Showing posts with label empowering women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label empowering women. Show all posts
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Barely three months ago, the world’s attention was drawn to the unprecedented public campaign led by Saudi women activists to be allowed to drive in their own country. This weekend, the octogenarian King Abdullah instead made a concession to women in a different area: they are now to acquire the right to vote, as well as being allowed (by 2015) to stand as candidates in municipal elections.
This still means that the nationwide local elections to be held this week will not see the involvement of women candidates or voters. But at least Thursday’s male-only elections, which have been delayed since 2009, appear to be going ahead – this will be only the second time anyone has voted since local elections were introduced in 2005.
Things may move slowly in Saudi Arabia, but support for managed change and transition appears to be an issue close to many Saudi hearts. Not for them the street protests seen across the rest of the Arab world this year; instead, they have delivered an accelerated series of online petitions addressed respectfully to the King, punctuated by the occasional arrest of a cleric, blogger or intellectual deemed to have overstepped the mark.
Even the campaign to promote the issuing of driving licences to women – which constitutes the main impediment to their legal right to drive – has, with a few notable exceptions, been conducted within certain norms. Most of the women to have taken charge of the steering wheel this year have been veiled and accompanied by a male guardian, as required by culturally enforced tradition, if not the full force of law.
In principle, women’s rights in Saudi Arabia are governed by the Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam and Islamic law (sharia), named after its 18th-century founder, Ibn Abdul Al-Wahhab. For over two centuries, he and his followers supported the ascendancy of the Ibn Saud dynasty as the temporal rulers of what eventually, through conquest, became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932. Read on and comment » | Claire Spencer | Monday, September 26, 2011
Claire Spencer is head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House
Friday, June 03, 2011
“The issue has not so far been tabled with the council for discussion,” he said, adding that not every issue in the public domain was discussed by the council.
Explaining the mechanism of tabling issues for discussion at the council, Al-Asheikh said a motion must either come from the government, at least one member of the council or when the council itself expressed a desire to deliberate a certain issue, reported local Arabic daily Al-Jazirah.
Saudi writer and columnist Abdullah Abdul Sattar Al-Alami said he and a group of other people formally asked the council to discuss the issue of women driving.
“We sent our request in a letter sent by express mail on Feb. 8, 2011,” he said in a statement to Arab News Thursday.
Al-Alami said the request was signed by a large number of academics, literary figures, media professionals, businessmen and women, housewives, students, government employees, a former ambassador, a former undersecretary to the UN secretary-general, a deputy CEO of a big company in the Eastern Province and a prominent member of the National Society for Human Rights. » | ARAB NEWS | Friday, June 03, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Manal al-Sharif, jailed after posting a YouTube video of herself driving, leaves Women2Drive movement
A Saudi Arabian woman who was jailed for driving a car has been released after nine days, having pledged to take no further part in a campaign to persuade the Saudi authorities to allow women to drive.
Manal al-Sharif, 32, was freed from the women's prison in Dammam on Monday. She was arrested after posting a video of herself driving around the eastern city of Khobar as part of the Women2Drive campaign of which she was a key organiser.
Her case attracted international attention after her lawyer said she had been charged with driving without a licence, prompting other women to do the same and provoking public debate in Saudi Arabia. Two other women associated with the campaign were also questioned by police and warned off further campaigning. One Muslim cleric even called for Sharif to be lashed.
"She wrote a pledge that she will not drive a car and after what has happened she has decided to give up the campaign and not be part of the protests," said Sharif's lawyer, Adnan al-Salah.
He said the authorities had not imposed the conditions, but Sharif had decided to make the pledge herself.
The climax of the Women2Drive campaign, a mass drive on 17 June partly inspired by demonstrations against restrictions on civil liberties across the Middle East, now appears to be in doubt.
On Tuesday, Sharif expressed "profound gratitude" to King Abdullah for ordering her release and appeared to abandon her call for women to be allowed to drive, according to a written statement published by the al-Hayat newspaper. » | Robert Booth | Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Saudi Arabia’s ‘Women2Drive’ Movement Reacts to Arrest »
FACEBOOK: Women2Drive »
TWITTER: @Women2Drive »
Related »
Monday, May 30, 2011
ARAB NEWS: DAMMAM/JEDDAH: Detained motorist Manal Al-Sharif has reportedly written a letter of appeal to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah seeking her release.
