Western Feminism and South Asian Women

Hamid,

1. So what does that tell you about ``maternity leave``?
2. Who can afford to leave their jobs and raise children?
3. Why dont more men leave their jobs to raise their children?
Seriously-answer 3 for us.

This ties in exactly to the piece Warp cutnpasted:

``The wage gap is not about corporate discrimination but about the division of labor that happens when men and women have children,``

Discuss.

hamidm

I should mention that the gender gap article was a cut`n`paste (by some anonymous). the rest was stuff I have some knowledge of.

as a lurker (mostly) I have enjoyed ur barbs on this site.. funnily enough I appreciate kkkandk although he manages to get himself banned too easily

warp (leave out the ster)

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Warp,
I still dont get this``point``.

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Well, I wont be able to convey it effectively in this medium. Even if you get one point, that is the more you get to the extremes of two distributions that vary slightly in their mean, the greater the disparity. So the greater skewing in favor of men at higher levels in math/science/tech is not necessarily the result of glass ceilings (note that I am not saying that such ceilings do not exist); it may mostly be a mathematical implication of the normal distribution of traits (at least in domains that go strictly by merit). Talk to someone who knows statistics if you are curious.

Regarding wage gap, here is another perspective. The bottom-line is that in western societies it is due to higher risk taking and induced stress by men (which has bad effects on their health presumably) . The gap that you talk about exists but it is not discriminatory. People are paid according to what the market will bear; pay is not based on some intrinsic value of work or on some communist principle. The gap will shrink or become non-existent when men make different choices. Of course all this applies only to western developed countries.


Bridging the (Gender Wage) Gap

Six no-nonsense ways women can close the gender wage gap.

The debate over the gender wage gap has been raging for a very long time, likely dating back to when Rebekah earned fewer shekels for hauling water than did Isaac for herding goats. We`ve all heard that a woman earns about 80 cents for every buck made by a guy. In fact, the AFL-CIO, citing a government report, devotes an entire section of its Web site to remedies for pay discrimination.

But what if, like so many other statistics, this one doesn`t tell the full story? What if you factor in things that men are more likely to do at work that lead to greater financial rewards? Admittedly, these practices read like the Office Handbook From Hell: clock longer hours, relocate to undesirable places, travel extensively, and toil under crummy conditions (think North Sea oil rigs). Companies, desperate to attract workers to fill such jobs, tend to offer higher pay. Men are more likely to take the bait -- and reap the rewards.

Then consider the evidence that until kids enter the picture, women earn as much as men -- and often even more. Don`t believe it? Check the census data on earnings of never-married men and women. Women don`t hit an income gap until family responsibilities factor into job choices. That`s typically when men agree to take on more onerous work in an attempt to be better providers, and women back off from such tasks in an effort to be more available to the kids.

``The wage gap is not about corporate discrimination but about the division of labor that happens when men and women have children,`` says Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It (AMACOM, January 2005). ``The biggest misconception is that there`s a wage gap for the same work.``

Farrell`s point is that men`s actions lead to their having more income. Conversely, what women do leads to more balanced lives. But anyone who`s willing can up their earnings by engaging in these tactics. On the other hand, if you`re seeking a life with more sanity, these are the behaviors to avoid.
1. Sign up for a job with bottom-line responsibility

Kathy Vrabeck, president of Activision Publishing, the video-game producer behind Shrek 2 and the Tony Hawk series, says that`s the best piece of advice she could give anyone seeking to move up the financial ranks. Vrabeck had an early glimpse of how this works while at Eli Lilly, where she noticed that R&D was the driving function of big pharma. At Activision, she`s responsible for game development -- the function on which the company`s success largely depends. ``In any company, it`s the operating jobs, not the staff jobs, that generate revenue,`` she says. ``A company`s always willing to pay more for people who are willing to take on the responsibility of a line job and the risk that entails.``
2. Find a field that entails financial or emotional risk taking

Even garden-variety venture capitalists can expect to earn between $100,000 and $300,000 a year, according to Salary.com. Of course, if they bet the ranch on an online pet-food supplier, they also risk losing a bundle. Currency traders, real-estate speculators, and many sales executives all gamble that they can use their smarts to make a living. If they`re right, they can clean up. If not, they`ve got nobody but themselves to blame. The market pays a premium for that kind of chutzpah.

3. Work more hours, more weeks, and more years

``Enough!`` you say. ``Americans already work more hours per year than the rest of the planet!`` So true. But if you`re willing to be the alpha dog of wage slaves in your industry, you can expect to be rewarded handsomely. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that the average person working 45 hours per week earns 44% more than someone who works 40 hours. Why? The willingness to work more often leads to jobs that pay more per hour. At the upper reaches of a corporation, this can be significant. Top CEOs typically command pay in the super-7-digit range. But they also generally paid their dues with 15-hour days, six days a week, for an average of 20 years. The road to higher pay, alas, is a toll road, with no EZ-Pass for the fast lane.


4. Be willing to relocate to unsexy places at the company`s behest

Charlene Begley, president and CEO of GE Transportation, Rail, is one of the company`s top executives, overseeing a business worth $2.5 billion. The good news: According to compensation expert David Leach of ECG Advisors LLC, a person in her position typically makes between $600,000 and $1 million a year. The bad news: Her operation is based in Erie, Pennsylvania, two hours from Pittsburgh and smack in the middle of the Great Lakes` snowbelt. Not that Begley`s complaining. Indeed, as she told a group of GE women executives, the remoteness of the division`s headquarters is a huge plus. ``Take tough jobs in distant locations,`` Begley advises. Those jobs often lead to bigger positions because they don`t come with the huge support infrastructure of corporate headquarters, giving you a chance to learn more and lead better. And if the company`s on the skids, all the better. ``Anybody can go to a job with a high-growth business and do well,`` she says. ``That`s easy. Go to a really broken business and make your mark. Those are the most rewarding.``
5. Pick technology or hard sciences over the arts or social sciences

In the demanding and high-pressure world of biotech, Lisa Spirio is a pretty rare bird: a PhD in human genetics; the co-founder and R&D director of a promising startup, 3DM Inc., which creates 3-D cell cultures for medical research; and a mother of two. In grad school, Spirio says, about 50% of her peers were women. By the time she reached her postdoctoral studies in cancer biology at MIT, that share had fallen to 30%. Now, she figures, about 20% of her peers are women. It`s a statistic that`s replicated across many scientific and technological fields. For example, in the BLS chart of ``20 Occupations That Pay the Most,`` 9 were various kinds of engineering jobs. Meanwhile, only 10% of engineering managers are women, although the BLS reported that the wages of women who took high-tech jobs increased more than twice as fast as for their male counterparts. In Spirio`s experience, scientific and technical fields are more meritocratic too. ``The bottom line is, it doesn`t matter if you`re male or female if you have what it takes to get the job done.``
6. Choose a field where you can`t ``check out`` at the end of the day

Pamela York Klainer, founder of the consulting firm Power & Money LLC, learned early the risks associated with life on the economic margins. When she was 14, her father, a salaried worker at DuPont, died suddenly of a heart attack, pitching her homemaker mother into a financial tailspin. Klainer vowed never to be so dependent on a paycheck for her well-being. With her husband, Jerry, she built a financial-services firm with 10 employees and $100 million under management. Two years ago, Jerry also died suddenly, leaving Klainer in charge. Far from being able to disengage, or even to take time to properly mourn her loss, she was in the office two days after his funeral, calming panicked employees and attending to clients. It was a terrible ordeal, but she got through it, ultimately increasing the family`s net worth by 25% before selling off the firm and starting her own consulting business. Despite the pain, she wouldn`t have it any other way. ``Running your own venture is very high stakes,`` she says. ``When it`s good, it`s great. When it`s bad, it`s beyond awful.``

Klainer is an example of the kind of worker author Farrell refers to as a ``7-Eleven`` -- they never close. ``When we can psychologically check out from our work, we call it a job; when we can`t, we call it a career,`` he says. Doctors, lawyers, executives, and most knowledge workers (the folks who are what they do) are 7-Eleven. They struggle to leave the office behind, even for vacations, but their commitment generally is repaid financially.

Farrell is eager to point out the ways men and women can up their earnings, but he`s quick to say he doesn`t necessarily endorse the most vexatious behaviors. Ultimately, he`d like to see corporations recognize what they`re asking of workers and find ways -- from job sharing to flex-time and other solutions -- to make the burden of work less crushing.

And if corporations don`t embrace these changes on their own, they may find workplace reforms thrust upon them when they begin competing for young talent. In a Radcliffe-Harris poll, 70% of men in their twenties said they`d be willing to trade money for a chance to spend more time with their children. The gender wage gap may someday be solved not by legislation but by the best and brightest people simply saying, ``Sorry, you can`t pay me enough to take that job.``

warpster,

..... excellent posts .......

