Moving Beyond Democracy: What Causes Variations in the Level of Gender Equality across Arab States?

Transcription

1 Moving Beyond Democracy: What Causes Variations in the Level of Gender Equality across Arab States? Amaney Jamal, Princeton University Vickie Langohr, College of the Holy Cross* This paper was prepared for the Middle East Politics Working Group Workshop, Cornell University, March 27-28, 2009 Comments are welcome, but please do not cite the paper without authors permission. *Authorship is alphabetical. 1

2 Recent scholarship has argued that systematic discrimination against women is a key reason for the lack of democracy in the Muslim world. Steven Fish argues that the gap between men s and women s access to goods such as education and representation in parliament and high-level private sector positions is more pronounced in Muslim countries than in the rest of the world and that this discrimination is strongly related to lower Freedom House scores. 1 Using opinion data from the World Values Surveys (WVS), Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris find that there is more support for traditional roles for women among Muslim publics than in non-muslim populations, and that attitudes toward the role of women are strongly connected to chances for democratization, as among all the countries included in the WVS, support for gender equality a key indicator of tolerance and personal freedom is closely linked with a society s level of democracy. 2 In this paper we are concerned with similar questions in the subset of Muslim countries that are often argued to be the worst performers on gender 3 and on democracy 4 countries in the Arab world. This paper examines several arguments which attempt to explain this systematic discrimination, focusing particularly on the question of whether inegalitarian attitudes, levels of human development, and levels of democratization in the region play a central role. By looking at the variation in gender outcomes that exists in the Arab world, we offer a more precise explanation of the factors that shape gender outcomes in the region. 1 Steven Fish, Islam and Authoritarianism, World Politics 55, October Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, The True Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Policy, March-April 2003, 67 3 Building on Fish s findings, Donno and Russett argue that when controlling for a wider set of socioeconomic indicators than those used by Fish, Muslim countries still perform worse on gender outcomes than non-muslim ones, but also that the effect is much stronger and more consistent for Arab countries. Daniela Donno and Bruce Russett, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Female Empowerment: What Are the Linkages? World Politics, July 2004, Stepan and Robertson argue that once levels of GDP are taken into consideration, non-arab Muslim countries are actually more electorally competitive than would be expected, while Arab countries are the largest single readily identifiable group among all those states that underachieve (relative to what one would expect from their levels of GDP per capita) when it comes to the holding of competitive elections. Alfred Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, An Arab More Than Muslim Electoral Gap, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3, July 2003, 30. 2

3 We first contend that while levels of socioeconomic development do affect levels of gender equality, this relationship is not systematic in explaining gender performance of the Arab world. We then turn to the wider question of the relationship between Arab authoritarian rule and gender discrimination. Previous work by Daniela Donno and Bruce Russett and by the authors of this paper suggests that neither poor performance on quantifiable gender indicators such as those used by Fish, nor inegalitarianism as expressed in the more qualitative measure of gender attitudes revealed in WVS surveys, are causally related to the Arab democratic deficit. But what if we turn the causal equation around, asking not if poor gender performance impedes democracy, but if authoritarian rule promotes or impedes gender equality? While the answer to this question is important in and of itself, the question can also help us to understand if, and how, inegalitarian attitudes affect gender outcomes. Gender attitudes in the Arab world are generally inegalitarian. An examination of the responses of the fourth wave World Values Survey shows that the Arab world holds the most inegalitarian attitudes in the world. Citizens in the Arab world were far more likely to believe that men made better political leaders, university education is more important for a boy than a girl, and men have more rights to jobs than do women. (See Table 1, Appendix) But since all Arab countries have authoritarian regimes in which the actual holders of power are either not elected at all monarchs or elected in almost completely uncompetitive polls (presidents) we cannot assume a priori that any action taken or position held by these leaders is reflective of popular opinion. In Arab countries in which some degree of liberalization has taken place, however, freer (but not fully free) elections have allowed the creation of lower houses that are to some extent reflective of popular opinion. When the policy preferences of unelected leaders clash with majorities in these elected lower houses, then, we make the assumption that it is the preference of the lower house majority which more accurately represents popular opinion. When looking at how attempts to pass legislation 3

4 affecting women s rights have played out in these countries, we can get some sense of the role that both popular opinion and varying degrees of authoritarianism play in gender outcomes. What we find is the following: 1) As Laurie Brand suggests, liberalization both allows women s rights supporters greater freedom to mobilize and, in much of the Arab world, increases the number and strength of Islamists with conservative gender views in lower houses. 5 2) Elected lower houses in liberalizing regimes have often attempted to block gender equality, particularly when Islamist parties held significant numbers of seats in these lower houses. 3) Heads of state in liberalizing regimes have frequently used undemocratic methods to block these inegalitarian pieces of legislation and to introduce more women-friendly policies. These policies include introducing more egalitarian legislation during periods when parliaments are dissolved, or using upper houses whose members are chosen by the regime to block inegalitarian legislation popular in elected lower houses. So far, these findings suggest that in Arab liberalizers the key obstacle to increasingly inegalitarian laws for women is the ability of unelected leaders to block popular opinion i.e., continuing authoritarianism. And we do argue in this paper that the commitment of unelected leaders to particular pieces of more egalitarian gender legislation has been essential in improving women s position in the countries we examine.. Further we also find that: 4) Public opinion is not uniformly on the side of maintaining discriminatory policies. Even among citizens who hold more conservative views on gender, one finds that they often support egalitarian laws for other strategic considerations. Female voters have provided strong support for Islamist parties, and in Kuwait, Jordan, and Yemen there is evidence either of Islamist parties 5 Laurie Brand, Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences, Columbia,

