(Fwd) Women's International Net, Issue 8, Part A
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1998. Ápr. 16., Cs, 12:26:09 CEST
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Subject: Women's International Net, Issue 8, Part A
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WIN
WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL NET
Issue 8A, April 1998
Connecting Women in 55 Countries
Editors: Judith Colp Rubin, Janice Wasser
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
(ARTICLES 1-3 IN THIS FILE. ARTICLES 4-5 IN NEXT FILE)
1) ZAINAB: A SHORT STORY
By Sharifah ash-Shamlan, Saudi Arabia
2) AMERICAN, AMBITIOUS AND MUSLIM
By Shaheen Ahmed, United States
3) LOVING, BUT POOR: MOTHERHOOD AFTER COMMUNISM
By Peter Kanev, Bulgaria
4) THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES: GENDER POLITICS IN THE PHILIPPINES
By Gina Mission, Philippines
5) PRIVATE LIFE FOR SALE: SPAIN’S GOSSIP INDUSTRY
By Barbara Meneses, Spain
1) ZAINAB: A SHORT STORY
By Sharifah ash-Shamlan, Saudi Arabia
Zainab is an excerpt from the new book, "Voices of Changes:
Short Stories by Saudi Arabian Women Writers," edited by Abubaker
Bagader, Ava M. Heinrichsdorff, and Deborah S. Akers (Lynne Rienner
Publishers, Inc. [http://www.rienner.com] in Boulder, Colorado, United
States). It is being reprinted in WIN with the publisher’s permission.
Zainab is a woman full of hope and love whose individuality is
not recognized. Her marriage offers her only material comforts, which
cannot substitute for respect. When she disappears, her relatives and
friends wrongly suspect her of immoral acts, only to discover otherwise.
-- Editors
Zainab had not gathered together her things. She had left
everything as it was. At two in the afternoon her husband woke up to
find his room as it was yesterday: his ashtray full of cigarettes, his
coffee cup dirty, his shoes and socks where he’d left them. The house
swam in silence.
Nobody knew where Zainab was. He asked for her at her parents’
house and at her friends’ houses.
"Zainab, where are you?" he asked himself. He went to his office
and tried not to worry; only when absorbed in his work could he forget
her for a while.
Her mother put on her "abayah," wrapped her scarf around her
hair, and went out with her driver to search for Zainab under the
pretense of routine visits.
Zainab’s maternal aunt said, "I saw her yesterday evening. She
didn’t say anything serious, but she looked depressed."
Her paternal aunt wet her lips and said, "Oh, I haven’t seen her
for two weeks. She must be preoccupied with something."
The "murdi’," Zainab’s old nanny, had been at her son Ahmed’s
house early that morning and remembered seeing her there.
Ahmed said, "She came to see me and I offered her the rent money
for her house in the middle of town."
Zainab had left home: it was a fact everyone agreed upon.
"Look for her passport." It was there.
"Search for her ID card." But she didn’t have one of her own;
she was included on her husband’s card.
Her eldest brother put his head between his hands and said,
"I’ll kill her when we find her."
Her younger brother mumbled, "But the most important thing is to
find her."
Her youngest sister was afraid.
Her husband was finally obliged to telephone the police, who
promised to carry out a quiet, thorough search.
In despair, her mother slapped herself and said, "I know her,
she is restless. I’m sure she has done something to herself. I wish I’d
never given birth to her."
The husband looked down at his shoes and repeated, "It was a
black day when I married her. She wants to work, but what for? Then she
wants to join charities. Isn’t it enough for her just to give money away
to the poor? Always restless."
Her old nanny cried incessantly and asked her son, "Did she tell
you what to do with the rent money?"
He stared at the floor and said, "No." He didn’t want to tell
the others that she had told him to use it to repair his house, and keep
the rest for his children.
They searched one house after another, determined to find her.
Whatever Zainab had done, they kept telling each other, she would not
bring shame to her family.