.............. in the management consulting business there are very very few women partners ....... why?.... it is no secret .......the women who come in as business associates are just as qualified, capable and hardworking as their male counterparts - they work long hours, party just as hard, put up with abuse from uncaring principals and partners, travel all over the world, make managers in record time, win best project awards and make big bonuses ......... but after eight to ten years, just when they are about to make principal and some are even being talked about as potential partners, most of them quit ............. why? ..... simple - because of the babies at home ...... some of them try to juggle kids and clients for six months to a year and the firms try to help them out with local clients and three day work weeks, but it just doesn`t work out ...........i have known a number of women who have taken a year`s leave of absence but never came back ............ i don`t think there is any discrimination involved ......... most men don`t want to put up with the demands either, but they stick with it even though only one out of fifty has a shot at making partner - the rest of them fall by the way side, take middle management corporate jobs and start attending weekly aa meetings ............

........... now some would ask why doesn`t the man stay at home and take care of the babies ........ good question, but i think we all know the answer ..........

Warp,

I still dont get this``point``. As to your other claim:

Only 100 More Years to Reach Equality

December 3, 2004

by Casey Shevin, Government Relations Intern

A new report by the Institute for Women`s Policy Research (IWPR) on women`s economic, political, social and health status in the U.S. concludes that, at the current rate, it will take 50 more years before women`s paychecks will equal men`s, and that a full century is needed for women to gain at least half the seats in Congress.

The current pay disparity between women and men, nationally, is 24 cents; the wage gap between women and men is closing at a snail`s pace — from 59 cents more than 40 years ago to 76 cents today. In some states the gap is much wider. For instance, in Wyoming women continue to be paid only 66.3 percent of men`s wages, and none of the states have managed to achieve pay equity. When race is factored in, the wage gap widens: Hispanic women are paid just slightly more than half of white men`s pay.

Progress has been similarly slow in the political arena, moving forward in fits and starts. Between fall, 1996, and October 2004, the number of women governors jumped from one to nine, the number of women in the U.S. Senate increased from nine to 14, and the number of women in the U.S. House rose from 49 to 60. But, overall, the U.S. lags behind many other nations, including a number of poor, developing countries.

But the picture of women`s status in 2004 is not entirely bleak. Between 1995 and 2002, women`s poverty decreased in all but eleven states and women saw a drop in their average annual mortality rate from both breast cancer and suicide. Ten states improved their reproductive rights rankings substantially between 1996 and 2004.

These findings and many others are included in IWPR`s annual Status of Women in the States report, which describes the status of women nationally and ranks each state for women`s status based on five areas: political participation, employment and earnings, social and economic autonomy, reproductive rights, and health and well-being. Among the states highest ranked on all measures are: Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota and Washington. States rated worst are: Mississippi, South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

Additionally, 11 new detailed reports on the states of Alaska, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming were released.

Although the main report highlights the various advancements in women`s status, it also reports the areas in which women could benefit from improvement. According to IWPR, women across the nation would benefit from stronger enforcement of equal opportunity laws, greater political representation, adequate and affordable quality child care, stronger poverty reduction programs, stronger protection of their reproductive rights and health, greater access to health care, and other policies to improve their status.

The full report, executive summary, fact sheet for The Status of Women in the States, as well as individual state reports, can be found on the institute`s web site. Or, download the full report in just one step.

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Letter to a Muslim Student

Sayyed Hassan Al Banna

[Grand Father of Tariq Ramadhan: One of the shining star of the Ummah* these days]

[Hassan al Banna was born in 1906 in Egypt into a family of scholars. In 1928, he formed Ikhwan al Muslimeen (the Muslim Brotherhood organization). This movement for the revival of Islam soon spread across Egypt and the region. In December 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood organization was suppressed and thousands of its members arrested. Hassan al Banna was spared arrest only to be assassinated in February 1949.

Letter to a Muslim Student is the English translation of a letter that Hassan al Banna wrote to one of his students that was studying in the West. The sincere advice contained in this letter is drawn from the perennial values and ethos of Islam. It reminds the addressee and indeed all Muslims that the first and foremost goal in a Muslims life is to please God and live in accordance to His sacred law. Also, it brings home that studying ought not to be an end in itself or for seeking material gain. A Muslim ought to excel in his or her study in order to work for Islam and benefit humanity.]

Read the rest at go to articles/letter

*Use this word in abundance.``If you build it, he will come``. If the thought is there, then the throne is not far behind.

Westernism ( a great word which contains within it all that is unIslamic like Secularism, socialism, communism, atheism, humanisticism, faminism (sic), Individualism, freemindism & any other -ism or pol/soc/sic mumbo-jumbo) must be confronted and crushed whenever & wherever it rears its ugly head within an Ummah.

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The most zaleel ones on earth are munafiques. It is a muslims` sacred duty to unearth such scum and let the sahriah take care of them {like this murtaDD Younas Sheikh was aided & abetted by the secularist/modernist musharraf to find refuge in a secularist/atheist state where he rightfully belonged in the first place! Musharraf should seek asylum there as well)

Saminasha #124

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I guess I need to spell out very clearly the tobacco example.

1. 50 years back even Docs thought tobacco was a good thing (or harmless)
2. In the 50s and later, epidemiological studies showed otherwise
3. Today smoking is a definite no-no as it is a clear risk factor for all sorts of diseases and causes huge costs to society.

The scientific research convinced doctors and policy makers to switch their stance.

My point was that feminist organizations like NOW are blinded by their ideological inclinations when dealing with policy issues. Ideology as a reference point is ok, but one should also be willing to consider the empirical evidence.

The specific example I give is the case of single sex education. There is a growing and convincing body of literature that suggests that single sex education (could be classes in mixed sex schools) is good for children of both genders. Yet such schools are virtually unknown in the US public school system (opposite of private schools). The reason is that funding for such institutions has been opposed by groups such as NOW on the basis of their interpretation of Title IX. This is clearly very shortsighted/stupid. They are opposing something that has clearly shown to have positive benefits for women (and men) on the basis of some out of date ideology. To see more on the benefits of single sex ed, goto www.singlesexschools.org; see the section on biological differences.

Similarly, if tomorrow one finds out that there are biological differences between men and women that are (partly) responsible for their representation in certain types of activities, you cannot ignore such evidence. Familiarity with biology, psychology, logic and statistical inference is essential before one yells ``discrimination``.

I`ll give one example. Most mathematicians and physicists in this country are largely male, despite a concerted effort to hire female faculty. Is this a case of discrimination? If you think yes, read on.

Suppose males have slightly more (and it can be a very small difference) natural ability with mathematical reasoning (why we dont know.. something about hormones, brain whatever). The average difference may be miniscule. However if you know how a normal distribution works (and most traits such as this tend to be normally distributed), even though the average difference may be tiny, the discrepancy in the tails of the two normal distributions can be huge! That is, in the top percentile of both distributions, the male-female gap is much clearer. Now top rate mathematicians and physicists are probably in the top 0.1 % or better of whatever measures their respective abilities. So it is a given, that if one hires FAIRLY, then these faculty will largely be male.

Another reason for male-female differences is that even though the mean of both distributions may be the same, the male distribution has greater variability. Compared to women, Males are more likely to be murderers as they are likely to be saints, more likely to be idiots as they are genuises. This is a fact of nature. One will encounter the occasional woman murderer/saint or idiot/genius, but it is less probable than encountering the male counterpart.

The point of this demonstration is that discrepancies in health, prenatal care, education are real discriminations as they can be corrected via policy and they can be shown to the consequences of discriminatory behavior. But equitable representation of males and females (or races or any other group criteria) in professions (50-50) is a fool`s errand. Trying to make these equitable via policy will necessarily involve discrimination (against men in the earlier examples or against other groups.. imagine if one put a cap on Jews as lawyers to correct their over-representation!). This will become a case where the cure is worse than the supposed disease. India is going through similar issues (job reservations based on caste).

On a different note, one cannot argue that women are discriminated against even though they are making 90% of what men make. There are hidden (third) variables causing the discrepancy. But Asians as a group may be discriminated against even though they maybe making more than average (i.e. underpaid given their skills and contributions)! To make the case for discrimination in many contexts is not so straightforward.

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Another general point I have is that some western feminists dont seem to recognize that eastern cultures have a lot to offer in terms of family and extended familial relationships. Our epics (ramayana, puranas etc. these should not be identified with ``hinduism`` per se. they are a cultural heritage of south asians in general) have lots of interesting dilemmas that provide a means for our children to think about ethical problems in a sophisticated way. If we abandon our cultural heritage mindlessly and buy into foreign ideologies without due analysis, then confusion and worse can result. Even the declaration of human rights made in the 1940s is not as universal as one might think (it comes with western baggage).

