics include civil servant skill-building, advancing economic development through civil societies, parliamentary strengthening and fostering young leadership.