5 adopting more egalitarian positions, or at least of these parties being severely internally divided over conservative gender positions, due to fear that these stances would cost them votes, in some cases specifically female votes. In Yemen and Jordan party positions criticizing women s right to work have led to heated internal debates initiated by party members convinced that these positions have led female voters away from the parties. However, in the case of Jordan (as well as in other Arab countries not examined in this paper), the IAF strongly argued against more egalitarian changes to personal status law, with no concern that this position would discourage female voters. This may well be, as other authors have discussed in other contexts, because key parts of the Personal Status Law are often viewed as being directly and clearly ordained by shari a and thus neither men nor women sympathetic to Islamist positions support changing them. 5) While it is clear that unelected leaders commitment to gender reform has been important in improving women s position, it is also clear that much of this commitment comes from a concern for foreign approval. Foreign approval has been vital in places where there have been reforms. Conversely, however, in places where Islamists are capable of blocking reforms, they often cite Western intervention as a reason to block more egalitarian laws. While we reference the experiences of many Arab countries in this paper we focus most closely on four cases: Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait and Yemen. Examining these countries allows us to gauge the importance of regime commitment, while also examining the role of public opinion, on gender outcomes. The cases provide us with necessary variation and controls to test our hypotheses and advance our argument. First, all four countries are partially free countries by Freedom House standards and have undergone liberalizations in the past twenty years. Liberalization has resulted in freer elections for lower houses and politics that are competitive enough that we can reconstruct battles between somewhat freely elected legislatures and unelected leaders representing two different sets of policy preferences on gender issues. Using these countries also allows us to examine the role 5

6 of regimes in improving the status of women while controlling for gender attitudes as expressed in surveys. All four countries are among those which have participated in the Arab Barometer surveys, which include questions on gender attitudes. Further, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, and Yemen have wide variation on levels of development: according to the UNDP s 2007/8 Human Development Report, Kuwait is a high human development country with a GDP per capita of $26,321, Jordan and Morocco are medium human development countries with GDPs of $5,530 and $4,555 respectively, and Yemen falls in the low human development category with a GDP of only $ This variation allows us to test qualitatively the claim that we make early in the paper using regionwide data that GDP and levels of development are not strong predictors of performance on gender indicators in the Arab world. To the extent that we find similar patterns of regime/opposition dealings with gender issues across these four countries, despite their enormous variation in levels of economic development, this provides further support for this contention. Research Question: What Explains Levels of Variation in the Status of Gender in the Arab World? Level of Human and Economic Development: Is there reason to believe that women s status is strongly linked with levels of economic development? In Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World,, Inglehart and Norris offer what they call a revised version of modernization theory, 7 in which attitudes towards the role of women change in predictable ways as societies develop economically. For Inglehart and Norris, these attitudinal changes are essential to improving outcomes for women, as where there are more egalitarian attitudes, these are systematically related to the actual condition of men s and women s lives. 8 6 UNDP Human Development Report 2007/8 7 Rising Tide, 10 8 Ibid, 10 6

7 Industrialization, they argue, leads large numbers of women to become educated, work outside the home, have smaller families, and obtain the right to vote; in post-industrial societies women consolidate these achievements by gaining more power in the workplace and in politics. These economic changes bring with them attitudinal shifts, as the importance of the traditional family declines, secularism spreads, and daily economic security allows citizens to turn from survival to self-expression values such as support for gender equality. In pre-industrial societies, by contrast, the constant struggle for economic survival and corresponding insecurity develop(s) cultures mistrustful of rapid change, emphasizing the values of traditional authority and strong leadership.backed up by social sanctions and norms derived from religious authorities. In these societies, the traditional twoparent family, with its division of sex roles between male breadwinner and female caregivers, is crucial for..survival. 9 Culture matters, as attitudes in Muslim countries are substantially worse than those in other countries even once key development indicators are controlled for, leading Inglehart and Norris to conclude that Islamic religious heritage is one of the most powerful barriers to the rising tide of gender equality. 10 In other work, however, the authors seem to suggest that even in the Muslim world, continued economic development will improve opinions, as they note that relatively industrialized Muslim societies such as Turkey have gender views similar to those of other new democracies. 11 The correlation between economic and human development and gender development in the Arab world is strong, as demonstrated in Graph 1 below, which compares the Human Development Index scores and the Gender Development Index scores of countries in the region. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite variable developed by the U.N. Development Program which measures long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living 12 through 9 Ibid, Ibid, The True Clash of Civilizations, Human Development Report 2007/8, 355 7