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14 by Saminasha on January 4, 2005 6:16am PT
Rape as Punishment

By Mona Eltahawy
Sunday, July 28, 2002; Page B07

A Pakistan tribal council`s horrific ``punishment`` by gang rape of a young woman last month was just the tip of a very ugly iceberg called honor.

In the name of that most elusive of concepts, women are shot, beheaded, burned, stoned and beaten. And, in the case of Saleema, raped.


Four men raped Saleema (not her real name) for more than an hour to ruin her honor and avenge that of another woman. (Saleema`s 12-year-old brother had been in the company of a woman from a more powerful tribal family, apparently not by his own choice, and been summarily accused of having an affair with her). Hence the tribal council`s ``verdict`` on his sister.

The Pakistan Human Rights Commission estimates that at least eight women, five of them minors, are reported raped every day; more than two-thirds of them are gang-raped.

In Pakistan rape is often used for revenge or punishment against an enemy. A woman is ``defiled`` to taint her family. What irony that a woman as powerless as Saleema carries the whole family`s honor on her shoulders -- a heavy burden indeed.

It is one that is carried by women in countless Muslim countries, yet there is not a single word in the Koran that calls for death in the name of honor. Virginity before marriage and chastity afterward are the bulwarks of honor in societies where such killings prevail.

The mere suspicion that she has jeopardized that honor -- talking to a neighbor, being seen with a strange man, or even asking for a divorce -- can earn a woman a death sentence.

Some conservative Muslim clerics shamefully support honor killings. They accuse activists who fight to eradicate such crimes, often at risk of their own lives, of seeking to impose Western values upon their traditional societies.

What is so Western about wanting to end a barbaric cultural practice that leaves a woman damned if she does and damned if she doesn`t?

In Yemen a few years ago, a man shot his daughter dead on her wedding night after her husband claimed she was not a virgin. At the mother`s insistence, a doctor examined the young woman`s body and found her to have been a virgin. Her husband was impotent and lied to protect his honor because he knew he would not be able to display a bloodied rag as proof of his bride`s virginity.

According to UNICEF and Amnesty International statistics, more than 1,000 women were victims of honor killings in Pakistan in 1999. There were up to 400 honor killings in Yemen in 1997. The United Nations says such killings have also occurred in Britain, Norway, Italy, Brazil, Peru and Venezuela. At least one case has been reported in the United States.

One particularly gruesome killing had us dumbfounded as word of what happened came into the Cairo newsroom where I was working at the time. A young woman named Nora Ahmed had eloped. Her father had not approved of her choice of husband. When she returned to Cairo to try to change her father`s mind he asked to speak with her privately. He then cut off her head and paraded it down a Cairo street, shouting ``Now my family has regained its honor.``

In 1997 some 52 honor killings were reported in Egypt. The actual figures in all of the countries I`ve cited are probably much higher because most honor killings go unreported.

What to do if clerics remain perversely silent about an ancient practice that is rooted in culture rather than religion? What to do when men who kill female relatives in the name of honor too often escape punishment or receive atrociously short sentences?

We must acknowledge the brave few who speak out. A village imam courageously condemned Saleema`s rape in a Friday sermon, drawing journalists` attention.

A particularly useful weapon is embarrassment. In Saleema`s case, local and international outcries led Pakistani authorities to arrest and charge all four suspected rapists. Several other people -- including a police officer -- are also in custody for allegedly failing to prevent the attack or hiding the suspects.

Two of the most courageous activists fighting honor killings are sisters Asma Jehangir and Hina Jilani. They are both lawyers and human rights activists who tirelessly champion women`s rights despite death threats and a largely unsympathetic government.

Let`s embarrass that government into prosecuting more of those who kill in the name of honor. Let`s shame it into doing the honorable thing.

Mona Eltahawy was a reporter in the Middle East before she moved to the United States.

Abey Ballukhan Sahib, its good to see you on the FP!

Chisholm, `Unbossed`

Pioneer in Congress, Dies

January 3, 2005
By JAMES BARRON



Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in
Congress and the first woman to seek the Democratic
presidential nomination, died on Saturday night at her home
in Ormond Beach, Fla. She was 80. She had suffered several
strokes recently, according to a former staff member,
William Howard.

Mrs. Chisholm was an outspoken, steely
educator-turned-politician who shattered racial and gender
barriers as she became a national symbol of liberal
politics in the 1960`s and 1970`s. Over the years, she also
had a way of making statements that angered the
establishment, as in 1974, when she asserted that ``there is
an undercurrent of resistance`` to integration ``among many
blacks in areas of concentrated poverty and discrimination``
- including in her own district in Brooklyn.

``Just wait, there may be some fireworks,`` she declared
after winning her seat in Congress in 1968 with an upset
victory in Brooklyn`s 12th Congressional District, which
had been created by court-ordered reapportionment.

Her slogan was ``unbought and unbossed`` - in the primary,
she had defeated two other candidates, William C. Thompson,
whom she maintained was the candidate of the Brooklyn
Democratic organization, and Dolly Robinson. ``The party
leaders do not like me,`` Mrs. Chisholm said at the time.

But about 80 percent of the registered voters in the
district - which included her own neighborhood,
Bedford-Stuyvesant - were Democrats. That edge helped her
in her race against James Farmer, a leader of the Freedom
Rides in the south in the early 1960`s, who ran as an
independent on the Republican and Liberal lines, and Ralph
Carrano, who ran as the Conservative candidate.

``I am an historical person at this point, and I`m very much
aware of it,`` she told The Washington Post a few months
after she was sworn in.

Soon she was challenging the seniority system in the House,
which had relegated her to its Agriculture Committee, an
assignment she criticized as irrelevant to an urban
district like hers.

``Apparently all they know here in Washington about Brooklyn
is that a tree grew there,`` she said in a statement at the
time. ``Only nine black people have been elected to
Congress, and those nine should be used as effectively as
possible.``

She said that the House speaker, John W. McCormack, had
told her to ``be a good soldier`` and accept the agriculture
assignment. Instead, she fired a parliamentary salvo at the
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wilbur D.
Mills, who handed out the committee assignments. Before
long, she was reassigned, first to the Veterans Affairs
Committee, and eventually to the Education and Labor
Committees.

Winning a better committee assignment did not make her any
less acerbic on the workings of Washington. ``Our
representative democracy is not working,`` she wrote in a
1970 book that borrowed her campaign slogan as its title,
``because the Congress that is supposed to represent the
voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief
reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old
men.``

In 1972, when she entered the presidential primaries, she
did not expect to capture the Democratic nomination, which
ultimately went to George S. McGovern. ``Some see my
candidacy as an alternate and others as symbolic or a move
to make other candidates start addressing themselves to
real issues,`` she said at the time. She did not win a
single primary, but in 2002, she said her campaign had been
a necessary ``catalyst for change.``

She was also aware of her status as a woman in politics.
``I`ve always met more discrimination being a woman than
being black,`` she told The Associated Press in December
1982, shortly before she left Washington to teach at Mount
Holyoke College in Massachusetts. ``When I ran for the
Congress, when I ran for president, I met more
discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are
men.``

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was born in
Bedford-Stuyvesant on Nov. 30, 1924. Her father worked in a
factory that made burlap bags, and her mother was a
seamstress and domestic worker. They sent their daughter
and her three sisters to Barbados, where the children lived
with a grandmother until 1934. Mrs. Chisholm later
described the relatives she encountered there as ``a
strongly disciplined family unit.``

But she had her own strength, too: ``Mother always said that
even when I was 3, I used to get the 6- and 7-year-old kids
on the block and punch them and say, `Listen to me.` ``

Her professors listened to her at Brooklyn College, where
she won prizes in debating. Some of them told her she
should think about politics as a career.

First, though, she taught in a nursery school and earned a
master`s degree in elementary education at Columbia
University. Working as the director of the Friends Day
Nursery in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and the
Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center in Lower Manhattan, she
became widely known as an authority on early education and
child welfare. She argued that early schooling was
essential, saying she knew there were experts who
maintained that children`s eyes were not developed enough
for reading. ``I say baloney, because I learned to read when
I was 3½,`` she countered, ``and I learned to write when I
was 4.``

From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant in the
day care division of the city`s bureau of child welfare.
But she laid a foundation for her eventual political
career, working as a clubhouse volunteer and with
organizations like the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League
and the League of Women Voters.

