Facts You May not Know About Arab Women's Roles!
By: Tasnim Elnasharty/ Arab America Contributing Writer
The position of women in the Arab world was not different from what it was in other regions of the world. Throughout history, this situation has gone through phases of discrimination that have led women to suffer restrictions on their rights and freedoms. Many of these restrictions are due to culture as they stem from tribal customs and traditions rather than being based on religious beliefs. However, some of these restrictions are based on religious beliefs. These restrictions represent an obstacle to women’s rights and freedoms. They are consequently reflected in the laws and legislation related to criminal justice, the economy, education, well as health and professional care.
The role of Arab women in education
Women played an essential role in the establishment of many Islamic educational institutions, such as the establishment of Fatima Al-Fihri to the university of Al-Qarawiyyin in 859. This continued during the period of the rule of the Ayyubids in the twelfth and thirteenth century, as more than 160 mosques and schools were constructed in Damascus, 26 of which were completed funded by women through the charitable endowment. Half of those enrolled in these schools were women from the royal class. As a result, opportunities for female education have emerged in the medieval Islamic world.
The women were described as pious and education. This was the case for children of families who were highly educated, as the son of jurists, where they wanted to ensure the highest levels of education for their sons, boys, and girls. Ibn Asaker states that he had studied by 80 women in his time.
The education of women in the Islamic world was inspired by the wives of the Prophet Muhammed, where Khadijia is a successful merchant, and Aisha is the famous modernizer. And it proved that Al-Shifa bint Abdullah Al-Mahajirah Al- Qurashiya taught Hafsa the mother of the believers to write with the approval of the Prophet Muhammed.
Women Role in Public
A woman’s work is a legitimate right for her, taking into account what this work is. For example, Arab laws and Jordanian law stipulate that women are entitled to all work that corresponds to their nature. For example, it is not permissible for women to work in quarries, crushers, construction work, mines, and areas where they can include radiation such as nuclear radiation or Infrared can be on the fetus, which leads to miscarriage or fetal deformity.
Islam allowed women to work with controls, and even women went out to battle to do nursing work. Some women in the first Islamic society may prepare nursing work for a military exit from the likes of Khansa, as well as education and teaching. Mrs. Aisha, the Prophet’s husband, had a scientific council as well as other women in Islam, and so on. From fields and fields.
When Europe was living in a period of darkness under the Church’s control of Europe and the Western world, there was what is known as chastity instruments that were put in place for married women to prevent them from adultery and others, except that the French Revolution and the beginning of the secularization stage or the separation of religion from the state in addition to the French Revolution and the World War made Western societies are in a very big stalemate in this respect, and they have made European societies cunning their principle of the freedom of women and taking their rights.
The global war left behind millions of dead people. Most of whom were men who are the pillar of armies that fought in world wars, leaving millions of widows and families without a breadwinner, so women were forced to go out to work in the factory and others to obtain the livelihood of their children, in addition to changing social concepts and Excessive advocacy emancipation in Europe after a harsh period experienced by the Church’s domination and tyranny in imposing religious opinion amounted to the execution of scholars for the mere opinion contrary to the Church, as happened when the Church executed the world Galileo to prove the theory of the rotation of the earth.
The contemporary Arab world
Arab women in opinion polls, a survey conducted by a Thomson Reuters Foundation, which included twenty-two Arab countries, showed that three of the five countries affected by the Arab Spring uprisings since 2011 – Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria ranked last in the list of Arab countries in which women’s rights declined.
The result of the poll was based on an evaluation of 336 experts on women’s rights to the extent that Arab governments respect the necessary provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in addition to the extent of the phenomenon of violence against them and its enjoyment of their reproductive rights, the type of treatment they receive within her family, and its role in politics and the economy
The study surprised observers that the Republic of Comoros – where women hold 20% of the portfolios – is at the top of the list of Arab countries in terms of their respect for women’s rights. It was followed by Oman [and Kuwait, Jordan, then Qatar].
The poll attributed Egypt’s recent occupation of the “terrible” situation of Egyptian women, according to experts’ opinion in most areas of respecting women’s rights, including widespread sexual harassment and female genital mutilation, the escalation of the phenomenon of exploitation of women, and the decline in freedoms since the 2011 uprising.
Source
https://ar.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=المرأة_في_الوطن_العربي&action=edit§ion=18
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