Women in the Middle EastJoin now to read essay Women in the Middle EastWomen of the Middle East have far been viewed as an oppressed group. From the desert sands of Saudi Arabia to the mountainous lands of Afghanistan, Arab women have faced many hardships in their society. While the role of a woman is meant to be nurturing and domestic, many have moved on to a more modern view, and have taken on the role as educators and laborers. Arab women threaten the traditional family structure by doing so; however, for many it is a sacrifice they are willing to make, as they see that the world has more to offer than just household chores and childbearing. A battle between culture and religion has arisen, as Islam allows women the right to education and a separate income from their spouse. And as Arab women continue to seek education and work, society’s expectations hover over them, giving more strength to those who oppose such actions.
In that past decade or so, Arab women have risen in the workforce, and have included a solid education in their early life achievements. However, the idea of a successful, educated Arab woman started long ago, dating back almost 1500 years ago, when the wife of Prophet Muhammad, Khadija, owned her own caravan and was her own employer; a successful one at that. However, after the Prophet’s death, the status of women slowly began to decline, and by the early 1900’s, Arab women’s status had been dwindled down to that of oppression and non-education. Because of this, several feminist women movements arose in the 1930’s and 1940’s, the most famous one led by Huda Sha’rawi in Egypt (Sidani 2005). Even though these feminist movements helped encourage Arab women to get back on the rise in society, only a handful were able to achieve that, as many countries such as Saudi Arabia still held the status of women back.
It is important to note that Arab women are not just Muslims, they are Christians as well. And so the idea of a woman taking care of the family and watching over the home is not a foreign idea to these two monotheistic religions (Read 2004). However, Muslims have taken their religion more seriously, and while each Middle Eastern country has its own Islam per se, the ones who rule by Islam take what they want from the religion and throw it out of context to satisfy what they wish to achieve. This is prevalent in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
While some countries do not allow women to work, many do, and so the number of Arab women entering the workforce is on the rise, as well as the rate of women achieving secondary education. In most cases, women outperform men at all levels (Finlay, Neal, and Tansey 2005). Still, there are many cultural factors that are keeping the number of women in the labor force very low. In Arab Gulf culture, many girls are married at a young age, as compared with other societies, such as America or Great Britain. The younger the girl, the less of a chance she has at entering the workforce, since she barely has time to even finish school. Also, the average Arab Gulf family consists of many children, and having ten children is not very unusual. Because of these two factors, early marriage and big families, women have little or no chance at succeeding in the work force, unless they choose a job that will fit in with this lifestyle, and there aren’t very many. Because of woman’s role in the home, she is viewed skeptically as to whether or not she can rise to positions of authority. Also, since culture is a large influence, jobs that allow women to work closely with men are not favored, and the smallest thing such as shaking a man’s hand can be viewed as a social taboo (Finlay, Neal, and Tansey 2005).
One country that is a bit more advanced than the Gulf is Lebanon, and the women there have achieved a higher level of societal acceptance than many women in the Gulf. Lebanon’s government does not mandate certain things such as covering or wearing the veil, and male-female interaction is publicly allowed with no reprocutions. Also, Lebanese women have a tendency to sexually express themselves; not by actions per se, but by body language and dress, and these factors give the other Arab countries- especially the Gulf ones- a reason to talk and look down upon them.
Thus is not the case in Egypt. Women there are forced to quit working to take care of their families full-time, because their society feels that if a mother neglects her children to work, it can affect the child’s behavior later on, and create delinquency amongst the youth. Although in the past twenty years the role of women and men being seen as equal has been accepted, most families raise their sons to be educated and independent, and the daughters to work alongside their mother in the home. They domestic the females from early on, and teach them that this is the only role they need to know. The women who do work are limited to secretarial, teaching, and nursing jobs, as these roles are seen fit for mothers (Mostafa
, p. 47, p. 48, p. 48, etc.) and are expected to go home on Saturdays to provide work-related care on a regular basis. To help them understand this, they ask women to be educated. Women will be provided with food, clothing, a home (sometimes they can live in a trailer or a house), a school, and to have some contact with their children. Women come from different backgrounds, and will also come from different cultures to be allowed to stay together, although most do not have this experience. Although women’s roles often vary from region to region, there are generally many who are very important to their communities and who are needed for the welfare of their children. There are also those who cannot keep their job, are expected to remain in their position (e.g., a male police inspector, who must be kept in his/her place by female citizens, or workers from other departments that are a part of the family), will lose the opportunity to share their time in society (a girl’s work), will be denied entry to the work force (in some cases a woman may only be allowed to enter for a limited period of time, and a male lawyer is needed to act as a mediator between the woman and the man), lose income from their wages, and become unproductive, even though they love their children. In some cases, however, a woman may still be able to remain in her job and do other things for the community without having to provide childcare to each of the child’s mothers, for her daughter has had no children.
What is a Woman?
The term “woman” is used in many Western European contexts to describe young girls from the same family who are brought up in Egypt as women, but who are also underrepresented in the Egyptian culture. She is often called a “mother” because she has special cultural knowledge and socialization which she needs to share with her children, and is viewed as a very important social role due to her contribution to the work force. In Egyptian society, men in society don’t consider women to be an equal opportunity person because they simply aren’t comfortable expressing their interests. This is especially true in the small numbers of low- or non-civilized middle-class women, such as those from the south and the north, who are considered low-income or low-status. When Egyptian women are treated like non-white people (including their children and mothers) in society, their rights to live, work and develop and access to education are not respected, because many girls from the southern and north feel that there is no possibility to work under the equality of citizenship and to earn a decent income. In fact, when Egyptians see their children being raised in the southern and north because of their status under the law, many feel they are discriminated