So, when she decided to run for the New York State Assembly
in 1964, she said the decision was straightforward: ``The
people wanted me.``

She moved on to the House four years later, in the year
when President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run for
re-election. A year later, she confirmed her reputation for
independence when she endorsed John V. Lindsay, who was
running for re-election as mayor of New York

as the Liberal Party candidate.By 1982, the political
climate had changed, and Mrs. Chisholm left Washington
after seven terms in the House, saying that ``moderate and
liberal`` lawmakers were ``running for cover from the new
right.`` But she also had personal reasons for deciding not
to seek re-election that year: Her second husband, Arthur
Hardwick, a Buffalo liquor store owner who had been in the
New York State Assembly when Mrs. Chisholm was, had been
injured in a car accident. (Her first marriage, to Conrad
O. Chisholm, ended in divorce in 1977. Mr. Hardwick died in
1986.)

``I had been so consumed by my life in politics,`` she said
in 1982. ``I had no time for privacy, no time for my
husband, no time to play my beautiful grand piano. After he
recovered, I decided to make some changes in my life. I
truly believe God had a message for me.``

She also sounded frustrated, saying she had been
misunderstood for much of her career. She mentioned her
hospital visit to George C. Wallace, the Alabama governor
who built his political career on segregation, after he had
been wounded in an assassination attempt in 1972.

``Black people in my community crucified me,`` she recalled.
``But why shouldn`t I go to visit him? Every other
presidential candidate was going to see him. He said to me,
`What are your people going to say?` I said: `I know what
they`re going to say. But I wouldn`t want what happened to
you to happen to anyone.` He cried and cried and cried.``

She maintained that her visit had paid off. ``He always
spoke well of Shirley Chisholm in the South,`` she said,
adding that she had contacted him in 1974, when she was
looking for votes for a bill to extend federal minimum-wage
provisions to domestic workers. ``Many of the Southerners
did not want to make the vote. They came around.``

Mrs. Chisholm moved to Florida in 1991 and said in 2002, ``I
live a very quiet life.`` She said she spent her time
reading biographies - political biographies.

``I have faded out of the scene,`` she said.

When she left
Washington, she said she did not want to go down in history
as ``the nation`s first black congresswoman`` or, as she put
it, ``the first black woman congressman.``

``I`d like them to say that Shirley Chisholm had guts,`` she
said. ``That`s how I`d like to be remembered.``

Michelle O`Donnell contributed reporting for this article.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/obituaries/03chisholm.html?ex=1105824521&e
i=1&en=07733546064ee397

Warpster,

What I have been is assertive in maintaining that popular opinions on Chowk neither reflect nor take into account the important grassroots and academic work that is taking place among the strata of various South Asian communities. Many interactors have pointed out the many flaws of looking at feminism as a monolithic construct.

The ``laundry list`` is one case in point.

Key Issues

Abortion Rights / Reproductive Issues
Affirmative Action
Constitutional Equality
Disability Rights
Economic Equity
Family
Fighting the Right
Global Feminism
Health
Judicial Nominations
Legislation
Lesbian Rights
Marriage Equality
Media Activism
Working for Peace
Racial and Ethnic Diversity
Title IX
Violence Against Women
Welfare
Women-Friendly Workplace Women in the Military
Young Feminism

“Putting up laundry lists will not lead to productive debate. My earlier point was that western feminists are oftentimes too ideologically driven, without paying heed to the science. 50 years back doctors thought smoking was harmless and women found it fashionable to smoke. Clearly we have a much different view on smoking now. Similarly, organizations such as NOW should be sensitive to the facts as they emerge and not simply harp on legalities (as they are doing by using title IX in opposing single sex education). I dont see why western feminists have to be so defensive in their posturing. Some humility will go a long way. After all ``you`ve come a long way baby`` as the cigarette ad went.”

First of all, lets examine the logic of this first paragraph. In your previous post you maintained that in order to find what issues transcended cultural, racial and economic lines we needed to do some investigation. Since you referred to NOW and the writer of this piece refers to “western feminism”, it seems necessary that we be as specific as possible. Therefore, I posted the “laundry list” you refer to. Which issues NOW maintains is are key issues, are “irrelevant” to South Asian women, as THEY represent themselves in scholarship,political leadership, activism, labor, reproductive rights, educational and health programs?

What is the logic of “ciggarette smoking” as an example ? Are you trying to say that because some “men”, women wanted to as well? If you really think about it, cigarettes are carriers of nicotine. Nicotine has a pleasurable, calming effect on the system. This is why many people on the subcontinent lace their paan with tobacco. But back to your claim; why shouldnt women want to eat, drink, inhale something that gave them pleasure? Why do some societies have the notion that it is unladylike? When did smoking become gendered? When it became one symbol of gender identity. When to “disobey” this cultural and societal rule meant that you were challenging the idea of gender identity. When smoking preceded institutional methods of controllign women through Valium, genital mutilation, sanitoriums. This is not “posturing” this is North American history. If RJ Reynolds chooses to capitalize on the trends, so what? Are you as upset at the Malboro Country ads? Why do you all want to be macho cowboys? Sounds like a bit of drag to me.



“The funny thing is that, barring echoboom, most male interactors are quite sympathetic to the plight of women in south asia. If you like flaying at windmills, that is your prerogerative (sp). I found the UN report to be quite useful. It told me very clearly that the key issues facing south asian women have to do with prenatal care, discrimination in care during infancy and youth and education. These issues affect both genders and more so women. However for the most part these issues are peripheral in developed socities (barring minority of the lower class). The fact that one girl in pakistan is fighting barriers to become a pilot may serve as an inspiration to others facing similar barriers but, in itself, it is not that important. Maybe as important as visitation rights by fathers. Or sexist language in the workplace.”

If one is “sympathetic” to the “plight” of a population, one educates oneself and works towards changing the conditions contributing to this “plight”. “Plight” sounds so innocuous doesnt it? As if all of us, in our own ways, have nothing to do with the systems and institutions that bear down on women’s lives. If you are so sympathetic, why are you disconnected to the “plight” of these women? What can you do to add your efforts to change these conditions? And I am glad that you slipped that little reference to working poor communities in North America, because they face similar issues. As to your examples, how can you judge what is imp. and what is not for girl children? The young women students at my college are THRILLED when they find out a woman of color is teaching them. Not only do they get a rigorous semester, but they are initiated into the intellectual process of academia. They are asked to relate philosophical, political, economical and cultural issues to their lives. They see that it is possible to do anything they want and they leave our classes prepared to compete with students from private schools. Is all of that “not that important”? Similarly, why is it “not that imp” for all women to see women fighter pilots, judges, polticians, architects, CEOs, etc. Would you make this argument for young South Asian men in North America? The sexism is the workplace comment shouldnt even be dignified.



“Because the west has been largely successful in removing systematic discrimination against women and minorities, these groups need to pick on imbalances of any sort and paint them as a result of avoidable discrimination. For arguments sake, lets suppose women lived 5 years less than men in developed societies. Feminist organizations would have made a big hue and cry about this. In fact, in developed countries women outlive men quite easily. No body suggests this is due to overt discrimination. At least not to date. But maybe this is in part due to the greater stresses that are put on males (rather than something programmed genetically). If so, men are getting a raw deal in developed nations. Maybe not. Until we have the evidence its hard to tell.”

First of all, gender discrimination still exists. Look up wages for men and women. The percentages of women in leadership positions in influential and decision making institutions.The percentages of mentoring programs. The inclusion of the workforce who must take maternity or paternity leave. What the percentages of women of color in North American institutions are. For example, yale or harvard has ONE African American women professor in 2005. Derrick Bell, Elizabeth Alexander and Hazel Carby are three scholars dealing with this particular issue-look them up and see what they say. Who is Shirley Chisolm (answer in my ilog). See if she would agree with your assessment.

We have gotten where we are BECAUSE feminists have forced us to change our society through legislation. They were a result of women entering the workforce during WWII. These changes didnt happen because our fathers, husbands, sons, cousins and nephews decided out of the good will of their hearts that women are equal human beings.
Also, please explain how men in developed nations are getting a “raw deal”? Are you aware that the stressors in women’s lives have increased steadily and often go undetected because women, until recently, havent been taken seriously in the medical world? Why not check out webmd? Its not too difficult.

“no doubt that NGOs in asia are addressing these issues. What is unclear to me is how western feminist ideology is going to be helpful in this context. I really had no opinion of NOW till I undertook to study that specific issue. Maybe they are right on all the other issues. Who knows? Similarly I had no opinion of you till your interacts here. However I do have a partially formed opinion which is not totally favorable, at least in the intellectual department. Maybe I am wrong. But to have a conversation, one has to respond substantively to what the other is expressing. Drop your categories like ``paternalistic``, ``chauvinistic``, etc.. they really may not apply to the other. If some of my language has pushed your buttons, you may pause to reflect how exactly your buttons came to be pushed.”