8 measuring adult literacy rates, rates of enrollment in all levels of education, life expectancy at birth, and GDP per capita. The Gender Development Index (GDI) measures the same four indicators and is adjust(ed for) the average achievement to reflect the inequalities between men and women. 13 Graph 1: HDI and GDI Scores in All Arab countries Mean HDI and GDI score Arab countries Gender Development Indicator (mean) HDI score (mean) HDI every 5 years (1990, 1995, etc) Evidence that the relationship between economic development and gender equality may not be as strong as we expect, however, comes from several sources. When we look at oil rich countries in the Gulf for example, Kuwait has done better on gender than Saudi Arabia or the states of the UAE. Syria has done better than Algeria although each state has similar development trajectories. And the West Bank, despite its staggering economy, still outperforms many Arab countries on gender rights. If we look more closely at the four liberalizing countries which we focus on in this paper, we see that although development is closely correlated to GDI (See Table 1), an important insight 13 Ibid, 358 8

9 emerges from our analysis. Whereas most Western countries have a very close HDI to GDI ratio (approximating 1.00 in most cases), we see that the countries in the Arab World still underperform on gender given their levels of Human Development. Table 1: Comparison Between GDI and HDI values (in ascending order of gender performance, as measured by high GDI) GDI value HDI value GDI value as % of HDI value (GDI/HDI ratio) Position on list of GDI/HDI ratio, ranking out of 156 countries 14 Yemen % 156 of 156 Morocco % 147 of 156 Jordan % 119 of 156 Kuwait % 72 of 156 As suggested by Table 1, several Arab countries continue to underperform on gender given their levels of human development. Yemen is a very clear example of this. Tables 2 and 3 below compare Yemen, with a GDP of $930, to all countries in the Human Development Report with GDPs under $1, countries are in this GDP range, all but two of which are in sub-saharan Africa. As Table 2 indicates, on socioeconomic and macroeconomic indicators, Yemen s human development performance is generally quite close to that of the GDP average with a few exceptions. Table 2: Yemen Compared to GDP Average on Socio/Macroeconomic Indicators 14 Column 5 refers to the 156 countries for which both HDI and GDI figures were available so that a GDI/HDI ratio could be constructed. 9

10 GDPpc PPP 2005 Adult Literacy rate Gini index % of total pop urban 2005 Empl in ag as % of total empl, most recent year, % of total pop under age 15 Public expend on health, % of GDP, 2004 Public expend on educ, % of GDP Official devel assist, % of GDP Yemen Mil expend, % of GDP 2005 GDP 1, avg 15 Yemen s macro/socioeconomic profile differs from its comparison countries in a few ways, however, but these ways are unlikely to cause big differences between Yemen and the comparison countries on gender performance. Yemen spends more than double the GDP average on the military, in line with the fact that military expenditures are a larger percentage of GDP in the Middle East than they are in most other regions. It is also clear that much larger percentages of GDP in the GDP average countries 23 of 25 of which are in sub-saharan Africa are made up of foreign development assistance than in Yemen. These spending patterns differences could hurt women s equality, if significant proportions of the foreign aid to the African countries were spent on promoting women s development, and if Yemen s military spending diverted money from spending on social welfare. While we have no information on the first question, the latter seems unlikely. As the table above makes clear, the percentage of GDP that is dedicated to education in Yemen is not only more than twice as much as the GDP average, but it ties Yemen with Vanuatu as the fourth largest spender (as % of GDP) on education of all 154 countries in the Human Development Report. 16 This suggests that 15 GDP average countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone,Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. 16 Figures are Lesotho 13.4%, Botswana 10.7%, Cuba 9.8%, and Vanuatu and Yemen at 9.6%. 10

11 Yemen s high levels of military spending are unlikely to be coming at the cost of social welfare programs that could help promote gender equality. The final key difference between Yemen and the other countries Yemen s significantly lower levels of economic inequality as measured by Gini rates - should if anything provide an advantage to Yemeni women, since in a previous paper we found that higher Gini scores tended to depress levels of women s economic activity and increase literacy gaps between men and women. 17 Aside from these differences, however, Yemen looks very much like the GDP average in its rates of adult education, urbanization and agricultural employment, and in having a very young population. However, when we compare Yemen to the GDP average on gender indicators, there are very clear differences to the detriment of Yemeni women. With the exception of contraceptive use and fertility rates, Yemeni women are much less likely to be enrolled in all levels of education, elected to parliament, or earning a high percentage of what men earn than are their counterparts in countries at similar levels of development. Yemeni women s dismal educational performance is all the more marked given the government s exceptionally high spending on education referred to above. Thus, it appears that in our cases, HDI alone can not explain the dismal conditions of women in the Arab world. Table 3: Yemen Compared to GDP Average on Selected Gender Indicators Female literacy rate 2005 Ratio of female adult literacy rate to male Ratio of female gross primary school enrollment rate to male 2005 Ratio of female gross tertiary enrollment to male 2005 % of seats in parliament held by women Ratio of estimated female to male earned income % of married women using contracepts, Yemen Fertil rate, GDP avg The Democratic Deficit and Gender Attitudes: Do Attitudes Towards Women s Role Actually Affect Women s Rights and Levels of Democracy? Amaney Jamal and Vickie Langohr, APSA 2007, 7. 11