The story was being widely discussed on websites and online editions of some Arabic newspapers on Sunday, but there was no official confirmation that she has written to the king. Repeated attempts by Arab News to get in touch with her lawyer, Adnan Al-Saleh, were unsuccessful.
A Jeddah-datelined AFP story quoted the lawyer as saying: “Al-Sharif hopes that the king will order her release and close her file.” Al-Sharif was arrested on May 21 while driving in Alkhobar, a day after she posted footage on the video-sharing website YouTube showing her behind the wheel.
Her father, Masoud Al-Sharif, initially spoke to the media after her arrest but has since declined to speak to any member of the media. “He is very upset at being misquoted and misrepresented in news reports,” a source told Arab News. “The father was particularly upset at the media for publishing baseless reports such as that of her breaking down in the women’s prison in Dammam.”
The other reason for the father not to speak to the media, according to the source, is to avoid unnecessary controversies.
“Some sections of the media have indeed tried to sensationalize the whole story without realizing the adverse impact it has on her case,” the source said.
Al-Sharif's father called on Eastern Province Gov. Prince Muhammad bin Fahd last week and explained his daughter's situation and change of heart.
“She has committed a mistake and has now realized her mistake and has since withdrawn from the so-called June 17 campaign through a social media website that incited women to take the wheel,” he was quoted as saying in the local Arabic media.
Ghazi Al-Shammari, a local official who met Manal Al-Sharif last week, also said that she feels remorseful.
“I made a mistake, and I’m a daughter of this nation. I have nobody but my family and the sons and daughters of my nation. I advise girls of my generation to rally behind our leadership and the Ulema. They know better than us about our condition. I’m confident about what I’m saying after sitting alone and contemplating,” Al-Shammari quoted Al-Sharif as saying in one Arabic newspaper. » | Siraj Wahab & Muhammad Humaidan | ARAB NEWS | Published: Sunday, May 29, 2011; Updated: Monday, May 30, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
NZZ am SONNTAG: Ein neues Selbstbewusstsein hat die saudischen Frauen erfasst. Sie wollen sich das Recht auf Autofahren erkämpfen. Das erzürnt die Konservativen.
Das neue Selbstbewusstsein arabischer Bürger hat auch die saudischen Frauen erreicht. Sie fordern die konservativen Kleriker in einem neuen Ausmass heraus und finden auch zunehmend Unterstützung ihrer männlichen Landsleute. Die jüngste Debatte im Internet, in den sozialen Netzwerken und in etablierten saudischen Medien löste die Aktivistin Manal al-Sharif aus. Sie fuhr verbotenerweise Auto in der Stadt al-Chubar und liess sich dabei auch von einer Freundin filmen. Dann veröffentlichte sie ihre Aktion auf dem Internetportal Wikipedia, mit der Aufforderung an alle saudischen Frauen, ihrem Beispiel zu folgen. In mehreren Fällen hatte die saudische Justiz in den vergangenen Jahren es einfach ignoriert, wenn sich Frauen ans Steuer gesetzt hatten. Al-Sharifs öffentlichen Aufruf empfanden die Behörden aber offenbar als nicht mehr hinnehmbar. Am vergangenen Wochenende wurde sie verhaftet. Al-Sharif besitzt laut ihrem Anwalt einen ausländischen Führerschein. Die Justiz begründet ihre Festnahme dennoch damit, dass sie ohne Führerschein gefahren sei, andere Frauen angestiftet habe, dasselbe zu tun, und die öffentliche Ordnung gestört habe. » | Max Borowski, Jerusalem | Sonntag, 29. Mai 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
THE GUARDIAN: Manal al-Sharif, the Saudi mother arrested for uploading a video of her driving on YouTube, faces another 10 days in jail
A Saudi Arabian woman who posted a video online of her driving her car is facing another 10 days in prison, according to reports from the kingdom.