By all means, educate yourself. And my buttons “werent pushed”. I was debating whether I should bother with responding to an interact filled with so many inconsistancies and half baked arguments. I’m not interested in honeying any of this up for you. Why should I?

“In todays world, there are plenty of men who would gladly be a homemaker and look after the kids but cannot, due to circumstances. Women are privileged to be in this position and many of them do consciously make a choice to adopt the homemaker role. I mean, what the hell is career and such compared to the joy of raising real live humans? Overall, I would say that women in upper class families in south asia are a rather privileged lot, much more so than their male counterparts. They have a choice of home or career and even type of career (volunteering etc).. the male is much more restricted in terms of choices. So in fact south asian women are in a position to undertake activities that are more meaningful and some of them are doing just that.”

I don’t know what world you live in. Over here, one income is not enough to survive. In addition, almost ALL the women I know would be bored homemaking. Their choice is to 1. develop their minds to their full potentials 2. Earn an income that will provide them with eco parity and independence 3. Contribute this income to the household 4. Better their society.

I also know of more than a few men who have stayed at home while their wives worked at prof. jobs. Unfor. these fellows couldnt be bothered with homemaking. Lets talk about that, shall we?



1.

Islam and the Woman - Part 1.

Dr Younus Shaikh.



Before the advent of Islam, the pagan Arab women generally enjoyed a respectable status in society; many of them Khadija- the first wife of the prophet of Islam, had the right to engage in business and choose or dismiss their husbands in a matrilineal fashion; they took part in most activities of war and peace including public worship. In female oriented Arab paganism, goddesses had special status; in Mecca, the female goddess Al-Uzza, in Taif the goddess Al-Lat and in Medina the goddess Manat were the most popular deities, and their statues were most revered while the statue of the stern Allah was almost neglected.

Arab pagan poetry was mostly concerned with the beauty and grace of their women, and the glory of their tribal values in peace and war. And it was only in one predator tribe of Mecca that the evil custom of burying alive of the daughters prevailed. It was highly unusual for a man of pre-Islamic Arab society to have more than one wife in his house; and it is quite certain that polygamy was introduced and encouraged by the prophet after the revelation of Islam.

Women were to produce as many Muslims as possible. This Ultimately resulted in the degradation in the status of the married woman in the Islamic society. Whereas the pre-Islamic Arab custom allowed many looser forms of marriage on the matrilineal and matri-local tradition that gave the woman freedom and liberty as full human being, however the artificial rules of Islamic nikah reduced marriage to mere sexual and social slavery.

The prophet of Islam, before prophet-hood, opposed the burying alive of the newborn daughters; he was eager to work for a woman and gladly married a divorced woman. The early Islam continued with most of the pre-Islam tribal traditions; there were for examples no hijabs or veils for women of Madina; and at a later date only the nine wives of prophets were restricted in their social intercourse as their home was constantly full of visitors, however the prophet’s women sex-slaves were not restricted in any such manners.

Indeed, the semi-transparent half-face- veil (hijab) was actually a very old custom originating in the Assyrian times, a status symbol and a mark of social distinction for the free women. The pre-Islamic pagan Arab woman of the cities often wore the fashionable semi-transparent half-face veil but the tribal women never did. Later, Islam added measures for“ the preservation of modesty F or women”-like casting down their eyes in public, concealing their breasts and jewellery and the likes. However, these restrictions were later extended by the followers of the prophet far beyond his original intentions as expressed in Koran, and remained more or less a permanent fixture of Muslim life thereafter. Later on, however, the insecurity of early Islam gradually added to the exclusion of women, and 100 years later, by the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Haroon ur Rashid, women became merely sexual toys and breeding machines; and as married women they were merely maidservants- mere man’s social appendages. Moreover, as female sex-slaves, women were freely bought and sold in open markets of all Islamic countries, and loaned, rented or bestowed as gifts to friends. The prophet himself bestowed women sex-slaves to his favorites. There was no limit to the number of slaves one could own; one of the companions of prophet Hazrat Zubair Ibn ul Arvan, for example, had had 1000 men-slaves and 1000 women sex-slaves. Islam took the woman as the land tilled by the man where he spilled his seeds.

The prophet himself took part or guided nearly 100 wars or raids or attacks for plunder. After him, his followers continued the offence. The fierce Islamic tribal Bedouins with centuries long experience of ruthless and cruel tribal warfare proved to be the worthwhile shock troops of Islam. After Iraq, Syria fell to the Islamic Empire in 634 CE. Despite surrenders, great massacres took place at many places; thousands of men were slaughtered and women and children sold into slavery; monasteries were ransacked, monks and villagers were slain and nuns were raped. After the conquest of Egypt, many of its towns were put to sword and their entire population wiped out. Great massacres also occurred in Cyprus and North Africa.

The Roman province of Iraq, the Syrian province of Iran, and the conquered Iran brought hundreds of thousands of men-slaves, women sex-slaves, and the vast fertile lands of these once mighty and civilized countries where the women had been held in high respect e.g. the Manichaecian Iraq, the Pharonic Egypt and North African Civilizations.

As in Egypt and Iran, wherever the conquering Islamic Bedouins armies went, they destroyed the local civilizations cultures, imposed their Islamic tribal medievalism recklessly murdering men and degrading women to perpetual sexual slavery. In short, the Islamic tribal Bedouins and barbarians did the same to the surrounding higher civilizations what the Roman barbarians did to the highly civilized ancient Greeks. Meanwhile the Islamic Bedouins continued to raid and abduct the European women for Islamic slave markets during all these Islamic centuries. The conquest of Syria forced the conversion of thousands of Christian priests to Islam, who changed their religion but not their profession: they became the stern anti-feminine Islamic mullahs and not only continued their religious magic and rituals but also continued the essentially Christian medievalism under Islam. In short, as a result of these conquests, destructions and imposition of Islamic tribal medievalism, societies under the Islamic Empire went further than any other in their total exclusion of women from political power and social influence. Islamic legislation went far beyond anything the prophet had originally dreamed of in his tribal religiosity in cheating women of their rightful place in society and in matters of inheritance. Where originally the Koran gave women the right if inheritance, the Islamic mullah invented the legalized institution of Waqf- the religious foundation, to exclude the daughters and their descendents from inheritance. Though the Koran does give the right of inheritance to women, she continued to be a minor; usually uneducated needing a guardian in father, husband or the son. Indeed, the status of women in Islam is theoretically exalted but utterly deplorable in practice.

Multiplying number of harems (residing place for the female sex-slaves), finally institutionalized under Caliph Al-Walid II, emphasized the inevitable degradation of womanhood under Islam. Haroon ur Rashid, the Islamic Caliph (ruler) had 2000 female sex-slaves, Caliph Mutwakkal had 4000 female sex-slaves; and every mullah, official or soldier of Islamic state had some men-slaves and women sex-slaves belonging to the conquered civilization nations.

Not being allowed to learn, experience or think for herself, it is no wonder that there are hardly very few outstanding women in 1600 years of Islamic history, and those who by chance or by the force of the ancient pre-Islamic customs came into light or in the corridors of power were sooner or later eliminated on the orders of some pious and religious Islamic mullah.. Indeed, Islam’s violent anti-feminism have been as nefarious as Christianity’s burning of hundreds of thousands European women as witches in 15th, 16th and 17th century. The female hating instruments of the Islamic Empire, the mullahs and the Caliphs, continued to promote degradation of women under the formal and sordid Islamic legal code of Shariah, the final seal on the complete subjection of the female element. The modern history of Islam is merely the continuation of the Islamic tribal medievalism, only the technology , phraseology and the façade is modern........................

Reclaiming Hijab or Declining Freedom?

By Lopa Hassan



From head-to-toe Burqa to long cloak-Chador to black silky Hijab- each of these attires has become one of the most visible instruments and ideological symbols of political Islam for the last few decades. A number of great articles have already been written in this website on the background and history of veils and on how Islam justified them to be the strict dress code for women. In this article I would like to focus on the ongoing controversies over the justification of wearing hijab in a modern perspective and also see how some western-educated young Muslim women are internalizing the antiquated view of their own status imposed by an inherently misogynistic religion.

“Today young Muslim women are reclaiming the hijab, reinterpreting it in light of its original purpose - to give back to women the ultimate control of their own bodies…...I wear hijab because it gives me freedom. I do this because I am a Muslim woman who believes her body is her own private concern.”

This is an excerpt from an essay written by a Canadian-born college-educated Muslim woman who suddenly decided to reclaim hijab at age twenty one. While being totally respectful of all the notions of civil liberties and a woman’s freedom of choice to wear anything she wants in a democratic society, I can’t help wondering what could drive a college-educated woman, of a North American upbringing, to throw away her freedom of clothing and embrace the veil or hijab and thus deluding herself that she is now liberated.