They asked the servants one by one.
The driver said, "I didn’t take her anywhere."
The children’s nanny said, "I didn’t see her after she gave me
instructions concerning the children."
The maid said, "I didn’t see her after she gave me a hundred
riyals yesterday morning."
The cook said, "I haven’t seen her since I served her breakfast
yesterday."
Where was Zainab? The question troubled everyone. Her mother
tied her head with cloth and tried to remember old neighbors and friends
Zainab might have gone to.
The husband thought, "She must be with HIM." He knocked on the
door violently. A small girl, blowing a bubble with her gum, opened the
door.
"Who are you, my little one?"
"I’m the daughter of the owner of this house."
"What is your father’s name?"
She told him. He hit his forehead with his palm. The man was
married, with children. He must have forgotten Zainab, even if she had
not forgotten him.
The scandal was ringing the doorbell at that house. His sons’
wives and daughters" husbands should not hear a thing about this.
His smaller children had gone to school, their faces filled with
questions about their mother’s sudden departure. The house returned to
deep silence.
The cook entered the storage room to search for something in the
large freezer. Zainab was inside the freezer. She had frozen into a
mannequin of ice.
Who closed the freezer door on Zainab?
But that is another matter.
Copyright, Lynne Rienner Publishers
Sharifah ash-Shamlan was born in Southern Iraq, but moved to Saudia
Arabia where she received a B.A. in journalism. Currently, she is the
Director General of Women’s Social Affairs in the Eastern Province,
Ministry of Social Affairs, Dammam. She writes literary articles for
newspapers. Two collections of her short stories were published.
2) AMERICAN, AMBITIOUS AND MUSLIM
By Shaheen Ahmed, United States
Dianne Ansari-Wimn is not most people's idea of a religious
Muslim woman.
The 30-something African American is a Fellow in Anesthesiology
at the prestigious University of Chicago Medical School. She sees no
contradiction between her profession and her devotion to Islam which she
has observed since her parents converted during her teenage years. But
by wearing a "hijab," a triangular shaped scarf covering the hair,
Ansari-Wimn often finds herself being put on the defensive as her
religious beliefs became public knowledge.
When interviewed by medical schools, "I was asked on numerous
occasions to explain my dress and my beliefs, in essence, to prove that
being a Muslim would not conflict with their expectations of what a
medical student should be," she recalled.
She added, "People have all kinds of preconceived ideas about
you if you're wearing a "hijab." They think that Muslim women are
'uneducated' or are only from other countries, that their lives are
dominated by their husbands or that ‘modern’ Muslim women do not wear
Islamic dress."
There are about six million Muslims in the United States, 51
percent of whom are women, according to the Council on American Islamic
Relations (CAIR). Much confusion exists about these women. The media
usually highlights oppression and infers, mistakenly, that this is the
necessary religious condition of women in Islam. Muslim women in
America in particular suffer from the dual stigma of being viewed as
traitors to their nation and their sex.
But many Muslim women in the United States are ambitious
professionals like Ansari-Wimn. They see decisions such as covering the
hair to be a symbol of female emancipation, not oppression.
"I have the choice to be judged by my mind and my personality,
rather than my looks," says Laila Ali, a 17-year-old student from New
Jersey.
"Isn't that what feminists are asking for?"
Although most Muslims in America are African Americans, most
converts are Caucasian women, according to the Missouri-based newspaper,
the "St. Louis Dispatch." They are attracted to Islam through readings
of the Quran, interaction with Muslims, or marriage. Heather Zawahry,
23, a medical student at the University of Florida, is one of
them.
Heather had an upbringing that could be described as American as
apple
pie. A member of her high school's track and field team and an officer
in many clubs, she was very popular. Raised a strict Southern Baptist,
Heather abstained from premarital sex and drinking. It was during
missionary work in Gibraltar and Morocco that she first learned about
Islam. However, Heather did not feel drawn to the religion until she
tried to convert Muslims at her high school in Panama City, Panama.