12 Level of Democratization: As the introduction to this paper discussed, several authors have claimed in the last several years that systematic gender discrimination impedes or possibly even prevents democratization. Russett and Donno tested Fish s argument connecting levels of democracy and gender discrimination by adding additional potential explanatory variables such as degree of democracy in the neighborhood and involvement in fatal military disputes, as well as more precisely measuring variables Fish had examined, such as degree of dependence on oil exports. Their expanded test led them to conclude that all but one of the gender outcomes measured by Fish (women in government) were unrelated to regime type, concluding that women s rights exhibit virtually no independent influence on democracy. 18 This finding was also confirmed by Jamal and Langohr in a recent paper. 19 Other indicators which measure gender egalitarianism differently than Fish, Donno and Russett similarly support this conclusion. The 2005 Freedom House report Women s Freedom in the Middle East assessed Arab countries in five categories which were generally more qualitative than those used by Fish and subsequent authors and, crucially, also measured personal status laws governing divorce and child custody which critically affect women s lives. 20 The report measured factors ranging from the degree of women s equality in the constitution and other laws, rights for women in personal status laws, levels of gender-based violence, women s political and civic participation, and their housing rights, reproductive rights and protection from harmful traditional practices. 21 The report found that two countries consistently earn the highest scores for the region: 18 Donno and Russett, The Democratic Deficit and Gender Attitudes: Do Attitudes Towards Women s Role Actually Affect Women s Rights and Levels of Democracy? Amaney Jamal and Vickie Langohr, APSA The introduction to the report, and links to all other report contents and tables, can be found at 21 Challenging Inequality: Obstacles and Opportunities Towards Women's Rights in the Middle East and North Africa, Sameena Nazir, Women s Freedom in the Middle East, Freedom House,

13 Tunisia and Morocco. 22 Tunisia was the highest-ranked country in all categories except Political Voice, where its lower ranking was due to the lack of freedom for both men and women. The 2005 Arab Human Development report similarly noted that Tunisia has made the most significant inroads (in the Arab world) in alleviating the injustices against women in personal status matters. 23 The Freedom House finding that Tunisia and Morocco rank the highest in gender egalitarianism once again suggests little connection between democracy and gender, as Tunisia is one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and Morocco is one of, if not the most, free and electorally competitive ones. In the twelve years prior to the 2005 Freedom House report, Tunisia was ranked by Freedom House as a Not Free country for all but one year 1997, when it received a Partially Free mark - while Morocco has been ranked as Partially Free since Freedom House rankings began in Morocco is also the only Arab country other than Lebanon and Palestine in which an opposition-dominated parliament has been allowed to come to power albeit within a political system whose basic contours are guaranteed by an unelected king and in which Islamist parties have been allowed to run and win enough seats that they can influence policy, perhaps the single best indicator of the degree of competition in an Arab country. Other evidence of the lack of a causal relationship between women s rights and democracy comes from looking at the diverging trends in women s rights and in levels of democracy in the region over the last few decades. Women s position has in key ways become much stronger in the region since the 1970s, and if there is a causal connection, or indeed even a strong correlation, between women s rights and democratization we should see the Arab world also becoming more democratic over this period. Instead, we find the opposite. See Graph 2 below. On average the status of women has improved in the region, even while the region has regressed on the democratization scale. Female labor participation is increasing faster in MENA 22 Ibid. 23 Page 2 of 2005 Arab Human Development Report Executive Summary: 13

14 than in other developing regions, partly because their rates are so low to begin with. 24 Similarly, education rates for both women and men have increased extraordinarily quickly in the MENA. According to a 2004 World Bank report, among the total population in MENA over the age of 15, the average years of schooling rose from less than a year in 1960 to 5.3 years in 1990 the largest gain of any region in the world. For women, the increase was more dramatic from.5 to 4.5 years. 25 The result was dramatic increases in literacy, with 16.6% of the population literate as an average MENA figure in 1970 and 52.5% literate in These increases were enabled largely by strong commitment by MENA governments to education spending - in 2000 the average percentage of GDP spent by MENA governments on education was 5.3%, while the average in South Asia was 2.5% and in sub-saharan Africa 3.4% 27 - and aided by the fact that against the background of increased conservatism in the region, education has been a widely accepted and uncontroversial area of gender inequality for governments to address. 28 Thus, while women in the Arab world still lag behind their counterparts in other regions in terms of the percentage of the workforce made up by women and in women s literacy rates, improvement in both indicators has been enormous over the past several decades. In spite of such advances, however, the Arab world is no more democratic today than it was two decades ago. In fact, close examination of basic World Bank Governance indicators from also shows that the Arab world on average has regressed on basic Government Effectiveness, Voice 24 Zafiris Tzannatos and Iqbal Kaur, Women in the MENA Labor Market, in Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society, eds. Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), Gender and Development in the Middle East and North Africa: Women in the Public Sphere, World Bank 2004, Ibid, Ibid, Ibid, 28 14

