I spent a good deal of my trip to Gaza in mental confusion over what I was seeing of women’s roles. The gender dynamics made me uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure where to come down, or if I had a right to do so. I’ve been thinking about the issue since I’ve gotten back and decided to write about it for a few reasons. For one thing, Hamas has lately required women lawyers to wear head scarves; and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has condemned the order. And just yesterday, the Centre publicized the honor killing of a 27-year-old woman in Jabaliya camp and called on Palestinians to impose "international standards" on this crime.
But the main reason I want to write about it is that it only seems fair. I bash Israel and Jewish chauvinism 24-7. I’m trying to do my part to change Jewish identity. Does that mean I can only talk about my people? Heck no. Also, I think the pro-Palestinian movement has to come to terms with the question of women’s roles in Palestine as it does outreach to a larger American liberal coalition.
So: what did I see? And, what does it mean?
Let me begin with two anecdotes that convey my discomfort. One delegation I was with was shepherded around Gaza in two vehicles. There were 13 in the delegation, and four of us were men. A man always had to sit in the front seat with the driver—having the most leg room, and best view–I guess because a driver sitting with a woman not his wife violated Muslim religious custom. I don’t know. The arrangement upset me. I’ve traveled in groups a lot in my life, sharing cars; and I put myself in the women’s position, and thought how angry I’d be to have to sit in the back all the time.
The second anecdote involves the European cup finals match on May 27. Our hotel had a television with a live broadcast, and I’m guessing there were 100 people in the hotel garden watching the game, smoking hookahs. Fun. I can’t remember one woman there, beside the hotel owner. That upset me. It supported the impression I’ve gotten in Morocco, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, that public social spaces are a male province. It reminded me of New Year’s in Palmyra, Syria, when my wife and I went out to a restaurant and it was all men celebrating New Year’s, except for the belly dancer. Did all the women choose to stay home?
I wrote about this stuff when I first got to Egypt in May, and maybe crudely, focusing on women in an American University of Cairo delegation who were covered. Helena Cobban had a good response to me then, and I know it upset others. But covering doesn’t seem to me to be the issue; western women also dress conventionally. It’s the apparent lack of choice—I think I saw only a half dozen women in Gaza who were not covered—and the social control it seems to represent. One woman in our delegation was a nun (not covered), and she said the covering reminded her of the social control that the nun’s habit grants the Catholic church over women.
Here is a photograph of some of the kids who accompanied us on a tour of rubble in eastern Gaza. You can see that two of the girls are wearing lengthy head coverings. I guess they had recently passed menarche. In the hot weather—it didn’t seem fair to me, I pitied them. Those girls were going down a separate path from the boys, and, it would appear, a more limited one, ordained by authorities.
Roles are the issue. I have a liberal friend back here who thinks Title IX is about the greatest thing the federal government ever did. Title IX would be difficult to implement in the Muslim societies I’ve visited.
Of course every society has gender roles that women often struggle against, and some of these role differences are surely consensual. More importantly, my problem with women’s roles is nothing like my problem with Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians and endless human rights abuses against them. But to deny the narrowness of the roles seems to me pointless. I got the impression that the more public-spirited women we met in Gaza were mostly unmarried. In fact, a friend in my delegation said that professional women sometimes sacrificed marriage because the wife role was too confining. When we met women in their homes, delegation members would often comment later on how strong they are– perhaps apologizing for the limited roles the women have by saying they get to be strong. My feeling was, Of course they’re strong; women are strong. Why can’t they be strong in other arenas too?
One member of my delegation said that when we were made uncomfortable by the fact that a teacher of young students we’d seen (right) was clad head to toe in a niqab, with gloves, 
we were just seeing her with western eyes. I liked it when a gay woman in our delegation, who has been engaged with feminist issues all her life, said, “But I am western.” And I would say the same thing. I am western. Does that mean my ideas are culturally-bound? Maybe. But I find certain liberal values emulable. And there isn’t a lot of liberal space in Gaza society.
