“Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong; it’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength”

– G.D. Anderson 

Women and Islam

In Islam, men and women are moral equals in God’s sight and are expected to fulfil the same duties of worship, prayer, faith, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca. Islam by and large improved the status of ladies contrasted with before Arab societies, restricting female child murder and perceiving ladies’ full personhood. Islamic law stresses the authoritative idea of marriage, necessitating that a dowry is paid to the woman and not her family, and ensuring women’s rights of inheritance and to claim and oversee the property. Women were additionally allowed the option to live in the marital home and get monetary maintenance during marriage and a holding up period following demise and separation. 

Historical records show that Muhammad counselled ladies and gauged their opinions seriously. Umm Waraqah was selected imam over the family unit by Muhammad. Women contributed altogether to the canonization of the Quran. A lady is known to have adjusted the definitive decision of Caliph Umar on the endowment. Women prayed in mosques unsegregated from men, were involved in hadith transmission, gave sanctuary to men, engaged in commercial transactions were encouraged to seek knowledge, and were both instructors and pupils in the early Islamic period. Muhammad’s last wife, Aishah, was a well-known authority in medicine, history, and rhetoric. Caliph Umar named ladies to fill in as authorities in the market of Medina. Life stories of recognized ladies, particularly in Muhammad’s family unit, show that ladies acted moderately independently in early Islam. In Sufi circles, ladies were perceived as educators, followers, “otherworldly moms,” and even inheritors of the profound privileged insights of their fathers. 

No woman held religious titles in Islam, but many women held political power, some jointly with their husbands, others independently. The best-known women rulers in the premodern era include Khayzuran, who governed the Muslim Empire under three Abbasid caliphs in the eighth century; Malika Asma bint Shihab al-Sulayhiyya and Malika Arwa bint Ahmad al-Sulayhiyya, who both held power in Yemen in the eleventh century; Sitt al-Mulk, a Fatimid queen of Egypt in the eleventh century; the Berber queen Zaynab al-Nafzawiyah (r. 1061 – 1107 ); two thirteenth-century Mamluk queens, Shajar al-Durr in Cairo and Radiyyah in Delhi; six Mongol queens, including Kutlugh Khatun (thirteenth century) and her daughter Padishah Khatun of the Kutlugh-Khanid dynasty; the fifteenth-century Andalusian queen Aishah al-Hurra, known by the Spaniards as Sultana Madre de Boabdil; Sayyida al-Hurra, governor of Tetouán in Morocco (r. 1510 – 1542 ); and four seventeenth-century Indonesian queens.

Nevertheless, the status of women in premodern Islam all in all adjusted not to Quranic beliefs however to prevailing patriarchal cultural norms. Thus, improvement of the status of ladies turned into a significant issue in the present day, reformist Islam.

The rights to education and employment plus women’s activism make a big difference in women’s rights.

In “Myths About Women’s Rights: How, Where and Why Rights Advance,” Feryal Cherif, analyses two hypotheses for why cultures advance gender equality. 

The first is the thing that we call “centre rights”: that women’s rights to education and employment are the structure hinders with which to begin political organizing for equality, developing a group sense of fairness (or the lack thereof), and building public support for women’s equal socioeconomic standing. This gives government officials, and other residential elites motivations to help ladies’ privileges. 

The subsequent hypothesis is that ladies’ privileges backing cultivates change as local and worldwide activists advance new standards of uniformity by publicizing countries’ practices — both those that treat ladies similarly and those that slack — and constraining governments to adjust to worldwide norms. Research shows that these hypotheses are steady with the ongoing advances in gender equality in Saudi Arabia and the region at large. Looking at ladies’ property rights in 41 Muslim-larger part nations, I believe that women are probably going to appreciate safer property rights in nations where, first, women have more prominent admittance to education and second, where there are thick systems of women rights activists. Where ladies are more mindful of their privileges, better situated to challenge male family, and have the socioeconomic power to hold politicians accountable, their property rights are stronger. That is valid also for the Saudi Arabian development of women’s rights, including the right to drive. It is presumably not a happenstance that, throughout the long term, the hole between Saudi Arabian boys’ and girls’ education has considerably limited. Furthermore, it’s actually in numerous other Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) nations, where young ladies beat young men in school and enrol in universities at higher rates than boys. Besides, an expanding number of Arab ladies have joined the work power — though not yet at levels as high as worldwide midpoints. Indeed, even in Saudi Arabia, with its extraordinary forms of gender segregation, ladies are working in an ever-increasing number of fields. Also, with the right to drive, more women will be able to seek employment. 

In addition to core rights, women rights activism has additionally considerably expanded in the Middle East and North Africa in the previous decades. During 1980 and 2015, the number of women rights groups operating in the region nearly tripled. Some scholars and reporters have argued that advocacy campaigns and global pressure have helped push MENA nations toward gender equality. 

Indeed, even in conservative states like Saudi Arabia, the government may think that it’s hard to contain women’s expectations once they’ve been educated and entered the work power — even while more traditionalist pieces of their country push back.

Political Participation

Political revolutions and instability in the Middle East have mobilized women in new ways. Despite political turmoil and express dangers to their privileges, numerous ladies are expanding their activism to make their voices heard. Because of this flood of political commitment from ladies, however, fundamentalist and traditionalist pioneers and governments are pushing back, increasing their assaults on women’s human rights with an end goal to keep up their power. 

Even though, when women do win rights, they aren’t able to execute them since they are sabotaged by solid accepted practices and conventions. For instance, although women in Egypt have cast ballot rights, the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement (which conducts customary political race checking) has discovered that in provincial towns, spouses, fathers, or siblings will advise women how to cast a ballot—or even just take a women’s polling form from her and round it out however they see fit. 

