Routledge Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East and North Africa by Anthony Tirado Chase

Author:Anthony Tirado Chase [Chase, Anthony Tirado]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317613756
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

The fifth freedom

The contemporary situation in the Middle East, however tragic, still pales in comparison to World War II. Then, in the midst of the deepest darkness, as 80 million people were losing their lives on the battlefields, in the Nazi concentration camps, and in the bombardment of cities, President Franklin Roosevelt raised his voice against isolationism and proclaimed a commitment to four pillars of freedom to which all humans are entitled: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These fundamental rights are likewise key to the Arab world’s future: without free expression, religious tolerance, economic opportunity, and an end to sectarian conflict, real progress will never be made toward human flourishing.

Roosevelt did not highlight women’s rights as a pillar of his essential freedoms speech; but during his administration, his wife and political partner, Eleanor Roosevelt, lent her considerable influence to the improvement of women’s rights, fighting for a limitation on the number of hours an employer could force a woman to work and striving to remedy the unsafe and exploitative conditions in many women-dominated workplaces. The advance of women’s rights in postwar Western Europe clearly reinforced the overall progress toward both human rights and European peace. Identifying freedom from gender discrimination as a fifth fundamental freedom provides an essential element in charting human rights possibilities in the Arab Middle East.27

As noted earlier, during the Arab Spring, the participation of women from Tunisia to Syria drew considerable media attention. While sexual discrimination against women in the Arab world remains the highest in the world, there are signs of positive change. The numbers differ from one country to another, but women in the Arab world have, overall, matched their world peers in literacy rates, life expectancy, and reduced infant mortality.28 Most remarkably, Arab women have reversed the gender gap in the key sector of tertiary education, where women now outnumber men. Combining better health and a breakthrough in higher education, the moment is approaching when women will almost certainly emerge as a political force capable of challenging the patriarchal foundation of Arab societies.29 “I cannot separate the liberation of women, as half of the society, and the liberation of the country,” affirmed Egyptian feminist and novelist Nawal al-Saadawi. “I cannot separate between revolution in relation to women’s rights and revolution in relation to country rights: women and men and peasants and the working class.”30

If Egypt and Tunisia, two countries with a strong history of feminism, are still experiencing significant hindrances regarding women’s rights, the inclement winds of religious conservatism from the Gulf monarchies provide even less hope for women. Nonetheless, social and economic changes in the Gulf region and beyond could promote human rights and assuage Islamist fervor. Compared to other women in the MENA region, women in the Gulf are far wealthier, and, bestowed with that advantage, the young generation of Gulf women, who now outcompete men in terms of education, could potentially lead the way toward a different form of human rights revolution—one which literally begins at home.

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