"There were a lot of Muslims in my high school and so we would
have discussions about religion and god," said Heather. "I started
studying Islam in order to find out what was wrong with it so that I
could inform the Muslims that were around me. I studied it for two
years. It appealed to me because it has such a perfect mix of faith and
logic. I immediately realized that the image [of Muslim women] portrayed
in the media was completely false and I began to understand that women
are aided by god in Islam in so many ways. The right to vote, to work
outside the home, to receive inheritance are things that women in this
country did not even have until the 1920's, but Muslims had for much
longer. That was very impressive to me."
Heather’s decision to convert and change her name was not easy
on her parents. "They were very upset, to the point that they tried to
keep me in the house," she said. "They brought people to pray over me,
cast out the evil spirits and that kind of thing. It was a very, very
strong reaction, and I didn't speak with them for a couple of years
because of that. I mean, we spoke, but it was very tense and difficult.
I prayed to Allah a lot and it was the hardest thing I had to do in my
life and it was a real struggle.
"We get along great now and I think a lot of that had to do with
my getting into medical school. They realized that I wasn't completely
wacko, giving up on all my ambitions and that this wasn't going to
change everything. Also I think that they, in a way, see the good it's
done in my life. Even though they would never admit it, I think that
they've come to respect me."
Other Muslim women, although raised in the religion, have become
more orthodox than their parents.
Saba Ternikar-Mozaffar, 25, from Chicago, Illinois, said most
people assume that her decision to cover her hair was something she was
forced to do by her Muslim parents: "...I say to them, ‘no, this is a
decision that I came to on my own because I believe in it,’ " she said.
Ternikar-Mozaffar’s parents are immigrants from India who had
both religious and cultural expectations of their daughter.
"I realized that those things that my parents taught me were not
necessarily true to the religion but to the culture, so I kind of went
through a self-learning process at college and had my share of learning
what was right and what was wrong for myself," she said. "I realized
that the values that I think are true are very important, and I
basically made Islam to be the deciding factor as to what practices I
would keep and what ones I would not."
Now a health care consultant for an international benefits
consulting firm, Ternikar-Mozaffar said she has never experienced any
bias in her career and has in fact done better than many of her
non-Muslim peers.
"I read about [Muslim] women who have been discriminated
against, but I think those are frequently cases of women in entry-level
positions, and I think that now there’s a climate, especially in
America, where it’s politically correct to respect other religions and
everyone’s individuality," she said. "I think it will only develop
further, especially in corporate America, where being a woman and being
a minority [means] actually [getting] promoted more and more."
But other Muslim women in the United States have encountered
problems because of their appearance. In Norfolk, Virginia, two Muslim
women wearing "hijabs" and veils were arrested last year for violating a
state law against wearing "masks" in public, according to CAIR. The law
was originally intended to target the activities of the Ku Klux Klan
who, covering themselves from head to toe in white sheets, started
attacking blacks during the post Civil War era.
Then there is the case of Dani, an employee at JC Penney
Department Store in McLean, Virginia who was fired from her job after
she refused to take off her "hijab." Insisting that it violated the
store's dresscode, two store managers told her to take it off or "clock
out now." After intervention by CAIR, the store offered Dani her job
back and distributed a clarification of policy on Islamic dress to store
managers nationwide.
Dress also accounts for Muslim women often being the target of
the most harmful stereotype of Muslims in America -- that of terrorists.
After Muslims were suspected in the bombing of a federal office building
in Oklahoma, women were easy targets for prejudice and suspicion.
Rabia Ahmed, who wears a black scarf and "jilbaab" (a long coat
covering the body down to the feet), recalled being asked. "if I had an
AK47 under here," said the 22-year-old medical school student from New
Jersey. "I was furious."