Just by wearing hijab she thinks she has full control of her body. What an illusive idea of liberation! We need to go to the origin of such notion and examine how veiling is anyway related to women’s freedom. Since the whole idea of cladding with veils emanates from the direct instructions of Qur’an, let’s first take a look at a few Ayats from the Holy Scriptures to examine how much control Allah Has allowed for women to have over their own body.

Volume 7, Book 62, Number 81: Narrated `Uqba:

The Prophet said: “The stipulations most entitled to be abided by are those with which you are given the right to enjoy the (women`s) private parts (i.e. the stipulations of the marriage contract).”

m5.4 (Ref: 8, p526):

Husband’s rights: A husband possesses full right to enjoy his wife’s person (A: from the top of her head to the bottoms of her feet, though anal intercourse (dis: p75.20) is absolutely unlawful) in what does not physically harm her.

Imam Ghazali

A woman must keep her sexual organs ready for service at all times. (Ref: 7: vol. I, p235)

(Shahih Muslim) Book 008, Number 3366:

When a woman spends the night away from the bed of her husband, the angels curse her until morning.

(Sunaan Abu Dawud 11.2142)Book 11, Number 2142:

Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab: The Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) said: “A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.”

Looks like Allah’s law guaranteed a man every right to go into his wife ‘anyway’ he wants, to discipline her anytime he wishes, and the wife has no say of her own about this. We don’t need to look hard into Muslim societies to find the terrible consequences the millennium-old Shariah law has brought for women. Due to the absence of premarital dating, the customary arranged marriage compels a Muslim woman to surrender herself to a complete strange man giving him the full ownership of her body. My question, what veil comes to her defense when she ends up being raped at her wedding night? What protection her hijab gives her when she must hasten to fulfill her husband’s desire even if she herself doesn’t feel compel to? Why can’t she take over and claim the so-called ‘ultimate control over her own body’ to protect herself when the husband exercises his Hadith-sanctioned right to discipline her?

The Canadian young woman made some interesting points in her essay, “Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical self. Because my appearance is not subjected to public scrutiny, my beauty, or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be discussed. No one knows whether my hair looks as if I just stepped out of a salon, whether or not I can pinch an inch, or even if I have unsightly stretch marks. And because no one knows, no one cares.” This apparently logical assertion of ‘not being displayed to public scrutiny’ might give the impression that Muslim women are probably free from being subjected to meet the impossible male standards of female beauty and therefore are actually taken as equal human beings in their society. Sounds more like feminist fantasyland than Islamic paradise! Is there any such Muslim society where the evaluation criteria don’t include a woman’s physical features when searching for a potential bride for a traditional arranged marriage? I’m sorry, my hijab-loving sisters, there are people (like your potential in-laws) who would ‘know’ and ‘care’ if you have an unsightly stretch mark on your forehead or if you have a bad hair day when those people will examine you like a piece of furniture. Yes, judging women’s worth proportional to their attractiveness is indeed a universal male attitude. Perhaps Islam saved Muslim men a little shame on this issue by making it part of the divine decree like the following:

Ibid, p228: The Prophet said: “The best of the women are the beautiful in face and the least in dowry.

In an attempt to defend veiling, Islamic apologists all too often point their fingers to western women accusing them of reducing the definition of liberation to a ‘right of wearing next to nothing’. To these people, a woman can only be either scantily-clad or veil-clad; nothing could exist in between the two extremes! It is true that women in the West are often judged on the basis of their appearance, objectified, and very often suffer sexual harassments. Certainly every society has its flaws. I personally don’t like to see women being objectified everywhere in the media. We need to realize that North American and European women enjoy a whole array of rights and freedom all of which they had to earn through decades of movements and struggles. The freedom of clothing is just one of their numerous civic rights. If we unjustly reduce their achievements and contributions by stereotyping them as mere ‘Baywatch sirens’, we would only do a disservice to women of all backward societies(specially Muslim communities) by crushing their hope of ever marching forward.

So what is the most convincing reason for observing hijab according to Muslim scholars? They endlessly argue ‘wearing headscarves or veils actually stops men from treating women like sex objects. Veils make them (the men) ignore women’s appearance and draw attention to their personalities and mind’. Nice twisted logic! I argue veiling only reinforces the idea that women are nothing but sex objects which is why they have to take the whole responsibility of ‘not exciting men in anyway’ by wrapping themselves up with a shapeless piece of garment. Burqas or hijabs had not been able to raise women’s status to a liberated and independent group of humans in last 1400 years. No matter how much Islamists apologize in defense of veiling, it has been and will continue to be a symbol of subjugation and oppression of Muslim women all over the world. Segregating women from public life, controlling their freedom of movement, and thereby institutionalizing a system of sexual apartheid are just some of the best contributions that veiling has made so far.

Islamic apologists always get the free ride in spreading their propaganda that Islam gave women the ‘true liberation- and a place to actively contribute in society’, simply because no moderate Muslim seems to stand up and pose the obvious question, “Is this because of that ‘true liberation’ we see such a high illiteracy rate among Muslim women in the Middle East?”, or “Is that why the Arab world is being crippled by repression of women and is thus marching toward stagnancy?” Nobody seems to point out the fundamental fallacy of the argument of how veiling protects women from male sexual advances. Why don’t we see any Muslim man being bothered by the idea that implies each and every man of all age would lose every sense of a rational thought at the sight of a girl’s bare arm or her uncovered neck? And what kind of message does it send to a young Muslim girl when she’s preparing to set her foot to the outside world? Doesn’t she need to learn to have respect toward the opposite sex? Strange how we never think about the various psychological traumas a young woman might suffer while going through the process of mandatory veiling.

Muslim women need more than Qur’anic teachings; they need moral guidance showing that they could be modest and virtuous without the help of veils or hijabs. And why is it that women always have to worry about what they should or should not wear? After all, what makes a woman respectable has very little to do with her attire, and a whole lot to do with what is inside her brain and how much she uses it.

Finally, returning to the young women’s assertion ‘I wear hijab because I choose to…I find the experience liberating”; I’m happy that she feels liberated and has the freedom to choose the hijab. Only thing we need to be reminded is millions of Arab and Iranian women simply don’t have that freedom of choice; hijab for them is a forced legal requirement. I think, for Muslim women, raised in a free society, to go and advocate for veils or hijabs is just a cruel mockery to the sufferings of hundreds and thousands of women who were slashed with razors, had acid thrown in their faces, often were killed and imprisoned until the Islamic regime in Iran and other Arab states were able to enforce compulsory veiling and establish their rule. As for ‘liberation through hijab’ concept, I only have one question- what is so conflicting with the idea of liberation to demand a little more freedom of feeling the wind through my hair?



Lopa Hassan writes from California, USA.

References

1. Against Hijab By Azam Kamguian, http://www.secularislam.org/women/hijab.htm

2. Women in Islam: An Exegesis (Part 4/7), By Abul Kasem

http://main.faithfreedom.org/Articles/abulkazem/women_in_islam4.htm

3. ``My body is my own business.`` Naheed Mustafa

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/humanrelations/womeninislam/hijabexperience.html

4. Women in Islam: An Exegesis (Part 5/7), By Abul Kasem

http://main.faithfreedom.org/Articles/abulkazem/women_in%20Islam5.htm

5. Islam, Political Islam and Women in the Middle East. By Maryam Namazie

http://main.faithfreedom.org/Articles/Namazie/Women_in_ME.html

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ISLAMIC TRADITIONS AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT
CONFRONTATION OR COOPERATION?
by Dr. Lois Lamya` al Faruqi

Whether living in the Middle East or Africa, in Central Asia, in Pakistan, in Southeast Asia, or in Europe and the Americas, Muslim women tend to view the feminist movement with some apprehension. Although there are some features of the feminist cause with which we as Muslims would wish to join hands, other features generate our disappointment and even opposition. There is therefore no simple or ``pat`` answer to the question of the future cooperation or competition which feminism may meet in an Islamic environment.

There are however a number of social, psychological, and economic traditions which govern the thinking of most Muslims and which are particularly affective of woman`s status and role in Islamic society. Understanding these can help us understand the issues which affect male and female status and roles, and how we should react to movements which seek to improve the situation of women in any of the countries where Muslims live.


