Janet Albrechtsen Silence of the sisterhood
25feb04
WHEN feminists quieten down, something is up. Last week Paul Bremer, Iraq's US administrator, promised to stop Iraqi leaders entrenching Islamic law in Iraq's interim constitution. The week before he opened the Ministry for Human Rights.
Great news for Iraqi women. But feminists in our midst were silent. In fact, there is a constant stream of good news about Iraqi women and a fine feminism is taking hold there. Yet we have heard nothing about it from our own middle-class sisters allegedly concerned about progressing women's rights.
On the home front, proud feminist agitators such as the ALP's Carmen Lawrence and Tanya Plibersek push for women's participation in politics. They agonise publicly over the plight of Iraqi women and children in Australian detention centres. The stentorian sisterhood had plenty to say about the Iraq war but have gone quiet over the good news coming from Iraq.
There is a malevolence to this muteness. Theirs is a new hierarchy of evil. Once driven by misandry, feminism in the wake of Iraq is ruled by the hatred of just one man -- US President George W. Bush. Politicians first and feminists second, they would rather see Iraqi women oppressed than Bush triumphant.
Recall the uncomfortable silence of the feminists when US president Bill Clinton, a defendant in a sexual harassment case, frolicked with that intern in a blue dress, Monica Lewinsky, and lied about it?
Their inability to chastise Clinton then is no different to their inability to applaud Bush now. Once again they pursue the political, not the feminist line.
Genuine feminism was premised on "the personal is the political" -- turning the big personal issues facing women into legitimate political causes. That has been turned on its head. Caught in a schism of isms, feminists opt for anti-Americanism over feminism. Political loyalties blind them from seeing the personal stories. Bush cannot be given credit for good outcomes for women. How galling that the Americans may be nurturing a new generation of genuine feminists in Iraq. So our Women's Electoral Lobby stays quiet, unable to applaud what should be applauded.
And there is much to cheer about. Not just the capture of Saddam Hussein last December. Or the Coalition Provisional Authority agreeing that a constitution for Iraq should include equal rights for all Iraqis, regardless of sex, sect or ethnicity.
Iraqi women are able to come together to discuss how they can participate in a free, democratic Iraq. Democracy may not come off in Iraq. But whether it does will rest with Iraqis. Meanwhile, the US and its coalition partners, like Australia, can be proud of the new Diwaniyah Women's Rights Centre. Last month women and men attended democracy classes there, learning about constitutions, human rights and democracy.
Unimaginable less than a year ago, now the voices of Iraqi women are being heard. Voices such as that of Maha Al-Sagban, a board member of the centre who tells how, under Saddam's rule, women did not speak.
But that is changing, she says. "First we have to rebuild a woman's self-confidence and return their lost pride," she told her democracy class.
Or Muna Khder, who works at the Women's Rights Centre in Hillah, a town better known as the site of Iraq's largest mass graves, where up to 15,000 are believed to have been killed.
"During the last regime, our only priority was how to survive," she explains. "Now we are talking. I hope to get the Iraqi woman's voice to the world."
Or volunteer Raghad Ali. "We want to know about democracy and women's rights but unfortunately, until now, we didn't know how to deal with this issue," she said during an interview with the CPA. The CPA has promised to help establish more women's centres during the coming weeks.
Our indulged feminists have not applauded the stubborn resistance of Iraq's women in the face of daily suicide attacks trying to derail Iraq's future. Or US efforts to pump $US27 million ($35million) into Iraqi women's programs. Or the $US86 million earmarked for education projects with particular focus on girls.
It's a good start in improving the atrociously low political and economic participation rates faced by Arab women, millions of them illiterate.
Genuine feminists should be tracking every step of progress for Iraqi women, telling the world about it, hoping that even these minor steps forward will set an example for the rest of the Arab world.
AND so Iraq throws up an interesting contrast in differing forms of feminism. Iraqi feminism is a genuine pursuit of fundamental rights and freedoms by women. Ours was like that once. But Australian feminism has been hijacked into trivia, into a carping, whingeing feminism.
Pampered middle-class women such as NSW politician Meredith Burgmann busily organise gala ceremonies at NSW Parliament House to hand out awards for sexist remarks. Four hundred feminist sophisticates in the audience determine winners by booing loudly. Where are these women on Iraq? Burgmann may have been out on the streets marching against a war in Iraq, but she has not said boo about the improved lot of Iraq's women.
The news about Iraq's women is on the CPA website, readily available to anyone interested. Nay-sayers will accuse Americans of beating their own drum or, worse, sexing up the news. In the meantime, Iraqi women are getting on with it, with help from the Americans. If giving credit where it's due is a sign of maturity, our own feminists have a long way to go.
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