15 and Accountability, Rule of Law and Corruption scores as well. These indicators are important measures that also gauge the overall level of democracy in a given region. 29 Graph 2: Connections Between Freedom House Scores and GDI Scores Reversed Freedom House score (mean) Mean FH and GDI score For Middle East/North Africa Gender Development Indicator (mean) Freedom House GDI FH score reversed (7=most democratic) Inegalitarian Gender Attitudes Political culture arguments suggest that where women are doing badly, this should in large part be because of the prevalence of inegalitarian gender attitudes. In an earlier paper, we found that based on gender attitudes in 45 nations, a country s attitudes towards women s rights were strongly linked to the status of women in society even while controlling for economic development, level of democracy, inequality, and level of urbanization. 30 Those countries that had poorer attitudes also had poorer gender records. Inglehart and Norris would not find this surprising, as they argue that where 29 See: for interactive dataset 30 We rely on data from 45 countries for which there is WVS data available. 15

16 there are more egalitarian attitudes, these are systematically related to the actual condition of men s and women s lives. 31 In the four cases we examine, it appears that the status of women is also linked to attitudinal predispositions towards women, but interesting variations do emerge. If attitudes are an important causal factor in gender outcomes i.e. if attitudes supporting gender equality translate into measurably better outcomes for women - then we should expect that countries with inegalitarian attitudes would also score poorly on key indicators of women s progress. Using as our measure of inegalitarian attitudes a composite measure of answers to gender questions in the Arab Barometer surveys, 32 we find that while Jordan has a higher Gender Development Index (GDI) ranking than Morocco, Moroccans on average have more egalitarian gender attitudes. Table 4: GDI and HDI Ranks and Gender Attitudes GDI HDI rank Gender Attitude Index Yemen % Jordan % Morocco % Kuwait % 31 Ibid, Data from Arab Barometer. Index is average attitudinal percentage of population that support the following statements: Women can be Prime Minister or President: % Agree Jordan:65%, Morocco: 68%, Kuwait: 49%, Yemen: 33% 2. Married Woman can work Outside the House: % Agree Jordan: 81%, Morocco: 73%, Yemen: 71%, Kuwait: 91% 3. Men Make Better Political Leaders: %Agree Jordan: 80%, Morocco: 55%, Yemen: 85% Kuwait: 68% 4. University Education More Important for a Boy than Girl: % Agree Jordan: 36%, Morocco: 26%, Kuwait: 16%, Yemen: 40% 5. Men and Women should have equal job opportunities: % Agree Jordan: 66%, Morocco: 76%, Kuwait: 83%, Yemen: 47% 16

17 In sum, a close examination of the Arab world reveals the following. Levels of economic development have some influence on gender performance but certainly do not predict it. Levels of democratization are not connected to gender performance: poor gender performance does not prevent democratization, and more politically liberal regimes do not reliably do better on gender performance than more authoritarian ones. In these more politically liberal regimes, however, we find that unelected leaders are often more committed to more egalitarian legislation than members of lower houses elected in somewhat free elections, and that in some cases, as in the extension of suffrage in Kuwait and the passage of the moudawana in Morocco, this commitment is essential to the passage of such legislation. While elected MPs, often from Islamist parties, often stand in the way of such egalitarian legislation, there are clear examples of them changing some of their positions or at least strongly considering such change in order to better capitalize on potential female votes or to avoid alienating those votes. Major Argument: Regime Commitment Matters A common feature emerges in countries that have better gender records: regime commitment, often strongly influenced by the desire to win foreign support, for improving the status of women. This is not to say that other alternative explanations above don t matter. Indeed, political openings have helped women s groups and other civil society sectors to effectively advance their agendas. Such mobilization may improve domestic attitudes towards women. However, these existing explanations fall short in capturing the actual variation across the Arab world. In the end, regime commitment to women s issues matters for gender advancement through two mechanisms. First, in partially free countries like the Arab world, regimes have the discretion to exercise their own will. Where regimes are committed to advancing gender rights, (most often due to international pressure) they can enforce legislation, bypassing parliamentary authority, to uphold women s rights. Second, Arab regimes can simultaneously override dissenting voices within their countries. Some regimes 17