THE FAMILY SYSTEM:

One of the Islamic traditions which will affect the way in which Muslim women respond to feminist ideas is the advocacy in Islamic culture of an extended rather than a nuclear family system. Some Muslim families are ``residentially extended`` - that is, their members live communally with three or more generations of relatives (grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, and their offspring) in a single building or compound. Even when this residential version of the extended family is not possible or adhered to, family connections
reaching far beyond the nuclear unit are evident in strong psychological, social, economic, and even political ties. Mutual supports and responsibilities affecting these larger consanguine groups are not just considered desirable, but they are made legally incumbent on members of the society by Islamic law. The Holy Quran itself exhorts to extended family solidarity; in addition it specifies the extent of such responsibilities and contains prescriptive measures for inheritance, support, and other close interdependencies within the
extended family.[1]

Our Islamic traditions also prescribe a much stronger participation of the family in the contracting and preservation of marriages. While most Western feminists would decry family participation or arranged marriage as a negative influence because of its apparent restriction of individualistic freedom and responsibility, as Muslims we would argue that such participation is advantageous for both individuals and groups within the society. Not only does it ensure marriages based on sounder principles than physical attraction and sexual infatuation, but it provides other safeguards for successful marital continuity.

Members of the family provide diverse companionship as well as ready sources of advice and sympathy for the newly married as they adjust to each others` way. One party of the marriage cannot easily pursue an eccentric course at the expense of the spouse since such behavior would rally opposition from the larger group. Quarrels are never so devastating to the marriage bond since other adult family members act as mediators and provide alternative sources of companionship and counsel following disagreements. The problems of parenting and generational incompatibility are also alleviated, and singles clubs and dating bureaus would be unnecessary props for social interaction. There is no need in the extended family for children of working parents to be unguarded, unattended, or inadequately loved and socialized because the extended family home is never empty. There is therefore no feeling of guilt which the working parent often feels in a nuclear or single-parent organization. Tragedy, even divorce, is not so debilitating to either adults or children since the larger social unit absorbs the residual numbers with much greater ease than a nuclear family organization can ever provide.

The move away from the cohesiveness which the family formerly enjoyed in Western society, the rise of usually smaller alternative family styles, and the accompanying rise in individualism which many feminists advocate or at least practice, are at odds with these deep-rooted Islamic customs and traditions. If feminism in the Muslim world chooses to espouse the Western family models, it should and would certainly be strongly challenged by Muslim women`s groups and by Islamic society as a whole.

INDIVIDUALISM VS. THE LARGER ORGANIZATION:

The traditional support of the large and intricately interrelated family organization is correlative to another Islamic tradition which seems to run counter to recent Western trends and to feminist ideology. Islam and Muslim women generally advocate molding of individual goals and interests to accord with the welfare of the larger group and its members. Instead of holding the goals of the individual supreme, Islam instills in the
adherent a sense of his or her place within the family and of a responsibility to that group. This is not perceived or experienced by Muslims as repression of the individual. Other traditions which will be discussed later guarantee his or her legal personality. Feminism, therefore, would not be espoused by Muslim women as a goal to be pursued without regard for the relation of the female to the other members of her family. The Muslim woman regards her goals as necessitating a balance with, or even subordination to, those of the family group. The rampant individualism often experienced in contemporary life, that which treats the goals of the individual in isolation from other factors, or as utterly supreme, runs against a
deep Islamic commitment to social interdependence.

DIFFERENTIATION OF SEX ROLES:

A third Islamic tradition which affects the future of any feminist movement in an Islamic environment is that it specifies a differentiation of male and female roles and responsibilities in society. Feminism, as represented in Western society, has generally denied any such differentiation and has demanded a move toward a unisex society in order to achieve equal rights for women. By ``unisex society,`` I mean one in which a single set of roles and concerns are given preference and esteem by both sexes and are pursued by all members of the society regardless of sex and age differentials. In the case of Western feminism, the preferred goals have been those traditionally fulfilled by the male members of society. The roles of providing financial support, of success in career, and of decision making have been given overwhelming respect and concern while those dealing with domestic matters, with child care, with aesthetic and psychological refreshment, with social interrelationships, were devalued and even despised. Both men and women have been forced into a single mold which is perhaps more restrictive, rigid and coercive than that which formerly assigned men to one type of role and women to another.

This is a new brand of male chauvenism with which Islamic traditions cannot conform. Islam instead maintains that both types of roles are equally deserving of pursuit and respect and that when accompanied by the equity demanded by the religion, a division of labor along sex lines is generally beneficial to all members of the society.

This might be regarded by the feminist as opening the door to discrimination, but as Muslims we regard Islamic traditions as standing clearly and unequivocally for the support of male-female equity. In the Quran, no difference whatever is made between the sexes in relation to God. ``For men who submit [to God] and for women who submit [to God], for believing men and believing women, for devout men and devout women, for truthful men and truthful women, for steadfast men and steadfast women, for humble men and humble women, for charitable men and charitable women, for men who fast and women who fast, for men who guard their chastity and women who guard, for men who remember God much and for women who remember - for them God has prepared forgiveness and a mighty reward`` (33:35). ``Whoever performs good deeds, whether male or female and is a believer, We shall surely make him live a good life and We will certainly reward them for the best of what they did`` (16:97).[2]

It is only in relation to each other and society that a difference is made - a difference of role or function. The rights and responsibilities of a woman are equal to those of a man, but they are not necessarily identical with them. Equality and identity are two different things, Islamic traditions maintain - the former desirable, the latter not. Men and women should therefore be complementary to each other in a multi-function organization rather than competitive with each other in a uni-function society.

The equality demanded by Islamic traditions must, however, be seen in its larger context if it is to be understood properly. Since Muslims regard a differentiation of sexual roles to be natural and desirable in the majority of cases, the economic responsibilities of male and female members differ to provide a balance for the physical differences between men and women and for the greater responsibility which women carry in the reproductive and rearing activities so necessary to the well-being of the society. To maintain, therefore, that the men of the family are responsible for providing economically for the women or that women are not equally responsible, is not a dislocation or denial of sexual equity. It is instead a duty to be fulfilled by men as compensation for another responsibility which involves the special ability of women. Likewise the different inheritance rates for males and females, which is so often sited as an example of discrimination against women, must not be seen as an isolated prescription.[3] It is but one part of a comprehensive system in which women carry no legal responsibility to support other members of the family, but in which men are bound by law as well as custom to provide for all their female relatives.

Does this mean that Islamic traditions necessarily prescribe maintaining the status quo in the Islamic societies that exist today? The answer is a definite ``No.`` Many thinking Muslims - both men and women - would agree that their societies do not fulfill the Islamic ideals and traditions laid down in the Quran and reinforced by the example and directives of the Prophet Muhammad, salallahu alehi wasallam. It is reported in the Quran and from history that women not only expressed their opinions freely in the Prophet`s presence but also argued and participated in serious discussions with the Prophet himself and with other Muslim leaders of the time (58:1). Muslim women are known to have even stood in opposition to certain caliphs, who later accepted the sound arguments of those women. A specific example took place during the caliphate of `Umar ibn al Khattab.[4] The Quran reproached those who believed woman to be inferior to men (16:57-59) and repeatedly gives expression to the need for treating men and women with equity (2:228, 231; 4:19, and so on). Therefore, if Muslim women experience discrimination in any place or time, they do not and should not lay the blame on Islam, but on the un-Islamic nature of their societies and the failure of Muslims to fulfill its directives.

SEPARATE LEGAL STATUS FOR WOMEN:

A fourth Islamic tradition affecting the future of feminism in Muslim societies is the separate legal status for women which is demanded by the Quran and the Shari`ah. Every Muslim individual, whether male of female, retains a separate identity from cradle to grave. This separate legal personality prescribes for every woman the right to contract, to conduct business, to earn and possess property independently. Marriage has no effect on her legal status, her property, her earnings - or even on her name. If she commits any civil offense, her penalty is no less or no more than a man`s in a similar case (5:83; 24:2). If she is wronged or harmed, she is entitled to compensation just like a man (4:92-93; see also Mustafa al Siba`i 1976:38; Darwazah n.d.:78). The feminist demand for separate legal status for women is therefore one that is equally
espoused by Islamic traditions.

POLYGYNY:

Although the taking of plural wives by a man is commonly called polygamy, the more correct sociological designation is polygyny. This institution is probably the Islamic tradition most misunderstood and vehemently condemned by non-Muslims. It is one which the Hollywood stereotypes ``play upon`` in their ridicule of Islamic society. The first image conjured up in the mind of the Westerner when the subject of Islam and marriage is approached is that of a religion which advocates the sexual indulgence of the male
members of the society and the subjugation of its females through this institution.