I recognize that Gaza is under blockade and in an extreme situation. A thousand and more people were just murdered by a despotic occupier– for no reason at all– and businesses and government offices wantonly demolished. I understand that an oppressed, isolated, decapitated people, whose men have been made to feel humiliated and powerless (per the Palestinian psychologist we met), will turn to what they can control, and what makes them different, religion.
But that doesn’t mean I have to approve of religious roles. I’m not religious myself; and one of the reasons I started blogging is that I was determined to apply to Israel the liberal ideals my country had come to during hardwon struggles over minority rights, and screw the religious ideology that made Israel. When I’m judging Israel, people say it’s fine for me to bring my luggage to Asia. When I’m criticizing Palestinian society, I’m a westerner suffering from orientalism.
People may say that Muslim society affords a woman freedoms we don’t have here. I’m sure that’s true. My wife likes to cover in the Arab societies we’ve visited because it gives her a freedom on the street, from others’ eyes. But she was on holiday; she gets to choose. Myself I feel a diminution: the absence of women in cafes and restaurants gives public life a grinding masculine air to me. It bothers me that I did not see one woman driving in Egypt or Gaza. I have to believe some women would like to drive.
I imagine people saying that my own sexism disqualifies me from pronouncing. But I’ve struggled for decades with my masculine identity, my sexism, and my racism, and homophobia too. I’ve changed my attitudes over my lifetime–and American social movements have reshaped me. I recommend the process.
Finally, people may say that my broaching this topic creates a distraction from the real cause: Palestinian freedom. I think they’re wrong. Palestinian women are sure to benefit from Palestinian freedom; and one way we will build this movement is by reaching out to liberals who feel strongly on gender-role issues. The tendency of politicized people to deny obvious flaws in their cause is at the heart of this great essay by Orwell, in which he blames himself for accepting certain stupid blindnesses out of party loyalty.
There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it…The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort
I actually think we will be more effective in taking on the neoconservative critique of Islamic society, and the Israeli one, too, if we concede the points they are right about and assign them their rightful, minor place in the discussion.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 17 comments }
Some “conservative” American males seem to think that if a woman is dressed “provacatively” and gets raped, then it is her own fault. Consequently, the only way for an American woman not to be blamed (at least partly) for her own rape is to be clad head to toe in a niqab!
It is well established that increasing educational levels (especially postsecondary) of a society is the surest way to improve the status of women within that society. Of course, Israel seems determined to make it as difficult as possible for Palestinians in the occupied territories (especially Gaza) to attend college (especially abroad). As you have recently documented on this site, students in Gaza with scholarships to Universities in Europe and the U.S. are not being allowed by Israel to leave Gaza.
Hi Philip. I love reading your articles. To respond to some of your questions as a Muslim woman living in the West (a Westerner by birth, actually -smile), I would have to say that the issue in the minds of Westerners always comes down to choice. There seems always to be assumption (sometimes rightly, admittedly) that Muslim women are forced to cover and to conceal themselves from public life. But in the majority of cases, I would say Muslim women find the same freedom as your wife on a daily basis. After having adopted Islamic culture in my own life, I can easily relate to what you’ve experienced in Asia, but in a positive sense.
I think also that the side of the story that most of my fellow country men and women miss is the intricate social life Muslim women have, although the same is usually not in the public eye.
By the same token, it is possible that the references to strength were also references to the manner in which most of the same women conduct the affairs of family life, and by extension, of their communities. It is indeed a different way of life, but the role of women in Muslim societies should not be underestimated, in my opinion.
By way of example, I have found that American Muslim women are much more timid than their counterparts overseas. To me, this is due to a misunderstanding of religion: that to be somewhat concealed also means one’s ideas are also concealed. This is not at all the case, as the first jurist in Islam was a woman, and she taught men from behind a screen in her home.
There are women who cannot imagine life without a headscarf, and who are repulsed by social gatherings with men who are not family members, let alone sitting in close proximity with one. In essence, to do so would be on the same level of offense to many women as it would be for a Western woman to have to sit in the back! Hard to imagine, I know.