18 will ignore opposition voices to gender rights while other regimes will try to negotiate or co-opt the opposition. This is not to argue that gender attitudes do not matter for legal reform. In fact, where regimes resist committing to gender causes, for example like the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan s refusal to impose a law banning honor killings, the regime can easily point to groups (like the Islamic Action Front) that block such legislation. Where existing regimes are committed to gender causes, like the case of the Sabahs in Kuwait, where they recently granted women the right to vote, or Morocco s King Mohammad the VI, who passed of one of the most progressive women s reform packages in the Arab world in 2004, regimes are able to bypass mass public opinion. Furthermore, a change in civic attitudes about gender perhaps plays an important role in allowing for mass mobilization around gender causes. Both electoral reforms in Kuwait and women s reforms in Morocco were preceded by significant societal pressure to push for better women s rights. However, in the end regime commitment mattered for the legalization of these reform packages. Battles Over Gender Legislation in Liberalizing Regimes: Regime Commitment and the Effects of Public Opinion Attempts in Jordan to change honor crimes law and to enable women to divorce more easily clearly show two patterns: strong support for egalitarian legislation from the monarch and the Senate whose members he appoints, and concern for Western opinion as a central driver of royal concern for these issues. In Article 340a, Jordanian law exempts from punishment an attacker who discovers his wife or female relatives committing adultery, while 340b reduces the sentence of a man who assaults his wife or female relative after finding her in an unlawful bed. 33 In February 1999 King Abdallah initiated a process whereby the Ministry of Justice recommended a hasty draft amendment that abolished Art. 340 and introduced tougher punishments for adulterers, murderers of female 33 Honor Crimes and the International Spotlight on Jordan, Janine Clark, Middle East Report, Winter 2003,

19 relatives who were victims of rape, molestation, or abduction, and rapists. 34 Janine Clark notes that some activists argued that the most serious problem with honor crimes actually lay not in Article 340 but in Articles 97 and 98 of the penal code, which reduce punishments for crimes of passion or for attackers whose victims had engaged in criminal activity (adultery), and that Article 98 was used in honor crimes cases more often than Article 340. However, the King chose to focus on Article 340 because it both directly contradicted the constitution s mandate of equal treatment by applying only to wives caught in the act of adultery, and because it contravened shari a, which clearly states that a man should not take punishment of adulterers into his own hands. 35 After the cabinet approved the amendment, it was defeated in the lower house by Islamists and tribal leaders. After going back to and being approved again in the Senate, it was again rejected in the lower house. When Abdallah suspended parliament for two years between 2001 and 2003, the anti-art. 340 amendment was one of the 211 temporary laws which he introduced and which would require adoption by the next parliament to be elected. The lower house elected in 2003 once again defeated the amendment. The story of the unelected King and Senate pushing more egalitarian legislation in the face of lower house opposition is repeated in the story of royal attempts to create khula divorce in Jordan. As Janine Clark notes, women seeking divorce in Jordan have to provide evidence of particular types of misbehavior on the part of their husband. King Abdallah created the Commission for Human Rights in 2000 to study existing human rights in Jordan and to identify laws that might need to be changed in order to increase them, and the Committee suggested the introduction of a form of divorce called khula which would permit women to divorce without proof of spousal mistreatment on the condition that they return dowry monies paid to them and renounce any right to spousal support after 34 Janine Clark, "Honor Crimes" and the International Spotlight on Jordan, Middle East Report, No. 229, Winter 2003, Ibid, 40 19

20 the divorce. This amendment, like that regarding honor crimes, was also initially introduced by the king as a temporary law while the parliament was dissolved, and, like the honor crimes amendment, was rapidly defeated by the parliament elected in Tribal MPs opposed the law, as did the Islamic Action Front: in an interview, Hamzeh Mansour, Secretary General of the IAF, argued that the family could not be exposed to the emotions of the women and as a result be destroyed. This position was fully supported by Dr. Hayat al- Musimi, the first female MP from the IAF, who predicted the collapse of hundreds of families should the amendment pass. 36 The Jordanian National Committee for Women and Princess Basma worked repeatedly to win passage of the law, meeting with MPs in both houses 37 and others and bringing Awqaf officials with them to make the argument that the amendment was religiously sound. 38 The upper house altered the law to add a period in which the spouses could reconcile, and the lower house s legal committee approved the law, but it was subsequently defeated by the house. Thus in the cases both of honor crimes law and khula divorce, unelected leaders supported more egalitarian laws but were unable to pass them in the face of determined lower house opposition. The case of changes in the Moroccan moudawana also show a determined monarch, but in this case he was successful. Before the passage of substantial reforms in Morocco s personal status laws in 2003, women s access to public life was guided by the notion of guardianship. Women needed the approval of their male legal guardians before they could legally work, travel or attend university. Further, the existing moudawana laws supported the institution of polygamy, and women had few 36 Clark, The Conditions of Islamic Moderation: Unpacking Cross-Ideological Cooperation in Jordan, International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, 2006, Ibid, Participation in Public Life and its Impact on Women in Jordan, Ibtissam al-atiyyat, IDEA,

