Women do not emasculate the state; religion does!
Today is International Women’s Day. In the rest of the world, it is a time to honor the achievements of women throughout history. In Lebanon, there is merely discontent. Pitiful progress on women’s rights is not surprising, because the issue has never been a priority for consecutive Lebanese governments, composed, by and large, of men.
Women are expected to work and be politically active when they need to be, but granting them their rights is always problematic. It is as if it will undermine the masculinity of the state. The state is weak, it is insecure and it is afraid of women.
When tourists and other visitors leave Beirut, they always take home with them a positive image of Lebanese women, that they are modern, educated and sophisticated. However, the façade of modernity hides a vicious reality: Lebanese women are still essentially second-class citizens.
While Lebanon has signed a number of international conventions on gender equality – in 1996, it ratified the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) – they were meaningless gestures, as legal and institutional impediments continue to block women’s liberation.
The crux of the matter lies in the fact that Lebanese law recognizes 18 confessions and grants authority to religious courts. Therefore personal status law depends on these various religious laws and not on one unified civil code.
The state-religion-family power triangle makes it too complicated for women to break away. Religion imposes discriminatory laws on the state, and these laws are welcomed by the traditional family structure which prefers to keep women in some degree of check. The public sphere is left to men, who in turn control politics, religion and family.
It is indeed a vicious circle. Discrimination still exists in the civil status, nationality, labor and social security laws, and the penal code.
The personal status laws threaten women with divorce and polygamy. Women come second on matters of compensation, child custody and inheritance. There is no legislative text to protect women from domestic violence.
In fact, violence against all women, especially foreign domestic workers, continues unabated with no indication from the state that it is a real social problem that needs to be addressed. “This is not the time. There are bigger issues” – we hear the same excuses every time.
But women make up half the population. Half of those who forced the Syrian army to withdraw in 2005 were women. Half of those who created the Independence Intifada were women. Half of those who voted for the majority of this government were women. Half of those who endured Israeli aggression were women. Half of those who have lost family members in all our wars and conflicts were mothers, sisters and daughters.
Women are required to endure hardship, resist occupation, demonstrate and vote for men, but they cannot call for their rights.
Lebanese women won the right to vote and to participate in national elections in 1952, but today, female political participation is unwelcome. In the June parliamentary elections, only 12 women ran for office, and they took only four out of 128 seats. With only 3.1 percent of seats now occupied by women, Lebanon is among the lowest in terms of female parliamentary representation in the Middle East, a little above Oman (none), Yemen (0.3 percent) and Bahrain (2.7 percent), but way below Syria (12.4 percent) and Iraq (25 percent).
Parliament has agreed on a 20 percent quota for women in the upcoming municipal elections, but this was cut from an original 30 percent proposed by Minister of Interior Ziad Baroud. Such quotas can be good because they encourage women to run, and be part of the decision-making process. However, 20 percent is humiliating. It is as if telling women that only two in ten could be considered citizens.
An estimated 50 percent of college graduates are women, but female participation in public life remains marginal. For instance, while 90 percent of those working in banks are women, there are no female bank directors.
To break away from the triangle of power, women’s advancement must be connected to a change in the political structure. A change that should move from the current sectarian and patriarchal structure to a modern state based on secularism and democracy.
But the stumbling block is not only legal. Women are themselves to blame. They need to unite, but the problem is that in Lebanon women’s groups and civil society organizations are competitive and fragmented. In addition, Lebanese women, like the majority of Lebanese men, are not mentally ready to cast off a sectarian system and move to a modern state based on democracy and secularism. It is as if they know what they want but they are too scared to step into the unknown. In the meantime, their rights are strangled by the same leaders they cheer for.
To achieve true emancipation, women need to look beyond, toward a real modern and egalitarian state. There is no way we can build a democratic, sovereign and modern Lebanon without granting women their rights and encouraging their participation in politics. If politicians are serious about their promises, they should take us seriously.
Hanin Ghaddar is managing editor of NOW Lebanon
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