You would also be surprised to know that, in the past fifty years or so, there are probably more women who are coerced by family members and others to remove their coverings than those who are forced to do so. Not too many people practice religion at all these days, of any sort. There are more women than you may think who are pressured to wear makeup and wear more revealing clothing, even if they do manage to keep a headscarf. In some Muslim societies, a covered woman is perceived as without ambition, just like in the West, and women are forced to choose between their religion and the acceptance of family and friends.
You could say things are not as they appear all the time.
Thanks for listening!
I spent a year in the Middle East studying (Egypt and Jordan, haven’t made it to Israel or the West Bank yet, much less Gaza), perhaps I can do some explaining. These are the impressions I’ve gotten as a westerner. A woman who covers will tell you enthusiastically that she loves doing it and wants to, unless it’s mandated, like Hamas’ lawyers, and only very conservative women condone that.
The car front seat rule, at least in Egypt and Jordan, is more about protection than privilege. Egyptian and Jordanian men are rude and stare (admittedly it would be a privilege to not be stared at so much). Women sit in the back seat because they’re more hidden. It’s also more modest. By the time I got out of the region, I felt much more comfortable in the back seat in a taxi, especially as a white woman, because of the driver and because of the people outside. There are boundaries between men and women that you don’t want to cross.
The front seat tradition (was a woman ever told she couldn’t sit in the front, or did she just never take it?) is cultural, not religious. Interesting that you blame it on religion, rather than culture.
Which brings me to my next point. There are a lot of complicated theories about veiling that I don’t feel like going into. One thing that the Muslims I’ve hung out with don’t want to admit very much, and perhaps I’m projecting my Western values, is that being pious is cool. Veiling means you’re more religious, and though it puts a wide variety of social restrictions on your behavior (no being out late at night, no dancing, ankles and wrists covered, etc), it earns street cred.
A comparison that is probably insulting is how I choose to be vegetarian because I have extremely strong feelings that it’s the right thing to do, and also secretly because gives me bragging rights. It’s genuine, but there’s social pressure because it’s seen as superior. The looks I get to give the “vegetarians” who eat fish… but eating meat feels disgusting and I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. Covering is the same kind of personal feeling.
A covered woman can also preserve her modesty (don’t get me started on how women must guard honor) in public settings and the workplace much more than an uncovered woman can, so the hijab becomes liberating.
Of course, if, as you noted at the soccer game, women were allowed to travel in the public sphere freely, all this would be less of an issue. I hate that that women are not as accepted in public, especially late at night.
That societal standard makes Egypt intolerable – don’t know if you noticed how much abuse women get there. The right to harass women on the streets helps preserve the public sphere as men’s domain, and it sucks.
I don’t want to underplay the role Arab women have in the workplace and government, though. During the day, women are well-respected in the public sphere, as you saw, and hey, I bet they don’t have to spend 20 minutes every morning drying their hair like I do.
You didn’t see *one woman* driving in Egypt? Open your eyes. I’ve nearly been hit by several – especially around the American University in Cairo campus. Did you get on the metro? There are special cars for women, and they’re always full. The ladies get around.
As you say, most Palestinian feminist movements have been subsumed by the overall Palestinian movement… Actually I’d say most Arab human rights movements have been subsumed by the Palestinian movement. It’s getting in the way, can we solve it now please?
One final pet peeve: liberating women does not mean taking their clothes off. It’s likely those little girls begged their mothers to let them cover, and the teacher chose to wear the abaya and niqab. I wish the western world could wrap their minds around that and go address a real women’s issue like poverty… but that would entail actual work.
Philip, although I admire the work you do, your article leaves me a bit confused. It seemed that it is a dissertation about how Islamic social values make you feel “uncomfortable.” The problem with your article (and this is nothing againts you personally since your sentiments are common among Westerners) is two-fold. First, you have not shown us why liberal values are superior to Islamic ones other than a few emotional statements .Secondly, this whole spiel about women’s roles in Gaza is a red herring. Israel, a secular liberal country, is commiting the most biting oppression of our age and Western men find it prudent to talk about headscarvs.?