21 rights to initiate divorce. The oral divorce (talaq) remained common and a major threat to women s advancements. (Sater, 2007). 39 In 2003, Moroccan women were granted one of the most generous reform packages in the Arab world. Wives duty to obey their husbands was abolished, and both spouses were made responsible for their households and families. Second, women no longer required the permission of a male legal guardian to marry, the minimum marriage age was raised to 18, and polygamy was substantially restricted. Third, divorce was made easier for women, while men could no longer divorce through the pronunciation of talaq. It is true that even with the moudawana women will have few legal channels to exercise their new rights, since the rule of law in Morocco is weak and the legal system is rather dysfunctional. Further, more than two thirds of Morocco s women are illiterate, knowledge of the moudawana changes is not widespread, and the crushing poverty of Moroccan men and women may well limit the benefit from these new laws. Nonetheless, these reforms are considered major advances for women and in fact are some of the most progressive laws in the Arab world. Women s groups emerged in the 1970 s and 80 s to demand their rights and call for reform of the existing moudawana laws, culminating in the 1990s million signatures campaign against the moudawana. Some advances were made under King Hasan II, who in 1992 signed an earlier version of the 2003 reforms that improved women s status while still falling short of their expectations. The push for reforms continued, and in 1995, the King, singlehandedly, eliminated the requirement that women have their guardian s signature in order to obtain a passport. In , women again mobilized to demand additional reforms, and King Mohammad VI, who in fact supported the reforms, had to withdraw legal deliberation at the time due to popular opposition by Islamist groups. 39 James Sater. Changing Politics From Below? Women Parliamentarians in Morocco. Democratization. August,

22 As political liberalization in the kingdom allowed proponents of the women s reforms continued space to advance their agenda, so too did it allow for increasing Islamic activism against the reforms. (Maddy-Weitzman, 2005) 40 The religious establishment, which had grown more active in political and social life during liberalization, openly campaigned against the proposed moudawana changes. The Moroccan League of Ulema, an official state body, declared that the plan would undermine Islamic jurisprudence, loosen morals in the kingdom, destroy the sanctity of marriage and make it more difficult for men to marry, a position supported by the Minister of Islamic Affairs. Both Islamist groups in Morocco, the PJD and the Justice and Charity movement, attacked the reform package as a US-American imperialist conspiracy designed to destroy Islamic culture. 41 Nevertheless, the King pressed on with the reforms. He had signaled his sympathy for improving women s position in a 1999 speech, when he asked how can we expect to achieve progress and prosperity when women, which (sic) constitute half of society, have their interests taken away; when the rights with which our holy religion has endowed them, to make them equal to men, are being ignored? On October 10, 2003, the king presented the Moroccan parliament with his plan to initiate the new modern family law, anchoring his rationale for the plan in an Islam which advocated human dignity, equality and harmonious relations, as well as cohesiveness of the Malikite rite of ijtihad, thanks to which Islam is a suitable religion for all times and places. The king grounded his explanations in the teachings of Islam and interpretations of the sharia. Further, the king won support from the leadership of such Islamic groups like the PJD, despite the fact that they had rejected the reforms earlier on. Even Nadia Yassine, daughter of Sheikh Yassine (leader of the Justice and Charity movement), supported some of the initiatives of the reform package. She indicated her willingness to endorse the reforms when she claimed that the old moudawana was not 40 Bruce Maddy-Weitzman. Women, Islam, and the Moroccan State: The Struggle over the Personal Status Law, The Middle East Journal. Summer, Martina Sabra. Morocco s King Takes a Courageous Step

23 sacred text and advocated its replacement with a more Islamically appropriate legal guide. The PJD leader at the time, Abdallah Benkirane, initially rejected the reforms by claiming that they were anti- Islamic. However, according to Maddy-Weitzman, One must note that once the King had made his decision to replace the moudawana, the issue was no longer a subject of public debate. 42 It is clear that in each of the three cases above unelected monarchs pushed strongly for more egalitarian legislation. In two of these cases, international pressure was key in pushing monarchs to support egalitarian legislation. Although, in each case public opinion was generally opposed to the reforms, only in Jordan did the monarch choose not to override societal preferences. Ironically, the same international order that demanded reform for women was perhaps one of the reasons why Abdallah was hesitant on pushing the reforms further. In this period the Jordanian monarchy had incurred much popular disapproval for its peace treaty with Israel and other foreign policy decisions, and may not have been willing to risk losing additional support by imposing unpopular gender reforms. As Clark notes, Kings Hussein and Abdallah have pursued an unspoken policy of leaving social and cultural issues to the parliamentarians in return for the MPs cooperation on foreign and economic policy. The Palestinian intifada and the Iraq war have tested the limits of this grand bargain. 43 What is not in doubt, however, is that Western opinion played a central role in spurring Abdallah to take positions on honor crimes and khula in the first place. Clark documents the key role of international publicity in galvinizing royal action on the honor crimes issue in Jordan, beginning in January 1999 with CNN coverage of the issue which included Queen Noor and journalist Rana Husseini. Husseini, received several international awards for this coverage over the next few years, and is indirectly credited for bringing the issue to the attention of King Hussein, who condemned violence against women in his November 1997 address to parliament. 44 Clark argues that royal interest was again increased in November 1999 when, during a royal visit to France, Le 42 Maddy, Clark, Honor Crimes and the International Spotlight, Ibid,

