Feminists Brave Blizzard to Attend Conference on Arab American Women

By Katherine M. Metres

Mother Nature's powerful display seemed an appropriate backdrop for a feminist conference. On Jan. 12 and 13, just as a second wave of Blizzard '96 hit, the elite of New York City's Arab-American community met at the Inter-Continental Hotel to discuss the "Empowerment of Women for the Year 2000: Women in Leadership Roles in the United States and the Arab World."

The third annual conference was sponsored by the Institute of Arab-American Women, Inc. (For Research & Development), Arab Women and the World magazine, and the National Organization of Arab-American Women, Inc. Conference participants received complimentary copies of Arab Women and the World's second issue. The New York- and Beirut-based glossy quarterly is the first Arab feminist magazine since World War II. Published in Arabic and English versions, it is distributed in the Arab world, North America and Europe. All three organizations were founded by Dr. Raja'a Mustafa Mukaddam, a United Nations consultant.

Like many such events, the conference opened with a celebrity-studded banquet that drew a larger crowd (nearly 200) than the sparsely attended but intellectually substantial panel discussions (around 50). Inclement weather prevented many out-of-towners from attending.

The banquet honored Mouna Elias Hrawi, the First Lady of Lebanon, with an award for the development of permanent child health and welfare services. Mrs. Hrawi is the founder of a host of charitable organizations, most notably the Chronic Care Center in Beirut, which provides free treatment for 850 children with diabetes and thalassemia, a severe anemia that is unique to the Mediterranean region. As a tribute to Mrs. Hrawi's work, artist Silvio Russo donated his sculpture "Song of Hope for the Children of Lebanon," valued at $35,000, to the Center. Conference speakers lauded the outstanding role Mrs. Hrawi played at the Beijing Conference, where she achieved a prominence comparable to that of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In her keynote address, Mrs. Hrawi called efforts to promote the status of women "an integral part of [Lebanon's] reconstruction." She applauded the recent removal of clauses in the Lebanese civil law that undermined women's legal status. For example, in 1994 Lebanon established for the first time the right of a woman to carry on commercial activities without the consent of her husband.

Mrs. Hrawi cited cultural dynamics as interfering with women's achievement outside the home. "Women's employment and career are seen as a potential threat to the values and norms defining the female role in Arab societies, causing conflict and marital tensions," she said. For these reasons, she asserted, Arab women's high level of education has not translated into equal employment or power.

To conclude, Mrs. Hrawi said, "The next phase of the struggle for gender equality, as James Gustave Speth puts it, 'lies in equalizing access to economic and political opportunities.' For this to take place, men will have to go along with the change. Let us hope they will be up to the task." The audience, which contained as many men as women, jumped to its feet in assent.

Conversation around the dinner table proved even more provocative. A World Bank employee told the Washington Report about her employer's discriminatory practices. She charged that the World Bank "never promotes Arab women, or women from developing countries, to decision-making positions. And if you're Muslim it's worse." Asserting that promotion decisions are "very political," she offered as an example her supervisor's suggestion that she give up her citizenship in an Arab country and become a U.S. citizen in order to advance.

The conference proper opened on Saturday. Attendees were disappointed by the absence of the keynote speaker, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. Secretary Shalala, a Lebanese American who co-chaired the U.S. Delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, was kept in the national capital by the blizzard.

Instead, Mrs. Hrawi gave opening remarks and fielded questions on the situation of Lebanese women. She advocated women's employment outside the home as a public duty that also benefits women's self-esteem and empowerment in the family. She expressed concern for rural women, who often receive less education and fewer career opportunities than their male counterparts, and emphasized that women who are empowered and privileged "have to work for the poor woman who has no one behind her." Remarking that she is pushing for the appointment of women to ministerial and other senior positions, the soft-spoken Lebanese First Lady said, "I am one of the militants for women's rights."

The first panel, entitled "Promoting Equality Between Men and Women in the Sharing of Political and Economic Power and Decision-Making at All Levels," brought together three U.N. officials to discuss how their agencies empower Arab women. Dr. Sa'ad Faragi, Director of Middle East/North Africa programs of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), said that the UNDP's current objective is to support individual countries in implementing the Beijing principles. He noted that UNDP regional workshops in Damascus and Tunis are focusing on gender, economic growth, and equal opportunity employment in an attempt to aid local efforts to implement the findings of the 1995 UNDP Human Development Report. That report emphasized that women's economic and social roles are crucial for development.

Dr. Leila Bisharat, Director of Planning at the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), stressed the importance of education for girls. The Arab states lead the world in the percentage of GNP allocated to education, but traditional gender roles often encourage girls to end their education early.

Lastly, conference participants heard from Marta Dueñas-Loza, acting director of International Training at the U.N. Institute for Training and Research for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW). Ms. Dueñas advocated the quantification of women's work as economically valuable and the extension of credit to women without regard to demeaning criteria like the identities of their husbands or fathers. In response to questions by conference participants, Ms. Dueñas admitted that INSTRAW, which is based in the Dominican Republic, has not done much work in the Arab world. Partly, this is a function of the expense of conducting research missions in the region and translating reports from or into Arabic, she said. Another factor is the sensitivities of Arab governments, which are suspicious of U.N. interference.

