Women in Saudi Arabia: A Long Road to Equality

Turkish President Erdogan: Women Are Not Equal to Men

Turkish President Declares Women and Men Are Not Equal

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that
women aren't equal to men

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Recep Tayyip Erdogan adds feminists do not understand the concept of motherhood to an audience of Turkish women

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has set off a new controversy, declaring that women are not equal to men and accusing feminists of not understanding the special status that Islam attributes to mothers.

Addressing a meeting on women and justice in Istanbul, Erdogan said men and women are created differently, that women cannot be expected to undertake the same work as men, and that mothers enjoy a high position that only they can reach.

He said: "You cannot put women and men on an equal footing. It is against nature. They were created differently. Their nature is different. Their constitution is different."

"Their characters, habits and physiques are different.... You cannot place a mother breastfeeding her baby on an equal footing with men. » | Agency | Monday, November 24, 2014

Equality Is Drinking and Dying Like Men

MAIL ONLINE: A few weeks ago, I was asked to curate a small exhibit at London’s Fashion And Textile Museum. Just a little thing about fashion in fiction, and how various writers, from Truman Capote to Jilly Cooper, have influenced and reflected the fashions of their day through their books.

We chose 30 Penguin Classics in all, including some of my all-time favourites by Daphne du Maurier and Roald Dahl.

Re-reading bits here and there, however, the ones that struck me as culturally most significant were Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone and Lynne Reid Banks’s The L-Shaped Room. Two very different writers, both wrestling with the same subject: sexual equality.

Written in the late Fifties and early Sixties, both books explored the unappetising choices faced by young women who dared to challenge the cultural conventions of their day. Rejection, loneliness, poverty, the struggle between intellectual fulfilment and children: all these were hot topics, then as they are now.

Fifty years on, and the passage of time has made the practical path to equality a lot less bumpy; emotionally, however, it’s still a rollercoaster. In the West at least, women have largely got what we wanted: equality enshrined in law, power and influence where it matters. The question is: has it made us happy?

It’s not a question that feminism often dares to ask itself. In fact, merely typing it might well be construed as an act of betrayal against my own sex.

Nevertheless, it’s an important question that needs to be addressed. Because in the same way that things that make you happy aren’t always good for you (cocktails) it follows that things that are good for you don’t always make you happy (cod liver oil).

Could it be that equality, while desirable, has actually done women more harm than good? » | Sarah Vine | Tuesday, October 29, 2013

UN Sees Gender Gap in Iranian Workforce

New statistics suggest women are under-represented as only 16 percent are currently employed despite qualifications.

Op-Ed: Europe Deserves Islam

ARUTZ SHEVA: The anti-gender radicalism of Europe would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic, says the writer.

On the 7th of June, the elementary school "Yves Codou", in the municipality of La Mole, France, celebrated the "Holiday of the Parents" instead of Mother's Day, so as not to upset the homosexual couples of France, where gay marriage is legal.

Now, when the new school year,begins in Mid-September, on the facade of the 55,000 educational buildings of France will be posted two pages divided into seventeen points and two chapters: "La République est laïque" and "L'école est laïque".

It is the long-awaited paper of secularism desired by the Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon. A sort of manifesto of the "révolution douce" or soft revolution, the French political correctness of extreme secularism and gay culture.

Peillon advanced the struggle "against any kind of determinism", family, ethnic, social, intellectual. He also wants to fight "homophobia" at school (read that, opposition to gay marriage and gender theory).

Peillon's ministry has just sent to all schools in the country a circular to "strongly encourage educating children about gender equality". The text recommended by the Snuipp, the main teachers' union, is titled "Daddy wears the skirt".

Some municipalities have already changed the enrollment form for schoolchildren by eliminating the words "father" and "mother", replacing them with "legal manager 1" and "legal manager 2". » | Giulio Meotti | Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Muslim Women in India Seek Gender Equality in Marriage
THE NEW YORK TIMES: NEW DELHI — Three years ago, Salma Khatun’s husband divorced her in a fit of rage after a quarrel, pronouncing what is known as the triple talaq in the presence of witnesses. The triple talaq is a formula of repudiation. The first two times it is pronounced, it can be revoked, but the third time it makes a divorce binding, according to some interpretations of Islamic law.

