Yemen Women Reluctant to Change - Building Gender Balanced Business

On March 22nd, hundreds of Yemeni women congregated to celebrate a proposed law banning child marriage. They were outnumbered by fellow women who, the previous day, at the same spot, condemned the law as an intrusion of Western values.

This division, within the ranks of women themselves, highlights the fact that men are not the sole obstacle on the road to gender equality. In the Arab world, progress has been made. But it pales in comparison to what still has to be done.

Adversity in Yemen epitomizes a crucial part of the problem facing gender equality in the Arab world

• Important and undeniable progress has been made in Arab countries. Where female education was once unheard of and seemed absurd, today, two-thirds of university students in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia are women.
• Yet, according to the most recent Global Gender Gap report, a World Economic Forum survey measuring the opportunities for women in education, health, business and politics, all 14 Arab countries included in the list are found in the last 30 countries of the 134 nation pool.
• Though it would be easy to assume that men are holding back on the advancement of gender equality, the protest in Yemen points to the fact that women are also promoting the current inequalities – an issue that is not specific to Yemen, the 134th country on the Global Gender Gap report
• In Kuwait, though women were granted the right to vote five years ago and got their first parliament seats in 2009, many of them were apathetic and even resentful of the decisions.
• A 2009 survey of 15,000 Egyptian youths revealed that an astonishing 67% of female respondents believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife if she speaks to another man.

The difficulties encountered by Egypt’s government to appoint female judges shows that Arab men do not see gender equality under a very favorable light, but the stance of the Arab women, revealed by the Yemeni protestors, is much more surprising, and much more problematic.

The Economist Article