During the question-and-answer period, conference participant Dr. Taysir Nashif called on other men to stop using women for their own "ego enhancement" and "economic exploitation." As an example, Dr. Nashif cited the man who vents his frustrations onto women and blames them for his problems, "while at the same time not holding himself accountable for his actions."

The second panel, on the "Promotion and Protection of the Human Rights of Women," was particularly revealing. Dr. Aziz Abu-Hamad, associate director of Human Rights Watch/Middle East, addressed gender-based discrimination in Arab states' citizenship laws. Even though a 1984 U.N. ruling established an absolute ban on such discrimination, most Arab countries grant a woman citizenship only because of her relationship (e.g., daughter, wife) to a male citizen.

Dr. Abu-Hamad gave a couple of draconian examples: Qatari law strips a woman of her citizenship if she is eligible through marriage for citizenship in her husband's country. Kuwaiti citizenship laws have rendered stateless 25,000 children of Kuwaiti women and stateless men. Whether these laws aim to prevent dual citizenship or to control women's choices of spouse, Dr. Abu-Hamad argued that people who would be eligible for citizenship of two different countries should at least be allowed to choose for themselves.

Shazia Rafi, the deputy secretary-general for democracy and development at Parliamentarians for Global Change, outlined her organization's bold agenda for electing women to parliaments and helping them serve feminist and progressive agendas once in office. Working women need affirmative action at all levels to provide them the economic security their skills merit, according to Janet Gallagher, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's women's rights project.

Amira Habibi Brown, the founder of a New York City social services agency for Arab-American families, spoke about domestic violence. In a voice laden with emotion, Mrs. Brown noted that this issue is very threatening to Arab Americans because this community values family so highly. "This is our deep, dark secret that we don't want to talk about," she said. Nonetheless, the need for support is particularly acute, because many Arab women who are being abused here have immigrated with their husbands and are cut off from the support of their own families. Furthermore, she noted, "Divorce is taboo, and a woman living alone is totally taboo."

Do Arab-American women fare better than their counterparts in the Middle East? Mrs. Brown, a Palestinian American, observed that "many times, like when they are married off young, Arab-American women are not being allowed to reach their full potential. I often wonder if women aren't doing better 'back home.'" Asked by a conference participant if she believes that wife abuse is perhaps more prevalent in the Arab-American context than in the "Old Country," she agreed that discrimination and underemployment of Arab men in the United States contributes to the problem. Her solution was twofold: help immigrants find good jobs, but also teach women to stand up for themselves and to say that abuse is unacceptable.

The third panel, cut short because the inclement weather prompted the consolidation of two days of planned conference activities into one, focused on the "Stereotyping of Women and Promotion of Women's Advancement Through All Communication Systems Including Arts and Media." Jocelyn Ajami, an artist and filmmaker, identified the components necessary for the empowerment of women as clarity of demand and solidarity of leadership. She pointed to women role models whose message empowered others: Rosa Parks, the American civil rights leader who defied racial segregation by refusing to move to the back of the bus; Christiane Amanpour, a top war correspondent who transformed compassion into an accepted element of objective news reporting; and Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian spokeswoman who helped the world identify with the Palestinian struggle and then challenged the status quo within her own community by founding a human rights organization to hold accountable the fledgling Palestinian administration.

"Arab women inspire me and my work," said artist Silvio Russo, who is creative director of the Arab Women and the World magazine. Gloria Kins, the diplomatic editor of Diplomatic World Bulletin, asserted that art can broaden the horizons and increase the sophistication of Arab women, as well as increase Arab men's exposure to women playing roles other than mother, wife, or—on the other extreme—nightclub "go-go" dancer. She advocated women's participation in and exposure to the arts.

The conference closed with recitations of Arabic poetry from the Umayyad and Abbasid periods (900-1200 A.D.), often considered Arab civilization's golden ages. Works by several women poets of that era were presented and discussed by Dr. Shiham Al-Frich, professor of Arabic literature at the University of Kuwait. Finally, Muhammad Hachem, an architect and admirer of Arabic poetry, read poems by men who praised women's role in society during that same period, saying for example that women could equal or exceed men in virtue and accomplishment.

Attendees left this excellent conference with a new perspective on women's empowerment, the efforts and achievements of U.N. institutions working in this field, the legal restrictions on women's rights in the Arab world, and the burdens of unempowered Arab-American women. Such discussions in the Arab and Arab-American communities are sorely needed. Perhaps when the region need no longer focus so intently on occupation and conflict, these issues finally will get the ongoing attention they deserve. In the meantime, the activities of the Institute of Arab-American Women are a breath of fresh air.

Katherine M. Metres is an Arab-American graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, where she is concentrating on Human Rights and the Middle East.