Muslim women also find that it can be hard to achieve their
Islamic rights in the United States because religious law is not
recognized. For example, women who marry under Islamic law and who do
not obtain a civil marriage license find themselves at a loss when that
marriage is not recognized in the American courts. Wives of polygamous
husbands have no marital rights in the United States since polygamy is
considered illegal. The second, third or fourth wife is considered to
be in a common law marriage and her children illegitimate. As such, she
has some of the same rights as a woman who has "lived together" with her
boyfriend and can challenge her Islamic husband to pay child support.
However, the question of alimony can be particularly difficult. The
onus is on the wife to prove that they lived together as partners and
she, at least, thought she was married.
Muslim women in America are vocal about asserting their rights.
During a conference of the Islamic Society of North America I attended a
year ago -- where women actually outnumbered men -- there were several
female speakers and workshops dealing with women’s rights.
In "Self Defense for Sisters," mother and daughter team Nialah
and Kareema Pettigen, sporting karate suits with brown belts under
"jilbaabs" and "hijabs," instructed 50 women to defend themselves from
an attacker.
"I usually encourage modesty for sisters," said Nialah, an
African American Tae Kwon Do instructor from New Mexico. "But if you're
faced with danger, don't be a victim. Be a resister."
Amina Assilmi, director of the International Union of Muslim
Women and an American convert, reminded conference participants that
"women in the time of Prophet Muhammad were not weak creatures. They
were able to walk for miles and use a sword. The men would think twice
about approaching a Muslim woman in those days."
She added, "Many women are still struggling to regain the rights
that Allah gave them 1,400 years ago...Women were allowed to directly
approach the prophet of god, disagree with him, argue with him and
criticize him without any fear of repercussions."
Ansari-Wimn sees herself in the tradition of such strong women.
She takes the endless curiosity and occasional criticism in stride: "I
feel that these occasions give me the opportunity to confirm my beliefs
and to develop self-esteem by standing up for myself as a ‘Muslimah’
[Muslim woman]," she said.
Shaheen Ahmed is a freelance writer and correspondent for the "Daily
Herald" newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and former associate
editor of "Young Muslim" magazine.
3) LOVING, BUT POOR: MOTHERHOOD AFTER COMMUNISM
By Peter Kanev, Bulgaria
The 15-story building of Mothers’ House Hospital in Sofia was
once white, but has now grayed with age and smog. Crowds daily fill the
lobby: fathers in shock at the miracle of birth and the onset of
responsibility, smiling expectant mothers, and solemn high school girls
with unwanted pregnancies. Thousands visit the complex daily. Almost
every mother in Sofia comes here to receive prenatal care and then to
deliver. Most abortions are also performed here.
Bulgaria’s battered economy has taken its toll upon Mother’s
House. Lights are missing in the corridors, broken window glass has been
substituted with cheap plastic, and paint is chipping from the walls.
Patients are advised to bring their own nightgowns and sheets.
Most also bring medicine, since reserves often run low. Birthing aides
such as epidurals are considered a luxury as nurses regularly tell women
in labor to "hold on, you [want] to remember the time you became a
mother."
Ivanka, a single mother, recalled that when the time came to go
to the hospital she was too distressed to bring the required items. "At
the maternity ward they gave me a night gown. The morning after the
birth I had broken out into pimples. Other women told me it was because
of the dirty gown. If it was not for the food they [family and friends]
brought me from home, I would have starved."
Petya Hristova, a 33-year-old blonde, who had her second
daughter last September, was also warned to bring medicines, syringes
and needles. She didn’t mind since she describes herself as financially
secure, but even she could not escape the swarms of cockroaches who
inhabit the maternity ward.
Motherhood has never been so difficult in Bulgaria. The dismal
state of the economy has greatly affected the national birthrate.
Demographers predict that in a couple of decades, Bulgaria’s population
of about 8.5 million will slump by a million people. In 1997, there were
only 60,000 births and double the number of abortions. Only 40,000
births are expected for 1998. Couples simply can no longer afford the
high cost of raising a family.