Hamza Andreas Tzortzis is an intellectual activist and Greek convert to Islam. I suggest you read these excellent well researched articles of his comparing the islamic and liberal social models.:
1.) Is Islamic Society Barabaric? An Essay Contrasting Liberal & Islamic Social Models: http://hamzatzortzis.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-islamic-society-barbaric-and.html
2.) Liberalism and its Effect on Society: http://www.hittininstitute.com/Article.aspx?ID=18&category=1
3.)A Note on Understanding Islam: Liberalism’s Origins & the Superimposition of a Specific European Experience :http://hamzatzortzis.blogspot.com/2009/06/note-on-understanding-islam-liberalisms_6195.html
Phil,
May I recommend this article regarding gender issues in Islam? It’s probably the best piece available on the Internet on the subject:
http://www.themodernreligion.com/women/retrievalofgender.html
Another great source of knowledge on this issue is Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America and a well-respected scholar in both the US and the Muslim world:
http://macdonald.hartsem.edu/mattson.htm
These sources will give you a bit more depth on this issue, helping you distinguish culture from religion, and give you a bit of insight on how to traditional women view these issues.
Keep up the great work!
Practicing of religion allows people to feel that there is one area where they still have the choices and more besieged the society feels, the more comfort they derive from public and private expressions of religion.
I remember churches bursting at the seams in Poland under the communist regime. There was a sense of social cohesion and solidarity in the thick crowds. With attendance came greater adherence to sexual/gender aspects of christian message: virginity till marriage, no divorces, female responsibility for domestic sphere, acceptance of male dominance.
I was always surprised at the lack of adherence at the material/financial aspect of christian message: dishonesty was ripe, and so was abortion on the social grounds.
All this evaporated within 15 years of opening of the borders to the west and TV screens to western media. Churches are empty. Divorces are rampant.
I think what you see in Palestine, and in Gaza especially, is universal in societies where the individual/society feels besieged and has little control over their future.
Makes sense, Eva, I always read that God is closer to the weak because it’s then we are open or reaching out. When we are back on our feet and moving forward, we don’t even look back to thank God!
I have one more thing to say on this.
The white settlers thought they were doing the Indians a big favor by Christianizing them, “civilizing” them and putting them in houses to live. Wooden shacks, of course. They were taken aback to find them living in squalor after awhile. One more reason to judge the Indians inferior. Well, the Indians didn’t know how to live in the damn shacks. They were use to living in tents in temporary residence, once season to the next. They would dismantle everything and go and start over every season. And their tents were beautiful! Hand painted an all that. All this “civilized” crap was un natural. To this day there have been no “favors” done for the Indians by the white man. Today the Indians are revered because they respected nature where we cause it’s ruination. We are so smart we invent great things, and so dumb we kill bees and earth worms when bees and earth worms are necessary for the earth and we are not. The Indians understood that. Buddhists understand that. Westerners need such peoples to educate them. Old world customs and values are priceless and westerners need to learn them and the value of them. If I were you, I would learn more and teach less when in the Arab world. The jewel of knowledge is there for those who seek.
Excellent Post.
I recently had a heated debate with some senior members of my community who wanted to keep the two main local schools segregated on the basis of gender – one for boys and the other for girls. Although it’s the local council that makes the final decision, parent pressure does a lot to influence it. I was angry that the Muslim community leaders were persuading parent’s to make decisions that weren’t in their children’s interests and the sheer hypocrisy of it all. They gave me some Qur’anic verses that according to them called for gender segregation (I disagree), but then they had the nerve to send their own kids to the mixed schools (that arguably perform much better).
I hope, that as these societies become richer, they’ll become more liberal. Quite a lot of it is culture rather than religion. Egypt is a peculiar case, where women seem to go in cycles – there was a time when 90% of Cairo women would be uncovered, but as soon as Sadat started attacking the headscarf they started wearing it again, leading up to today where 90% of them are covered.
One of the reasons why I support a one-state solution is because it will enable Palestinians to live in a liberal society – here in Britain, you can have two sisters, one covered head to toe and the other wearing Western clothing, and no-one would blink an eyelid.
