The women of Arabia are emerging from behind Islamic restrictions to take their place in the corporate world. Kathy Evans reports from Doha
IT was not an auspicious start to the first ever conference on the rights of Arabian women in the workplace. “No cameras, no recording equipment,” said a veiled policewoman, guarding the conference hall from male infiltrators. Sheikha Moza, wife of the emir of Qatar and initiator of the conference was inside, and pictures or recordings of her were forbidden.
The meeting provided a rare insight into life behind the veil. For four days, participants were isolated from men and driven around in black-windowed Mercedes like precious sexual cargos.
The meeting brought together about 250 women from 16 Arab countries.
From Tunisia, Algeria and Kuwait came delegates in sharp business suits with power shoulders.
From Saudi Arabia, too, came an unveiled woman, working as a United Nations bureaucrat outside the kingdom. Other women from the conservative states travelled with a male relative, as tradition requires.
Most of the Qatari participants covered their hair and wore black cloaks. But some hid their faces under an impenetrable black chiffon scarf.
Their varying attire showed just how ideologically confused the Arab and Muslim world is about an issue likely to figure prominently on the political agenda: the status of women.
In some countries such as Tunisia, women enjoy Western-style family laws which grant them equal rights in divorce and custody actions, and the right to abortion on demand. They also vote. All this is, of course, sanctioned by the Koran, say Arab feminists.
More rigorous interpretations are followed in other states. In Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden to drive or travel alone. They are even still fighting for the right to have a plastic identity card. ID cards, which carry photographs, lead to men seeing the face, and that leads to independence, and independence leads to adultery, as a disgusted newspaper reader pointed out recently.
Jordanian women, meanwhile, are about to embark on a campaign to ban the ultimate bonus for Muslim men – the right to have four wives simultaneously. Once again, they are arguing on the basis of Islam, asserting that it is impossible to treat all the wives equally as the Koran requires.
This ideological confusion about what Islam does or does not say about the status of women comes at a time when the women of Arabia are emerging from local universities in huge numbers, demanding their rightful place in the job market.
In Qatar, like many other Gulf countries, women graduates and postgraduates now outnumber the men by three to two. Despite their qualifications, social traditions have made it hard for women to make headway in careers other than teaching.
The educational gap threatens to revolutionise gender relations. Some Qatari women are already earning more than their husbands.
Not all men, or even women, agree that it is socially acceptable for women to work. The emir’s wife organised the conference to encourage consensus in favour of careers for women.
Not surprisingly, sparks flew. A heavily veiled Saudi speaker argued that Islam obliged women to have as many as children as possible. Working could mean leaving children in the hands of heathen nannies.
One problem with women working in the Gulf is the taboo about mixing with men. In Saudi Arabia, male and female employees in government ministries have separate entrances and work on separate floors. Banks and restaurants have areas restricted to women. Many educated Gulf women ridicule such restrictions.
“What’s the point about talking about our rights among ourselves? We have to start a dialogue with men,” a Qatari graduate pointed out.
Not all agree. Fatima, a statistician, said she recently turned down a promotion as it would have involved extensive contact with men.
Sheikha Moza is thought to be behind the consideration the Qatari government is giving to women voting in the forthcoming local elections.
For the women of the rich Arab oil states, it would be a first, envied by all Gulf women. The future does, however, look bright and increasingly female. Yemeni women have just made it to Parliament in a straight contest with men. And in Doha, Qatari women were demanding government creches, and an end to restrictions on driving and single women travelling.
One went as far as to ask whether she should ask her husband to help around the house.