WUNRN
Institute for War & Peace
Reporting-IWPR
Protests have given female activists in Yemen, a rare opportunity to express their views.
By Afrah Nasser - The Arab Spring - 24 March 2011
Traditionally
in
Everybody
acknowledges that yes, we do have a voice, and the role of women in this
uprising is increasing day by day as we enter a new time of freedom for
everyone.
Women’s
participation in this revolution started on a very small scale. There were only
about ten women in Sana’a’s
And life is indeed
challenging for Yemeni women, every day. We constantly fight to claim our
rights at home, in the street, at work. In any kind of field, a woman has to
increase her efforts hugely to succeed. For instance, a 19-year-old cousin of
mine won a scholarship to study in
If a man makes one
per cent effort, a woman needs to make 200 per cent effort to get the same
result. I work as a journalist and I am the only woman in the newsroom. Even
there my colleagues find it hard to accept that I do go to places dominated by
men to report.
There is some
political participation by women, but it is very timid - women still live in a
prison of their own fear. We are not very politically aware. It is a process
and we are still at the very beginning. There are a few women politicians and
about 18 months ago President Ali Abdullah Saleh instituted a 15 per cent quota
of seats for women – but there aren’t enough women politicians to fill it.
But despite this
women have been participating in the protests to an unbelievable extent. The
female protesters come from all sectors of Yemeni society - women who do not
have their faces covered, like me, and others are much more conservative. They
are coming to an awareness that they have to be a huge part of building this
country. We gain in confidence and women begin to think that they have to have
a voice, a place in this new society - something that has never happened
before.
Talking to other
friends of mine, we feel we are revolting against our parents too. It’s a
double revolution, inside our homes as well as in
The extremism and
violence Saleh predicts will sweep
I am not worried
that there will be violence like there is now in Libya. There is no way things
will deteriorate here to that extent. The violence last week in which more than
50 people were killed won’t be repeated, I don’t think.
I am worried about
what the future holds – not because of the fear of violence, but because of the
uncertainty. But when I go to