RE:One of the reasons why I support a one-state solution is because it will enable Palestinians to live in a liberal society – here in Britain, you can have two sisters, one covered head to toe and the other wearing Western clothing, and no-one would blink an eyelid.
I’m curious , what do you have to support your argument that mixed schools perform better than segregated schools? And regarding the point being made in the post we are commenting on, since you disagree with your community leader’s call on the issue, would you solicit the local Jehovah Witness chapter if they agreed to come in and offer influence? Maybe offer your children seats in their classrooms because you all (Muslims) are so backward? Remember from your own religion which states clearly that a Muslim does not take a non Muslim as an intimate friend nor accept their help because they offer help only to rob you of your treasure which is your religion. There is a reason why Muslims stay within their own community. Take a closer look at the post. Read deeper, it carries an important message for you.
what do you have to support your argument that mixed schools perform better than segregated schools?
I was talking solely about the schools in my community, where the mixed ones have consistently outperformed the segregated ones.
As for the rest of your post, I don’t understand what you mean.
“I understand that an oppressed, isolated, decapitated people, whose men have been made to feel humiliated and powerless (per the Palestinian psychologist we met), will turn to what they can control, and what makes them different, religion.”
No, Phil, it’s simple biological strategy. A people with a high mortality rate will always embrace religion. It’s no coincidence that with the rise of standardized medicine, and the attendant drop in mortality rates, the Western world has become increasingly secular. We simply don’t need religion to survive anymore. Secularism and ethics are quite a luxury.
Religion is hardly the root of all evil, it’s a form of government for a chaotic world. Christianity, for instance, allowed the world to transition away from monarchy and towards a merit-based system of rule; i.e. any peasant could join the priestly class and rise through the ranks. I digress.
The reason women are oppressed in Palestine is not because Hamas is power trippin’. It’s because the Palestinians must adhere to strict gender roles in order to avoid being completely exterminated. For instance, across the aisle in Israel, women are afforded all the freedoms they have in the US: abortion, unmarried sex, a carrer in pornography, etc. While we can agree that these are all wonderful things, they are not conducive to a high birth rate. Thus the dwindling population in Israel.
Similarly, general Western ethics are practiced in Israel; if it feels good, do it. This is a healthy, indeed necessary attitude in the overpopulated West. And by healthy, I mean for the human population as a whole that needs constant weeding out — to the individual it’s quite unhealthy. Gays enjoy freedom of lifestyle in Israel. This is the luxury of a well-protected affluent society that can afford to release a certain segment from the obligation of spawning the next generation. You might call it a population tax.
[LEV][20][13] If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Pretty harsh, isn’t it? But you have to consider that circa 1000 BC, it was a grind just to live through the day. The luxury of gay sex, and all the other modern things we prize, would have been a shortcut to death for the entire tribe.
I find a couple of things problematic about this essay–primarily the fact that much of your angst seems to be caused by what makes you uncomfortable as opposed to what women in Egypt and Gaza told you about their own problems or what makes them uncomfortable.
Mainly, though, I would like to point out that if you saw no women driving in Egypt, it is, to put it bluntly, your own damn fault. I’ve lived in Cairo for over a decade and just about every woman I know who has a car (or whose family has a car) drives, and if they don’t, it isn’t because they aren’t allowed to. If you had been stuck in rush hour on the October Bridge and looked around you, you would have seen lots of women driving. They do it every day. And some of them–gasp!–are even veiled.
May seem like a small point, but to me it is indicative of a broader problem with discussions like yours: things that are prevalent or characteristic in one Arab society (say Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive) are generalized to the entire Arab or even Islamic world, where they are not prevalent at all, and then equally broad conclusions are drawn based on what are essentially falsehoods or unfounded assumptions. And then all of a sudden you’re talking about what “Muslim society” is like or what are the problems with “Islamic society”–as if gender dynamics (or anything else) across a geographic area that stretches from Morocco to Indonesia can be summed up in a couple of paragraphs.
This seems to me decidedly unhelpful in countering neo-con critiques, since it employs precisely the same rhetoric and sleight-of-hand shifts from the particular to the general that neo-con arguments about Islam and the so-called trouble with it often use.