Although Ms. Khatun’s husband repented the next morning, the head cleric of their mosque in Delhi insisted that the divorce was binding. According to his reading of Islamic law, Ms. Khatun would need to marry another man, consummate the marriage and then divorce before she could remarry her husband.

For more than a decade, Muslim women’s organizations in India have been fighting for changes in the body of Islamic law that governs marriage, divorce and the property rights of women. But as the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board held its annual convention in Mumbai last week, the battle lines had never been so starkly drawn. Although the Indian Constitution guarantees equal rights to all citizens irrespective of their religion, Muslims are governed by the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937. Attempts to apply a common civil code have often been viewed as interference in the practices of India’s largest religious minority. » | Nilanjana S. Roy | Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Sweden to Give £300 a Month Bonus to Stay at Home Dads
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Swedish parliament has voted to give couples where the father takes over caring for the baby a 'gender equality bonus' of 3,000 Swedish Kronor (£287) each month, on top of existing paternity benefits set at 80 per cent of salary.

The Swedish vote comes as the UK's coalition government is seeking to roll back an earlier pledge to change the UK system so that British parents can share leave, as they do in Sweden.

"The government wants parents to share more equally in their parental leave, so that women aren't discriminated against on the labour market," said Niklas Löfgren, a spokesman for Sweden's Social Insurance Agency. "It is also to ensure that the father gets a closer relationship to the child at an earlier stage of its life." » | Richard Orange, Malmö | Monday, October 17, 2011

Anatomy of an Iranian Revolution Delayed
THE JAPAN TIMES ONLINE: YPSILANTI, Mich. — The ongoing conflict between Iran's rulers and the Iranian public is the result of a head-on collision between two contradictory forces. In recent years, public attitudes in Iran have become more liberal. At the same time, power has shifted from conservative pragmatism toward a much more militant fundamentalism. The call by the most important group of Iran's clerics for the election results to be thrown out is but the latest sign of the fight back of both the reformist and pragmatic conservative factions.

Thirty years after the Islamic revolution, Iranians are growing demonstrably less religious and more liberal. Two face-to-face surveys of more than 2,500 Iranian adults, conducted in 2000 and 2005, clearly show the trend. The percentage of those who "strongly agree" that democracy is the best form of government increased from 20 percent to 31 percent.

Similarly, on a number of questions concerning gender equality — including political leadership, equal access to higher education, and wifely obedience — the numbers continued a downward trend. Those who considered love as the basis for marriage increased from 49 percent to 69 percent, while those who depended on parental approval fell from 41 percent to 24 percent. In 2005, a much higher percentage than in 2000 defined themselves as "Iranian, above all" rather than "Muslim, above all."

This trend is not hard to understand. The imposition of a monolithic religious discourse on society has made liberal values attractive to Iranians. But, while this was reflected in reformist trends in the country's wider political life, a movement toward militant fundamentalism took shape within the regime's power structure. Reform-minded politicians were partly to blame for this change. Far from opposing absolutist power as an impediment to religious democracy, they tried to persuade the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of the value of reform.

But Khamenei had no interest in reform, as he made plain in dismantling the reform movement. The presidency of Mohammad Khatami, an avowed reformer, who served eight years, beginning in 1997, convinced the supreme leader that his authority would be assured only if the presidency was held by a subservient fundamentalist such as the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In this, Khamenei was following the lead of the late shah, who kept Amir Abbas Hoveyda, a loyal retainer, as prime minister from 1965 until the shah was overthrown in 1979.

The problem with the supreme leader's calculation, however, is that Ahmadinejad is a loose cannon. His populist rhetoric and religious fundamentalism have alienated a large section of conservative-pragmatist clerics and their supporters. >>> Mansoor Moaddel*, © 2009 Project Syndicate | Wednesday, July 15, 2009

*Mansoor Moaddel, a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, has conducted numerous opinion surveys in the Middle East.