Middle Eastern Women Status
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Arab States region, the situation of women and girls is still unsettled. There has been proven incremental progress, but the rate is modest and does not represent the pledges made to Agenda 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals, or tackling the region’s problems. As it will be addressed, over the past ten years, there has been some progress towards gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in a number of areas. Women are increasingly represented in government and national programming, and many countries have established national women’s machines and other institutions that support the rights and welfare of women and girls. Gender equality laws, policies, and programming are expanding throughout the region.
Talk us through the history of women’s rights in the Middle East, from how they were interconnected with the wave of nationalism that swept across the region at the start of the 20th century to how, in the last 16 years, women have gained the right to vote in nations from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia.
Since long history Women’s struggle for equality, especially in Iran, going all the way back to the Constitutional Revolution in 1906. They’re fighting for a wide range of causes during this time, including the right to an education. However, these women, or rather those whose work we have mostly heard of, were primarily elite women involved in the struggle. Although these women were an important part of the revolution, once it had taken place, they were mostly disregarded.
Women were also in large numbers during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, but as soon as the Islamic Republic of Iran took power, it quickly marginalized them. Although it is debatable if revolutionary women made particular demands regarding their rights, the political establishment that arose as a result of this revolution completely damaged the idea of gender equality.
Since then, during the past 40 years, the tale of women’s fight for equality has been complex due to state-sponsored persecution against proponents of women’s rights as well as the Islamic Republic’s key tenet of confining women.