Laws in the area, including both old laws and ongoing ones, confine ladies’ common freedoms and fill in as unequivocal proof that people with significant influence don’t consider women equals. For instance, in 2014 the Iraqi parliament introduced a draft law that endeavoured to make it lawful to wed a young girl as young as nine years of age, granting conjugal assault, and allowing polygamy. A long-standing law in Lebanon doesn’t permit women to pass on their citizenship, implying that if a Lebanese lady weds a non-Lebanese man, her children wouldn’t have Lebanese citizenship. Also, fundamentalist gatherings are a ground-breaking and developing danger, with systems that straightforwardly target women, including the abduction and forced sexual slavery of Yazidi ladies in Iraq by the alleged Islamic State gathering (ISIS). With so many powerful forces opposing women’s human rights in the Middle East, many in the region feel that international support has been far too weak. Leaders of women’s groups across the region stress the need for international support and solidarity. Past budgetary help, women likewise call for worldwide solidarity and expressions of help, referring to the two sorts of help as basic to opposing fundamentalism. Women’s gatherings keep up that while fundamentalist dangers against women’s rights are at the moment most powerful in the Middle East, the issue is, in fact, a global problem. 

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Confinement in homes, and lack of steady incomes, seems to have been fostering tensions and frustration in households and strain due to concerns over health and security. The lockdown is also putting women in isolation with violent partners, with nowhere to turn to for help. In India, the National Commission for Women has reported a 200 per cent increase in the reporting and stress call numbers of domestic violence on their helpline in the month of June alone.

Even before the lockdown was imposed, domestic violence was one of the most prevalent violations of human rights and a key impediment to the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with one in three women have experienced it at some point in their lives. Economist Amartya Sen has estimated in 1990 that more than 100 million women are ‘missing’ — that includes those that never lived because of sex-selective abortions and infanticide, child neglect and maltreatment. That number was revised in 2015 to 136 million – this just shows how females have been subject to violence, at times even before they are born, at an alarmingly high rate.

Furthermore, it is essential to address that violence against women not only affects individuals, but also households, families and communities. However, the only way to change this stark reality is to hold the aggressors accountable and ensure that the problematic social norms that perpetuate the instances of violence are also tackled in an inclusive manner. The SDGs act as an apt framework to work off of, in order to shape a violence-free world – here’s how:

SDG 1: No Poverty

Women’s work – in agriculture, in communities, and at home, fuels economies and yet, isn’t regarded as ‘economic activity’. The exposure of females to incessant discrimination and mistreatment at the workplace makes them vulnerable and susceptible to gender-based violence. Women and girls are four per cent more likely to live in poverty and poor living conditions, a risk that rises up to twenty-five per cent as we factor-in other inequalities. Financial independence for women creates new opportunities and avenues for them to reject typical gender norms and leverage independence against violent partners. It also helps them to create a mentality of freedom and a sense of self for themselves. As a result, the reduction in poverty proves to be a catalyst towards enabling women in societies.

SDG 4: Quality Education

An estimated 246 million girls and boys experience school-related violence every year and one in four girls say that they never feel comfortable using school washrooms, according to a survey on youth conducted across four regions by the United Nations. Quality education is essential to ending violence against women. Educated girls are more likely to make their decisions towards family planning and managing finances, it is fundamental for the development of aspirations and skills, and children of educated women are more likely to have been safeguarded against malnutrition and illiteracy. Educational exposure also enables women to get access to leadership and decision-making opportunities. Hence, it propels them into a cycle of development that helps them create barriers to economic violence at home or in their communities.

SDG 5: Gender Equality

According to a 2018 report by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in India, 18 per cent of women and girls aged between 15 and 49 years of age have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or family member in the past twelve months. Further, someone is known to them – every day kills more than 137 women around the world. These figures represent a fraction of the discrimination against women in terms of opportunities, wealth, inheritance, safe access to public spaces, lack of decent work, and safe and healthy environments of living, learning, working, and engaging with their communities. These inequalities leave them extremely vulnerable to gender-based violence.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

Unsafe and poor working environments affect women regardless of their age, location, income, careers, or social standing. As of 2020, 18 countries have laws that enable husbands in preventing their wives from going to work. UN Women estimates that the economic costs of violence and harassment amount to US$12 trillion every year. As of 2018, 59 countries do not have laws protecting women from sexual harassment in the workplace. Economic growth cannot be achieved without the inclusion of women and their contribution to sustainable development in an empowering work environment.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

In developing countries, concerns of safety and restricted access to public transport reduce the probability of women participating in the labour market by 16.5 per cent. As the processes of urbanization and industrialization catch up to tier two and tier three cities, the UN estimates that more than 5 billion people will reside in cities by 2030. This becomes an essential notion to address in the light of crimes against women that are prevalent in most urban regions. Further, there is widespread human rights abuse in many industries, such as fast fashion, many of which employ women in majorities. Women may be subject to exploitation in such circumstances and need to be safeguarded against such instances.

SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

In 37 countries, rape perpetrators are exempt from legal prosecution if they are married to, or subsequently marry the victim. Improving access to justice for survivors, and strengthening the legal framework against violators is an essential step towards making justice accessible for women – be it against violence, sexual misconduct at the workplace, or any crime against them. It is further imperative for women to mobilize and advocate support for their personal rights and those of their communities. This can be done digitally, individually, or at any level.  

Conclusion

At this point in time, COVID-19 is already testing humanity in unprecedented capacities. The shadow pandemic that we have had to face additionally is a mirror to the kind of societies we have built for ourselves so far. As we emerge from the pandemic, we must renew the outlooks towards inequalities and factor them into our responses to create a more equitable and sustainably sound world.

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