24 Monde published a major article on honor crimes and Queen Rania was asked about the issue in a French TV interview. 45 Abdallah s concern for foreign approval of his gender policies continues a pattern that began at least as early as the 1970s. As Laurie Brand notes, Jordanian women had been mobilizing to attain suffrage from at least 1954, but the timing of the royal grant of suffrage in 1974, and the licensing in that year of the Women s Federation in Jordan (WFJ), were both heavily influenced by the U.N. Decade for Women which began in Brand suggests that the WFJ licensing was driven largely by Jordan needing an organization of Jordanian women that could represent the kingdom at the U.N. conferences, while the timing of the suffrage extension was probably explained by the approaching U.N. meeting and Jordan s position at the time as the only non-gulf Arab state which had not granted women the right to vote. 46 Concern for Western public opinion also played an important role in gaining Hasan II s support for moudawana reform in Morocco. In fact, the World Bank played a crucial role in supporting women s groups and civil society actors. This is a pattern that has persisted from both European and American actors. Since 2000, the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) has earmarked a significant amount of its Moroccan funding to women s organization. In the end, this momentum equipped the king to pass the reforms into law, regardless of Islamist opposition and public opinion opposing the reforms. While the stories from Jordan and Morocco above show elected lower houses particularly their tribal and Islamist members opposing more egalitarian legislation, other cases from Jordan as well as examples from Kuwait and Yemen show Islamist parties either adopting more egalitarian positions, or at least being severely internally divided over conservative gender positions, due to fear that these stances would cost them votes, in some cases specifically female votes, or alienate them from the good graces of the monarch. 45 Ibid, Brand,

25 Since the 1963 parliament denied women the right to vote and again rejected women s suffrage in 1981, the Kuwaiti parliament has done little to advance the status of women. Since the 1980 s Islamists have portrayed the women s movement as inherently un-islamic and part of an imperialist plot to destroy the Muslim religion 47 and have used parliament to pass laws separating the sexes, such as the 1996 law segregating all post-secondary institutions. Islamist movements gained significant amounts of female support and provided women with new political opportunities. Women became part of the Islamist movements and became active in da wa, petitions, leafleting and organization for the Islamic cause. They felt important in transforming Islamic history. As female support for the Islamist movement grew, so too did the demands of the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood), the largest Islamist group in Kuwait, for female suffrage, which it saw as a vital political opportunity. An Ikhwan deputy in the 1980 s argued If we allow women to participate in political decisions, this will mean the political growth of the movement. Ikhwan support for the measure served as a key reason for the lukewarm support from the regime. Further, other conservative elements in society like the Bedouins and Salafi groups continued to resist female suffrage. Those women in support of the Salafi movement also refused suffrage. Again, in 1985 a bill to grant women the right to vote was blocked by parliament. This time the bill was blocked by the Assembly s Legal Affairs Committee, which called on the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs for a ruling. The Ministry ruled that the nature of the electoral process befits men, who are endowed with ability and expertise; it is not permissible for women to recommend or nominate other women or men. 48 Hence, debates about female suffrage were initially resisted by some sections of the Islamist movement based on conservative interpretations, while the Ikhwan supported it on primarily if not exclusively instrumental grounds. Non-Ikhwan also shared the assessment that women would vote 47 Haya al-mughni. Women in Kuwait: The Politics of Gender. Saqi Books, Al-Mughni,

26 heavily for the Ikhwan if given the opportunity, as those who opposed Islamists also worried that if given the right to vote, women would vote Islamist and strengthen their overall position in parliament. The Emir, Sheikh Jaber Al Sabah, gave women full political rights in a royal decree issued in 1999 but now the Islamists, including the Islamic Constitutional Movement and the Salafis, who dominated the ninth parliament, overturned the decree, declaring it 'unconstitutional', because it was issued between the end of the eighth parliament and the election. The parliament continued denying women the right to vote in subsequent parliaments. 49 In general, both Ikhwan and Salafi Islamists in the post-liberation period along with the tribes resisted female participation. Since the Emir has attempted to pass legislation in parliament only to have it blocked by the Islamist/tribal coalition consisting largely of ICM and the Salaf movement. 51 Women with support from the Emir continued pressing the parliament to adopt legislation allowing women the right to participate. While the tribes were committed to denying women more participation, Lula al-mulla, a leading female activist, says they made more leeway with the Islamists. Says Mulla, we confronted them and asked them to tell us why Kuwaiti Islam was different than Egyptian Islam, or Palestinian Islam, or other Islams where women could vote. 52 She says they had no good responses, and then ultimately, they began supporting the tribes by claiming it was a cultural and traditional issue. 49 Mary Ann Tetreault. Kuwait s Unhappy Anniversary, Middle East Policy. June, Haya al-mughni argues that there was another side to regime support for female suffrage, that is due to the redistricting debates in parliament at the time, the regime, believeing women would on general constitute a pro-monarchy and modern stance, attempted to dilute the influence of the opposition, should the redistricting measures pass. Other concerns about female suffrage, included the fact that women would become the majority of the electorate since males serving in the army were not entitled to vote. Women, if allowed to vote, would become the dominant voting constituency. Many conservative men feared that Kuwait, would indeed, be a country run by women. However, since the 2006 elections, it is clear that women are voting along issues not pertaining to gender per se. That not one single female candidate has made it to parliament in either 2006 and 2008 demonstrates this trend. 52 Personal Interview with Amaney Jamal, Winter