I’ve often heard it mentioned how powerful mothers and wives are in Islamic societies, with respect to directing and inluencing families and family affairs, especially in high status and powerful families. Given women’s constrained role ( to our cultural sensibilities) and the highly patriarchial nature of most devoutly Islamic societies (I’m thinking mainly Arabic in this context), how is this accomplished and manifested?
None, zip, nada, bupkiss.
I have never seen any sign of women in this society ever having any influence on my friends here. I keep looking for signs of it, I presume it has to be there. I haven’t seen it.
Amazing.
Benazir Bhutto did get to be Prime Minister of Pakistan.
I think this thread, currently active in the pit, is a good indicator. Link
I suspect that in arab society there really is not that much power manifest in the women. However as you’ve already done, its critical to distinguish between arabic society, and the much larger muslim world, which spreads a much greater distance.
In muslims in the indian sub-continent and in the far east, society is traditionally more matriarchial even without the influence of islam, and there is substantial female power at the grassroots level. As the thread linked above shows, this has also resulted in there being top political female leaders in much of the new islamic world.
So, what the hell is the deal with Afghanistan and Iran, then, if women have so much grassroots power there? BTW, I don’t think women in India have all that much power in Western terms, though they’re undoubtedly better off than most Arab women.
Iran and Afganistan are societies that are substantially unbalanced with regard to womens rights within western conception of rights. Iran represents the worse excesses of a theocracy, and I personally feel that its restrictions on women violate parts of the Quran. I would argue that in both of the above cases it is residual cultural mysogny that is being upheld in the name of islam.
My intent was to highlight especially Indonesia and Malaysia, especially as the former is the words largest islamic nation. If political power can be taken as indicative, then it seems that in a large part of the islamic world [over 335 million by jjimm’s count] have voluntarily accepted the rule of a woman. If political power is to be your metric for actual power, then you would have to conceed that is a strongly probative fact. Real social power is harder to measure, but surely it has to be stronger then the actual political power achieved.
With regard to India, I believe that India tends to be on the whole much more progressive with regard to womens rights, and are moving towards, if they have not achieved, notional equality with regard to access to education, employment and property rights. This I accept is tied with with provisos as to economic prosperity, social class and education. I think anyone would conceed that all social indicators are tied up with such provisos though, and that India as a largely developing country cannot attempt to hit first world standards with regard to actual equality without many further years of progress. I would remind you that 19th Amendment to the US constitution that allowed women to vote was only passed in 1920, after almost 150 years of the existence of the USA, and only 85 years ago. British women achieved parity in 1928. India did not even exist as an independant nation when these accomplishments occured. Comparatively India has achieved radical reform to its laws regarding womens rights since its birth, and those legal reforms do continue. Its had a female prime minister [its most powerful PM ever i may add] in the form of Indira Gandhi, currently has a woman in charge of the ruling party, and who was tipped to be the current PM, and would have been if she had not excluded herself from the job. I have yet to see a female president of the USA. Sure there are problems with regard to equal pay, equal access to education, sexual harrassment and even forced prostitution in the county. I was not aware that these problems had been altogether surmounted in the western world either. India has substantially achieved the social and legal framework to bring about the development of a more equal society. To expect it to arrise fully functional is incorrect.
Womens rights in India are no utopia of equality, but to say they are substantially inferior to what India could have been expected with regard to empowering its women in such a short while is to me an unjustifiable accusation.
It should be noted that India is a primarily Hindu country, albeit with a large Islamic minority, and therefore isn’t strictly relevant to the OP.
Paul is doing the thing I was complaining about in the Pit, of conflating his experiences in Saudi Arabia (and possibly other Arab countries), where women are treated abominably, with all Muslims across the globe.
Women’s rights are severely compromised across the third world, though the really dreadful repression does seem to happen more often in third-world Islamic countries than in third-world non-Islamic ones.
To be fair to Paul, he did say “here” in his post, meaning Saudi Arabia, which is clearly ascertainable by his username of “Paul in Saudi.” Not really conflating, just a report from someone who is actually LIVING IN Saudi Arabia and thus is in a position to know.
Your second paragraph seems to make the point agaisnt women having power in Islamic socieites: Women’s righte are severely compromised acrooss the third world (which would constitute all Muslim nations, I don’t think there are any First World Muslim nations) and it’s generally worse in Muslim countries. So I would think it fair to say, based on these statements, that Islam generally makes things worse for women, which is my general impression.
