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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/13/arab-women-egypt-laws-parliament

ARAB WOMEN CHALLENGED TO KEEP GAINS OF REVOLUTIONS

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The revolutions freed millions from dictatorship but are delivering only limited gains in the struggle for women's equality – and in some cases are threatening to set back the advances already made.

Chris McGreal in Washington - 13 June 2012

Egyptians celebrate the end of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. But now women are attacked in Tahrir Square. Photograph: Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP

When Yemen's long-term dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh tried to silence Tawakkul Karman, he called in her brother.

Karman was in prison for her part at the forefront of the popular revolution against Saleh's rule, a role that earned her the Nobel peace prize. The president's warning to Karman's brother was blunt. "Saleh told him a clear message: if you don't restrain your sister, whoever disobeys me will be killed," she said. "My brother told me the day I was released from prison. The next morning I went protesting."

The threat says much about Saleh, who was finally toppled in February. But his attempt to use Karman's brother to silence her says something about Yemeni society and other countries across the Arab world where women were in the vanguard of revolutions – joining protests en masse, facing bullets and being killed – looking for more than solely political emancipation.

"The most important thing the Arab spring brought us was to give women leadership roles," said Karman. "When women become leaders of men, and men are following, when women sacrifice themselves and get killed in front of men, when they get detained for political issues and men don't feel ashamed of women who are arrested, this is a change. But is it enough to change the situation of women? The answer is: not yet."

Karman was among several women who played leading roles in uprisings across the Arab world who gathered in Washington recently for a meeting of Vital Voices, a group founded in 1997 by the then first lady Hillary Clinton to empower female leaders. There was agreement that the revolutions freed millions from dictatorship but are delivering only limited gains in the struggle for women's equality – and in some cases are threatening to set back the advances already made.

This week Clinton, who is now US secretary of state, said women's rights in newly liberated Arab countries were a test of whether the revolutions were living up to their promise.

"One of the important indicators as to how the whole process of democratisation, political reform, economic reform is going is the way that the newly formed governments and their allies in the various countries treat women," said Clinton. "To that end, there's mixed news. There's some positive news in that there are certain guarantees put forth about women's rights and opportunities. But there are some worrying actions that certainly don't match those guarantees."

The challenge was demonstrated at the weekend in Cairo's Tahrir square, the crucible of the Egyptian revolution, as hundreds of men attacked women demonstrating for an end to sexual harassment and assaults. Marianne Nagui Hanna Ibrahim was among the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in the square last year for the protests that brought down President Hosni Mubarak.

"During the 18 days against Mubarak there were no women and men. It was just Egyptians in danger. I was in the square almost daily and I didn't witness a single case of sexual harassment.

"But that changed after Mubarak stepped down. We were back to face the reality of where we are as Egyptian women," she said. "We're not a priority even with fellow revolutionaries. They're just thinking of the political change but no one is thinking of setting the rules for basic rights including women's rights. I think because even the activists don't really consider women's rights part of the larger concept of human rights, which is a huge issue."

The setbacks are not only on the street. Some members of Egypt's first freely elected parliament, in which the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest party, are pressing to scrap laws that protect women on the grounds that they were introduced by the Mubarak regime and are therefore illegitimate.

"We're going years backwards when it comes to women's issues. One MP wanted to discuss cancelling the ban on female genital mutilation. Another proposed reducing the age of marriage to 12 for girls. Another wanted to cancel the law giving the right to Muslim women to initiate divorce. If this is how the Egyptian parliament is after the revolution we have a serious problem," Ibrahim said. "We know the Muslim Brotherhood agenda. We're not worried that they're likely to force us to wear veils. I'm thinking more on the deeper level because they consider women as second class. You can see it from their speeches and statements on television. They're always talking about morals, virtues, family. They want to keep us in the home. This is how they see women. Not as an equal citizen."

In the early days of the Libyan revolution, when victory was far from assured, Salwa Bugaighis was to be found sitting with her gun in her lap in Benghazi as Muammar Gaddafi's forces besieged the city. She was an original member of the rebels' national transitional council but quit after a few months because women were virtually excluded from the new government.

Bugaighis, a human rights lawyer, has campaigned to get as many women as possible on the ballot for next month's elections to a national conference that will appoint a government to draw up a new constitution.

"There are many women candidates. We know they will not win but we want to send a message that we are here; even if we lose this time, there will be the next time," she said.

"It's culture and psychological too. For decades, men and women both didn't see any women in power so automatically they thought this is the role of the man. During the Gaddafi years, there were 132 ministers. Just three of them were women. Those three are not the kind of women people like." Those ministers included Huda Ben Amer, who rose to become one of the former Libyan dictator's most trusted lieutenants after a stomach-churning incident in which she was an enthusiastic participant in a public hanging in Benghazi in 1984.

Bugaighis is looking beyond the immediate challenges of the armed factions that still hold sway in parts of Libya to the writing of a new constitution to guarantee equality. But she says practice will matter more than declarations.

"I want to be able to feel it. I'm not worried about the law and the constitution, I'm worried about the awareness of the people. In Egypt and Syria and Tunisia there was a constitution but did they respect that constitution? Did they practice that constitution? If the government respects the constitution, the ordinary people will respect the constitution," she said.

There is common agreement that the revolution has changed the game. But, says Ibrahim: "When it comes to women, it has failed. The biggest powers in the country at the moment are the military and the Muslim Brotherhood and both are women-free by default.

"But the revolution has also changed the situation. You can see it in the young women. We are more persistent in claiming our rights. More women are talking about sexual harassment than before. We are open about it and we are clear about our demands. The social change that is taking place – it's gradual but it's still there.

"The hope I'm still holding on to is that during the 18 days we were on the frontlines as women, and women lost their lives, they were injured, and they were fighting shoulder to shoulder next to men. No one can take this from us because we were there." Karman agrees. "The revolution is still continuing. Now women are taking the role of being the saviour and not the victim waiting for a solution to rescue her from those who took her rights," she said. "We will not stand for the fact that women would be involved in fighting for the revolution but post-revolution they will disappear. We've passed that time when women can be used that way."