How Far Has Our Women's Cause Come?

Talk of the Month

If it is right to call winter the season of productive activity (1), it is equally right to call summer the season of idleness and repose. People of affairs, whatever their bents, plunder the winter with striving and diligence so that their labors may bear the choicest fruit. And no sooner do the brides of summer look forth with the blaze of their golden braids than the people of affairs throw down their weapons, turn their faces away, and surrender to rest and stillness to recover their spent strength. This description applies to most of the peoples of the Near East; hence the summer months, especially in Lebanon, rarely bring forth achievements worth recording, though they have a character of their own that clothes them in shades of charm and enchantment.

For Lebanon in summer is the stage of fair festivity and the meeting place of friends and companions. In the mountains of Lebanon, Arab personalities keep appointments with Arab personalities, ending their meetings with agreements and resolutions calculated to bring our world to a state less wretched and more honorable than its present one... And from time to time Lebanon is visited by a Syrian or Egyptian or Iraqi or Jordanian lady of long experience in the social or political field, and our women gather around her, circle after circle — some for pure evening talk, some a blend of talk and earnest — during which they discuss the present women's problems that are, to some degree, common to all the Arab countries. Views are compared, profit is drawn from the practical experience some have gained, and the Syrian or the Iraqi or the Jordanian woman returns to her country after this 'grafting' operation with her quiver full of designs and plans and her head full of ideas... And how can anyone deny the measure of benefit Arab women's circles reap from this direct grafting, and from the long hours of discussion and the frank exchange of studies?... And now one asks: how far has our women's cause come — if indeed there is a cause??

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A quick glance at recent events reveals to us clearly that the Arab women's cause has begun to loosen and open, cutting its way toward release after it had seemed beyond solving. The Lebanese woman's exercise of her full political rights, during last July, was the first spark in proclaiming this right and publishing it abroad. Nor was it long before the new Syrian constitution likewise established equality — politically — between man and woman (2)... And the Egyptian and the Iraqi woman are still waging fierce war upon their two governments, appealing to public opinion, to the press, and to all the forces of publicity and print, to back them until they reach the stage their Lebanese and Syrian sisters have reached.

In my opinion the decisive battle will not last much longer before the two governments, the Egyptian and the Iraqi, follow the example of their Lebanese and Syrian sisters — out of courtesy toward them, or in deference to the wish of the League, or under the pressing pursuit of the women's organizations — so that woman may register her exit from her political isolation. It will then become one of her first tasks to champion her sisters in the other Arab lands that stand below her in renaissance and emancipation, and to help them, through the various institutions, to cross the vast distance and catch up with the caravan...

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Some objector may say: what meaning is there in the Arab woman's obtaining her political right, and what virtues distinguish the coming Lebanese parliament from its old brother? And what trace has woman left in it? — I do not imagine she has advanced anything there or set anything back. The results of the parliamentary elections, confined as they came to men alone, are results that every person of insight — good at conjecture and at judging matters by their like precedents in history — was bound to have foreseen... Woman has never fought, in any country, out of greed for the seat, except in due measure; her struggle through the long years was only to consolidate and establish her natural right in life... and this right is, in principle, but a weapon for her and a support to strengthen her arm. Only after making certain of having won her political right can woman set out, strong in self-confidence, strong of wing, to demand what

(1) Broadcast from the Near East Arab Broadcasting Station, except for the paragraph in black.
(2) The talk was broadcast before the recent Syrian parliamentary elections.

is loftier and higher than political rights — to set out with resolve and firmness on the track of her civil rights, which are of far greater importance and more closely bound to her general life than any other rights.

How often have we heard them extol the extent of the social justice that has reached, and is reaching, the Arab woman, citing anecdotes and curiosities to prove that woman is now amply favored compared with her state in the days of the Jahiliyya, and that man is distinguished from her only by simple differences of no essential importance. What escapes these people is that it is precisely these differences that have made woman, down the ages, a weak human being, broken in morale, limited in possibilities, deep in doubt of herself and of those around her, so that she became, in the nature of things, beneath man, ruled by the feeling of an inferiority complex.

And could she be anything else, when her testimony counts as deficient merely because she is female — when her share of her father's inheritance is half her brother's share, and man is guardian over her, divorcing her when he pleases and keeping her when he pleases — and all the rest of that taming of her pride and drugging of her self-respect?

The Arab woman's cause today aims at absolute equality — equality politically, then civilly and socially; without this equality the two scales of the Arab home and Arab society will never balance, nor will they rise from their present stumble.

There is no fear for the Arab woman as she sets about entering this road — the road of absolute equality — though it be rugged and thorny and full of obstacles; though the second step be of greater moment than the first; and though woman, as she walks it, must collide with stubborn opposing elements and with laws of firmly founded structure, very difficult to confront or attempt to touch — unless there be granted to our nation social reformers imbued with the spirit of this age, whose understanding is wide enough for so grave an upheaval, and who have courage enough to come forward and bear the supreme responsibility.

And it is my certainty that unless this upheaval takes place in the very core of our life, it is idle to suppose that the Arab woman will one day see her distant hopes fulfilled and become a 'peer,' the equal of her brother man, in all the breadth and depth of that word.

The arrow has left the quiver; we have covered a first stage of the road — the starting point for the daughters of our sex — and from it we begin the struggle in the battle that is surely coming, and whose first signs, as I see it, are not far off.