GDPpc…$15,100 USD
Poverty …0
Unemploynent …1.8%
While not wishing to appear to oppose you dogmatically, I would ask whether you could back that up with any evidence to support that statement. My impression has been that western style equality of rights does not exist anywhere that cannot afford to do so. All third world countries seem to have a rather low regard for human rights.
If you look at Freedom Houses weighted average of freedom indicators, the worlds worst countries are Turkmenistan, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Burma, Vietnam and Uzbeckistan. This seems to suggest that the problem lies not with islam, but with the fundamentalist versions of it, and with arab culture. Generally if you look further up the chart, you will see that there tend to be two groupings of islamic nations that score lower. The middle eastern ones and the central asian countries. Surely the correlation if any that can be drawn from such data, is that the problem is of a geographic nature rather then of religion.
My prototype islamic countries, Malaysia and Indonesia in fact outscore first world countries like Singapore in terms of their freedom .
Uh? This list doesn’t suggest anything like that. The only fundamentalist, islamic, arab country is Saudi Arabia. There are only three arab countries in this list : Saudi Arabia, Syria and Lybia.
I suspect that i have mistakenly conceeded a point that need not be conceeded. The list can then taken to stand for the proposition that the islamic nations are generally no worse then other third world nations with regard to human rights
Thanks clairobscur
I will amend my post to read, “With the exception of Kuwait” which is one of those differences which makes no difference.
It is a difficult question to answer in a few lines.
There is no such thing as an Islamic society or an Arab society (and there is in many aspects also a difference between rural and non-rural settings etc…)
A few points that I always found in contrast with my mother’s European family, because it is so “Arab” in mindset and tradition:
The family is extremely important and never leaves you “on your own”. In that family, women make make a life-long claim on the love and attention of their sons. The mother/son bound is extremely powerful in an Islamic man’s life. (If you want to enrage an Arab with one word, insult his mother.) Women have in this not only the back-up of Al Qur’an but also of the sayings of the Prophet.
This relationship does not end or comes to a halt or to an other level when the son gets married. The daughter in law comes to live with the young couple or whatever other situation occurs where the mother becomes closely involved in the life of the young copule. (If you think you have heard all the difficulties a Western couple can have with a mother in law, be sure of it you have heard nothing.)
The general idea when people look from the outside at the traditional arranged marriage is that the father decides.
In practice it is very often the mother’s choice that is decisive.
I don’t know if this is an answer to your question. I don’t know what exactly you had in mind as “example”.
Salaam. A
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. it did answer most of my questions. I really wondered mostly how a woman (as a mother or wife) would interact and deal with her surroundings as a person of influence and power, when the objective situation in many Islamic oriented societies (from a western perspective) seems very repressive and antagonistic towards women exercising overt power.
Bahrain and UAE are pretty well off too.
Sure, I concede this, but I was referring specifically to the imbalance of women’s rights versus men’s. While the poor in Saudi Arabia have a really shitty time of it, a middle-class Saudi man enjoys way more freedom than a middle-class Saudi woman.
A good point.
Sorry, didn’t see this post yesterday.
No, it is not amazing.
I would be very amazed if any of them gave a stranger insight in the inner circles of their family life = if they talked with you about such private matters. And especially concerning the women of the family and their relationship/interaction with them.
Note:
When it comes to the ME/Arab society in general, there are quite a few misconceptions about the “role” of women in these societies. There are also a lot of misconceptions about the “power” of men. As if they can do just whatever they want at any time.
There is even more ignorance about what moves and changes gradually and in my view irreversable. The more women with an academic education, the more support (and initiation and encouragement, coming from both women and men) women with no acces to education will get in their struggle for more rights and opportunities.
Salaam. A
Sorry, didn’t see this post yesterday.
No, it is not amazing.
I would be very amazed if any of them gave a stranger insight in the inner circles of their family life = if they talked with you about such private matters. And especially concerning the women of the family and their relationship/interaction with them.
Note:
When it comes to the ME/Arab society in general, there are quite a few misconceptions about the “role” of women in these societies. There are also a lot of misconceptions about the “power” of men. As if they can do just whatever they want at any time.
There is even more ignorance about what moves and changes gradually and in my view irreversable. The more women with an academic education, the more support (and initiation and encouragement, coming from both women and men) also the women with no acces to education will get in their strive for more rights and opportunities.
Salaam. A
Except the first sentence, in response to the general question “How much power & influence do women really have in Islamic societies?” was “None, zip, nada, bupkiss.” Which is clearly an exaggeration.