"The large family that used to be the model some 40, 50 years
ago is history," said Yassen Kalaydjiev, a gynecologist. "Now
Bulgarians know they cannot [provide], even with the greatest efforts,
for more than one or two kids."
It is a startling change from communism when a high birthrate
was encouraged as more children meant more workers and more soldiers.
There were also certain ethnic considerations. Communists here feared
that ethnic Turks and gypsies were increasing in population faster than
the majority Bulgarians of Orthodox Christian heritage.
Procreation was encouraged not only through restricted access to
contraception, but also by a "bachelors’ tax," levied on single people
over age 25. In contrast, families with more than two children received
preferential loans and other bonuses.
But all that has changed. Many of the day care centers built
under communism have been closed because of low enrollment. However,
rather than raising national concern, the low birthrate is being
applauded as a way to help resolve a number of economic problems.
Doctors say the slump has made it easier for them to cope with treating
patients under deteriorated hospital conditions.
The end of communism has left Bulgaria’s economy in dire
straits. As both ex-communists and their adversaries search for a middle
ground between socialism and capitalism, industry has been left to rot.
An economy that simply stopped working was further devastated by a
choking embargo on neighboring Serbia. Bulgarian exporters lost not only
a market, but a route to Europe. Since 1989 Bulgaria experienced a
thousand-fold inflation. The average monthly wage is about US$180 on
which one has to pay 30 percent in taxes.
Government subsidies have dwindled, especially in health care.
Under communism, citizens enjoyed free medical care for virtually
everything, including having children. Now women must pay a fee of
50,000 to 75,000 lev (US$27.40) to hospitals for deliveries. Tipping
doctors has a become routine way to ensure decent care.
Once the baby leaves the maternity ward, the real problems
begin. The initial investment in medicine, diapers, blankets, bottles
and a carriage amounts to 1 million lev (US$600) -- a virtual fortune
here. Moreover, now mothers are only guaranteed their full wages for
five months after birth -- instead of the three years they once enjoyed.
The story of Fani and Nikolay Ivanova has become typical. The
couple married, had a child, and made a good living working in
advertising. After inflation skyrocketed, their savings were lost within
days. They had to sell an apartment at loss. And they had to give up
their dream of having a second child.
"It, it just turned out that way," Fani says. She cannot add
anything. Her eyes are full of tears.
Families with more than two children are so rare they have
become a media spectacle. Raime and Yussuf became famous in their
hometown of Haskovo after giving birth to triplets after their first
child. Officials generously talked of providing an apartment and some
special funding. But all the family received was a total US$500 worth of
assistance for three years. It’s far from enough. Currently Yussuf is
unemployed, as the furniture-making plant where he works has no orders.
Raime, a tall, blonde seamstress can make up to US$150 a month, when
there are contracts. Last month she brought home only US$15. Electricity
bills alone amount to US$20 per month. They joke that the family cow is
raising the children.
The situation is harder for the many single mothers here
struggling on one income. Four out of every ten children are born out of
wedlock. Abortion remains a popular form of contraception, another
legacy of communism during which there was virtually no sex education
and "abortion is cheaper than the coil," was a popular phrase.
"In the communist era, the government concentrated on measures
to assure high birth rates, and contraception was neglected, if not
discouraged." said Emil Phillipov, a gynecologist. "This is something
we have to deal with now."
It is now easier to get condoms and other contraceptives in
Bulgaria, although their cost makes them prohibitive to many.
For many Bulgarian women nothing compares to motherhood. As the
spring comes early to the Blagoevgrad region, locals do not miss the
chance to bask in the sunshine. The Bachinovo park is filled with
mothers. One can see them pushing babycarts, jogging with older children
and even trying soccer kicks with them.
"Bulgarian mothers are very good, loving and caring," said
Kalaydjiev. "The problem is they are poor."
Peter Kanev, a graduate of the American University in Bulgaria, is a
reporter for the International News Department of "24 Hours," the
second largest daily newspaper in Bulgaria. He writes about world
politics and science.
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