Manal al-Sharif, a 32-year old mother who drove around the eastern city of Khobar last Saturday, had been expecting to be released on Friday after five days in jail on charges her lawyer described as driving without a licence, provoking other women to do the same and provoking public opinion in Saudi Arabia. It is disputed by lawyers whether it is illegal for women to drive under national law but it is socially and religiously unacceptable in many quarters.
"The investigator needs another 10 days to complete his investigation," said Al-Sharif's lawyer, Adnan Al Salah. "He will decide whether Manal is innocent and has to be released or he will refer her to the prosecution unit, a government organisation and they might refer her to a special prosecutor to deal with the case. I feel the fair and right thing would have been to release her on bail."
The extension of the investigation was interpreted as a show of defiance by the Saudi authorities in the face of growing domestic and international pressure to release Al-Sharif. » | Robert Booth and Mona Mahmoud | Thursday, May 26, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Manal al-Sharif is expected to spend the rest of this week in prison. Her crime? Driving a car in Saudi Arabia.
The arrest on Sunday puts a new and gloomy perspective on all that euphoria surrounding revolutions in the Middle East, doesn't it? Women may have taken to the streets from Egypt to Libya, Tunisia to Yemen, but in the richest and most powerful Arab state, their rights are frankly non-existent.
So great are their demands that some campaigners have criticised Sharif for diverting attention away from what really matters. Does it matter that women aren't allowed to drive if they can neither vote nor live independently in a country where men have automatic legal guardianship? The 32-year-old Sharif and other campaigners argue that without being able to drive women are entirely physically dependent on their male relatives. The issue is also a financial one – campaigners argue that women and their families need about $350 a month to hire one of the estimated 800,000 foreign drivers in the kingdom.
Sharif's stunt – she posted a YouTube clip of her driving a car which can still be seen here on al-Jazeera – was designed to garner support for a national protest on 16 June, when she hopes thousands of women will take on the authorities. Read on and comment » | Jane Martinson |Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: What tells us more about Saudi Arabia – the knowledge that it remains the only country in the world where women are banned from driving, or that an increasing number of women are prepared to take the risk of openly flouting the rule?
Manal al-Sharif, 32, was arrested at the weekend after posting a dramatic YouTube video – mundane anywhere else – of herself at the wheel in her home city of Khobar. But then her weekday life as a computer security consultant hardly squares with the popular image of the repressed Saudi woman either.
Much has been written about the Arab Spring this year, and Saudi Arabia has become its leading opponent. It offered asylum to President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali of Tunisia, backed President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to the hilt, and sent troops to crush protests in neighbouring Bahrain.
But in its own way it started the whole process off. Since King Abdullah, the current monarch, came to the throne in 2005 he has eased restrictions on freedom of speech and particularly on women, encouraging them to study and work.
He opened Saudi Arabia's first mixed sex university, and even appointed a woman minister.
In return a small but growing band of middle-class professional women have both expressed gratitude and used the opportunity to press for further reforms, big and small. » | Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent | Monday, May 23, 2011
Related links here, here, and here
Monday, November 24, 2008
ARAB NEWS: The first ladies of several Arab countries recently called for greater empowerment of women in the Arab world, so that women could play a role in building their countries and communities. They also stressed the need for promoting dialogue, between Arab countries on the one hand and Arabs and the international community on the other, to boost cooperation in the service of humanity.
Urging the empowerment of women is crucial to our region. We need to work harder to create a consensus in the Arab world to support women in leadership positions. The more we see women in power, the more people will get used to the fact that women are capable leaders. However, recruiting women to run for a local office is still a real challenge for our region. In the United States, there are many organizations that give women the support they need to reach decision-making positions.
Emily’s List, Emerge, The White House Project and The League of Women Voters are among the national organizations that pursue this goal. Emily’s List is a group that helps young women to become successful candidates for political office. It trains women so they improve eligibility and qualification for public office. There is a lot that we can learn from these organizations, and there are a lot of strategies that we can adopt in order to succeed in empowering women to run for public office. >>> Samar Fatany | November 24, 2008
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