Hi Phil,
I am sure you will get flamed for this one way or another, but a couple of things:
1. Women DO drive in Egypt, even if you didn’t see them.
2. While Gaza has always been more conservative than other parts of Palestine (the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood had a strong influence there), you wouldn’t have until pretty recently seen such a site as a woman in full niqab even covering her hands with gloves. I know I didn’t when I was there in the late 1980s. What the Palestinian psychologist said is true. However, Israel also contributed mightily to the rise of socially and politically conservative, fundamentalist forces through its deliberate (and widely known) policies of supporting those forces as a counterweight to secular and leftist parties and movements, particularly in the 1970s. Now it is coming back to bite them in the ass. (Not that those movements didn’t have massive problems, too, that contributed to their own undermining, but that’s another post.)
I always told people many years ago that while you may not like the PLO, Fatah, PFLP, DFLP, etc., you were going to get a much more radical, religious-based movement coming to the fore, so keep ignoring and dismissing the Palestinian leadership (at that time) at your own peril. Those of us closely observing changes in Israeli and Palestinian society for many years saw this coming from a mile away, but nobody would listen. I would say the rise of socially and politically conservative, religious, anti-women’s rights forces in Palestine more or less mirrors what is happening in Israeli politics and society, and that is no coincidence at all.
Of course, it is up to the Palestinians and particularly Palestinian women to determine their own fate and place in society, and not for Westerners to dictate to them (criticize, yes, everyone has that right), especially when we are the ones actively aiding and abetting an occupation that has ruined their lives and undermined their position as much as any awful oppressive Hamas diktat, and in fact feeds into their oppression even more, as Hamas will use this as a cudgel against them, or an excuse to pass misogynist laws, or condone “honor” killings (nothing honorable about these), because they are “protecting Palestinian culture and Islam” from albeit real enemies.
Philip, I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate your evenhandedness here. Let the other side do the propagandizing. We liberals (and I mean that in the broadest sense of the term) need to fight for justice with honesty and impartiality. Doing so will only strengthen our cause.
btw. When you greet an older man in the Arab world, address him as Haji. Address an older women as Hala. Never look any woman straight in the face (lower your gaze and respect their modesty, and never but never be alone with a woman even by accident) and don’t shake hands with anyone unless a man makes the gesture first. It’s ruins their wadu. Arabs generally stay away from dogs because dogs ruin a person’s wadu too if they are touched. Wadu is the cleansing process Muslim perform for prayer (like nuns) and they like to keep it as long as possible. If you give the impression you have “missionary” tendacies, that is, to try and teach them away from their religion (everything they do is connected with religion) they may kidnap you, lock you in a room with a Quran for a few days. Just kidding, but the Taliban does it! It’s just not kosher to be a missionary in the Muslim world. You have to be mindful that YOU are the backward foreinger, not the other way around! Christian Arabs are not much different than Muslim ones. hardly I can tell the difference. They both reference God as Allah and follow many of the same customs. Many Christians fast for Ramadan. So just treat them all the same. Palestinians are happy and friendly people. They are most like Americans than any other people I know when it comes to disposition in many ways, I am always comfortable around them. They love jokes. They know westerners don’t know anything (of their ways) and they are patient but you can’t cross certain lines as I am telling you. Say a few words in Arabic and they love you for attempting to learn. Palestinians are more “old fashion” in many ways as opposed to others in other areas. If they invite you to dinner and you are served a goat’s head on a platter that is a great honor! Like getting the king treatment.
You may know all or a few or nothing of what I’ve told you. But after this post I am under the impression you are over there just like a typical westerner in the Middle East, nothing more. You should try and become one of them. Never try and change what in reality is “golden.” Just cherish it. Palestinians are so warm as opposed to cold Jews (sorry to say that but in comparison it’s true) you would grow to love them more than your own people. The children are the best creatures there. Get close to them, walk around the streets with them (they will find you) they will act as your guides and be your joy in the Middle East.
Comments on this entry are closed.