Empowerment of Women: Algeria

[Al-khiyal]

June 25, 2007 -- It was not a long time ago when I heard from one senior person (no need to emphasize ‘his' gender) that the “women's issues” should be sorted out amongst and by women. He argued that men could never understand exactly what women want to achieve in their struggle.

We might well rebut this remark as a bigoted single outcry but yet this comment was persistently coming to my mind while I was sitting in the conference hall in the Institut National de la Sante Publique in Algiers. This former hospital building turned on June 20 into the platform where more than fifty representatives, predominantly females, of Algerian civil society discussed for the entire day issues related to one of the longest global struggles: Struggle for gender equality.

Empowerment of Women: Algeria

The “Empowerment of Women: Algeria” conference was organized by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) as a part of the conference series conducted in the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) region and dedicated to gender equality issues. TESEV has been closely cooperating with the local NGOs and the Algerian symposium – which followed the Jordan conference and preceded the women's forum to be organized soon in Pakistan – has been also a result of the collaboration with the Algerian Centre d'Information et de Documentation sur les Droits de l'Enfant et de la Femme (CIDDEF).

TESEV, despite not being a “women's NGO” has been actively supporting the empowerment of women in public life not only in Turkey but also in the BMENA region. This role has been in fact defined by its partnership (together with the Italian and the Yemeni counterparts) in the Democracy Assistance Dialogue (DAD) – a mechanism established under G8 to support and enhance democratic reforms within BMENA by means of a dialogue between the civil societies and governments. Within this framework TESEV has focused on what is essential for any democratic society –gender equality in public life.

However, most of the participants in the Algeria meeting were working on the issues related to the violence committed against women, according to the words of the director of CIDDEF Nadia Ait-Zai who was chairing one of the panels. Besides, the word “empowerment” (that implies rather the political emancipation) used in the English title of the conference was often alternated by words like “liberation”, “freedom”, etc. during the deliberations.

Even though the modifications might have been caused by the variety of languages spoken by the members of the audience, it is more likely that it has been a result of the differences in the understanding of the meaning of “empowerment”.

Slaves both in the political and civil sense

Women in the region have to struggle for far more than equal participation in decision making. To use the terminology of a feminist political writer Mary Wollstonecraft, they are “slaves both in political and civil sense”.

In an environment where the prospects of human rights are envisaged only for one gender, it is not enough to lobby for the female representation quotas. Much deeper fundamental ground work is needed instead.

These were the conclusions from the meeting in Algeria too: There is an urgent need in the region for the establishment of a gender institute that would operate not only as a research center but would serve also as a watch dog for the implementation of the necessary legal changes.

Naturally, there is no democracy when the democratic rights are not enjoyed by both sexes. If the G8 – the ideological parent of the TESEV's initiative – wants the concept of human rights to be disseminated with the prefix “hu-”, it should listen to the demands coming from the region.

Thinking Wollstonecraft in Algeria

[Al-khiyal]

More on the conference and on women's issues in Algeria here