Dr Ebtehal Abdulaziz Al Khateeb
Women’s long history of persecution, which is probably as old as human existence on Earth, is attributed to the dominance of those who are physically stronger, most often men.
This categorisation of the physically strong and the weak still continues. Even after urbanization, we have continued to judge members of both sexes on the basis of physical strength.
Religion has supported this idea by placing the man on top of the pyramid in various hierarchies; he owns, controls and drives while the woman always plays the role of the obedient follower: she listens and obeys.
She is always tied to a man and doesn’t have any authority over herself. Her family name is not inherited (perhaps Judaism differs in this respect), she doesn’t have legal guardianship over her children, and she cannot even marry of her own accord.
A primitive logic governs relations between the sexes even in the fifteenth year of the twenty-first century. Physical strength is still a major deciding factor in our lives. After a long struggle for human rights and citizenship, women don’t have even the basics of these rights.
In Kuwait, many believe that women have got their rights by obtaining political privileges that are only tools to secure human rights and citizenship, which are severely curtailed in our country.
The woman is not equal to man in eligibility for Kuwaiti citizenship. She doesn’t have legal guardianship over her children, nor the right to full housing if there is no man in her family, and what is worse, her children cannot inherit her nationality.
The Kuwaiti woman suffers humiliation daily as she tries to get her foreigner husband and children permission to live in the country, while the Kuwaiti man’s foreign wife and children can get citizenship, ensuring stability and lasting bonds in the family.
The personal status laws represent gender discrimination at its worst. A virgin woman remains under guardianship and cannot marry of her own accord regardless of her age.
Divorce is a weapon in the man’s hands; he uses it to arrest and free, and sometimes humiliate and harass the woman, or bring her life to a complete standstill.
Most personal status laws are discriminatory and in need of radical change.
Then there is the community’s perception of men and women, and the way women see other women and themselves.
These are based on submission to old beliefs, which say that the woman is a lesser being: less important, greater in sins and lacking in reason.
Such views are at the core of the battle for women’s rights; changing them is a starting point in the struggle to get women all their rights. That result will not be achieved unless women change the community’s and their own belittling perception of themselves.
The author is a political activist and a researcher