Islamic tradition does indeed allow a man to marry more than one woman at a time. This leniency is even established by the Quran (4:3).[5] But the use and perception of that institution is far from the Hollywood stereotype. Polygyny is certainly not imposed by Islam; nor is it a universal practice. It is instead regarded as the exception to the norm of monogamy , and its exercise is strongly controlled by social pressures.[6] If utilized by Muslim men to facilitate or condone sexual promiscuity, it is not less Islamically condemnable
than serial polygyny and adultery, and no less detrimental to the society. Muslims view polygyny as an institution which is to be called into use only under extraordinary circumstances. As such, it has not been generally regarded by Muslim women as a threat. Attempts by the feminist movement to focus on eradication of this institution in order to improve the status of women would therefore meet with little sympathy or support.


II. DIRECTIVES FOR THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN AN ISLAMIC ENVIRONMENT

What can be learned about the future compatibility or incongruity of feminism in a Muslim environment from these facts about Islamic traditions? Are there any general principles to be gained, any directives to be taken, by those who work for women`s rights and human rights in the world?

INTERCULTURAL INCOMPATIBILITY OF WESTERN FEMINISM:

The first and foremost principle would seem to be that many of the goals of feminism as conceived in Western society are not necessarily relevant or exportable across cultural boundaries. Feminism as a Western movement originated in England during the 18th century and had as one of its main goals the eradication of legal disabilities imposed upon women by English common law. These laws were especially discriminatory of married women. They derived in part from Biblical sources (e.g., the idea of man and woman becoming ``one flesh,`` and the attribution of an inferior and even evil nature to Eve and all her female descendants) and in part from feudal customs (e.g., the importance of carrying and supplying arms for battle and the concomitant devaluation of the female contributions to society). The Industrial Revolution and its need for women`s contribution to the work force brought strength to the feminist movement and helped its advocates gradually break down most of those discriminatory laws.

Since the history and heritage of Muslim peoples have been radically different from that of Western Europe and America, the feminism which would appeal to Muslim women and to the society generally must be
correspondingly different. Those legal rights which Western women sought in reform of English common law were already granted to Muslim women in the 7th century. Such a struggle therefore holds little
interest for the Muslim woman. In addition, it would be useless to try to interest us in ideas or reforms that run in diametrical opposition to those traditions which form an important part of our cultural and religious heritage. There has been a good deal of opposition to any changes in Muslim personal status laws since these embody and reinforce the very traditions which we have been discussing. In other words, if feminism is to succeed in an Islamic environment, it must be an indigenous form of feminism, rather than one conceived and nurtured in an alien environment with different problems and different solutions and goals.

THE FORM OF AN ISLAMIC FEMINISM:

If the goals of Western feminism are not viable for Muslim women, what form should a feminist movement take to ensure success?

Above all, the movement must recognize that, whereas in the West, the mainstream of the women`s movement has viewed religion as one of the chief enemies of its progress and well-being, Muslim women view the teachings of Islam as their best friend and supporter. The prescriptions that are found in the Quran and in the example of the Prophet Muhammad, salallahu alehi wasallam, are regarded as the ideal to which contemporary women wish to return. As far as Muslim women are concerned, the source of any difficulties experienced today is not Islam and its traditions, but certain alien ideological intrusions on our societies, ignorance, and distortion of the true Islam, or exploitation by individuals within the society. It is a lack of an
appreciation for this fact that caused such misunderstanding and mutual distress when women`s movement representatives from the West visited Iran both before and after the Islamic Revolution.

Second, any feminism which is to succeed in an Islamic environment must be one which does not work chauvenistically for women`s interest alone. Islamic traditions would dictate that women`s progress be
achieved in tandem with the wider struggle to benefit all members of the society. The good of the group or totality is always more crucial than the good of any one sector of the society. In fact, the society
is seen as an organic whole in which the welfare of each member or organ is necessary for the health and well being of every other part. Disadventagous circumstances of women therefore should always be
countered in conjunction with attempt to alleviate those factors which adversely affect men and other segments of the society.

Third, Islam is an ideology which influences much more than the ritual life of a people. It is equally affective of their social, political, economic, psychological, and aesthetic life. ``Din,`` which is usually regarded as an equivalent for the English term ``religion,`` is a concept which includes, in addition to those ideas and practices customarily associated in our minds with religion, a wide spectrum of practices and ideas which affect almost every aspect of the daily life of the Muslim individual. Islam and Islamic traditions therefore are seen today by many Muslims as the main source of cohesiveness for nurturing an identity and stability to confront intruding alien influences and the cooperation needed to solve their numerous contemporary problems. To fail to note this fact, or to fail to be fully appreciative of its importance for the average Muslim - whether male or female - would be to commit any movement advocating improvement of women`s position in Islamic lands to certain failure. It is only through establishing that identity and stability that self-respect can be achieved and a more healthy climate for both Muslim men and Muslim women will emerge.


NOTES

[1]. For example, see Quran 2:177; 4:7,176; 8:41; 16:90; 17:26; 24:22.

[2]. See also Quran 2:195; 4:124,32; 9:71-72.

[3]. ``God (thus) directs you as regards your children`s (inheritance): to the male, a proportion equal to that of two females...`` (Quran 4:11).

[4]. Kamal `Awn 1955:129.

[5]. ``... Marry women of your choice, two, or three, or four; but if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess. That will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice.``


[6]. It should be remembered that any woman who wants her marriage to remain monogamous can provide for this condition under Islamic law.


REFERENCES

Kamal Ahmad `Awn, Al Mar`ah fi al Islam (Tanta: Sha`raw Press, 1955)

Muhammad `Izzat Darwazah, Al Dastur al Quran fi Shu`un al Hayat (Cairo: `Isa al Babi al Halabi, n.d.).

Mustafa al Siba`i, Al Mar`ah baynal Fiqh wal Qanun (Aleppo: Al Maktabah al `Arabiyyah, first pub. 1962).

Acknowledgment: This page was downloaded from http://www.albany.edu/~ha4934/sisters.html (now www.jannah.org ) and reformatted for www.islam101.com

Most of the Critics of Feminism are supporters of mullahism......I have no doubt about it......Now Feminism is directly confronting these mullahs.........I hope the mullahs can see their end near....................

Feminist Hermeneutics

Born and bred in a land of patriarchy, the Bible abounds in male imagery and language. For centuries interpreters have explored and exploited this male language to articulate theology; to shape the contours and content of the church, synagogue and academy; and to instinct human beings -- female and male -- in who they are, what roles they should play, and how they should behave. So harmonious has seemed this association of Scripture with sexism, of faith with culture, that only a few have even questioned it.

Within the past decade, however, challenges have come in the name of feminism, and they refuse to go away. As a critique of culture in light of misogyny, feminism is a prophetic movement, examining the status quo, pronouncing judgment and calling for repentance. In various ways this hermeneutical pursuit interacts with the Bible in its remoteness, complexity, diversity and contemporaneity to yield new understandings of both text and interpreter. Accordingly, I shall survey three approaches to the study of women in Scripture. Though these perspectives may also apply to “intertestamental” and New Testament literature, my focus is the Hebrew Scriptures.

When feminists first examined the Bible, emphasis fell upon documenting the case against women. Commentators observed the plight of the female in Israel. Less desirable in the eyes of her parents than a male child, a girl stayed close to her mother, but her father controlled her life until he relinquished her to another man for marriage. If either of these male authorities permitted her to be mistreated, even abused, she had to submit without recourse. Thus, Lot offered his daughters to the men of Sodom to protect a male guest (Gen. 19:8); Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to remain faithful to a foolish vow (Judg. 11:29-40); Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar (II Sam. 13); and the Levite from the hill country of Ephraim participated with other males to bring about the betrayal, rape, murder and dismemberment of his own concubine (Judg. 19). Although not every story involving female and male is so terrifying, the narrative literature nevertheless makes clear that from birth to death the Hebrew woman belonged to men.


What such narratives show, the legal corpus amplifies. Defined as the property of men (Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21), women did not control their own bodies. A man expected to marry a virgin, though his own virginity need not be intact. A wife guilty of earlier fornication violated the honor and power of both her father and husband. Death by stoning was the penalty (Deut. 22:13-21). Moreover, a woman had no right to divorce (Deut. 24:1-4) and, most often, no right to own property. Excluded from the priesthood, she was considered far more unclean than the male (Lev. 15). Even her monetary value was less (Lev. 27:1-7).

Clearly, this feminist perspective has uncovered abundant evidence for the inferiority, subordination and abuse of women in Scripture. Yet the approach has led to different conclusions. Some people denounce biblical faith as hopelessly misogynous, although this judgment usually fails to evaluate the evidence in terms of Israelite culture. Some reprehensibly use these data to support anti-Semitic sentiments. Some read the Bible as a historical document devoid of any continuing authority and hence worthy of dismissal. The “Who cares?” question often comes at this point. Others succumb to despair about the ever-present male power that the Bible and its commentators hold over women. And still others, unwilling to let the case against women be the determining word, insist that text and interpreters provide more excellent ways.

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