Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Hello, and welcome to woman off of the middle East podcast. This podcast relates three realities of Arab women and their rich and diverse experiences. It's aims to present the multiplicity of women's voices and its wishes to break cultural stereotypes about women of the middle East, as well as educate and empower the younger generation of middle Eastern woman who has stripped off their historical reference. And weren't necessarily raised to believe in their agency and power to create their own destiny. Um, I'm, <inaudible>, I'm a feminist scholar and educator. I'm also the author of Arab woman and Arab news, all stereotypes. And you meet you. I created this podcast to be an extension and an update of the book and its main topics.
Speaker 1 00:00:54 Hello, and welcome to episode three. This episode will be one of a series that will focus on women in conflict zones. And unfortunately, there are many in the middle East and this episode, we will be focusing on the case of Yemen and Yemeni woman. As I do in every episode, I'll be selecting the parts that are relevant from my book, Arab woman followed by a discussion with a special guest who will be updating us today about the status of women in Yemen. And my treat to my listeners in this episode is a new recording done just for this podcast off a traditional song about Yemen national struggles are carried by both men and women. The Arab spring uncovered numerous examples of courageous Arab women heroes, risking not only their reputation, but also their physical safety for the sake of reform. Some it ought to be a Yemeni journalists to on the front line of the 2011 protests and Sinatra was memorialized and a poetry for her Baylor.
Speaker 1 00:01:59 At one point, she was pushed to the ground by police and one Yemeni bystander was so moved by her bravery that he dedicated the poem to her entitled revolution of the grandkid job to <inaudible> and all other revolutionaries. The poem enjoyed wide circulation on the Arabic internet during the Arab spring of 2011, the Arab leaders learned the hard way they risked the breadth of foreman. If they played the religious court to block women's rights on April 16th, 2011, thousands of enraged Yemeni women filled the streets of sedan, other cities to protest against president <inaudible> pronouncement that it was against Islam for women to join men and demonstrations aimed at toppling is rigid. Eric Booman mentioned it brief from <inaudible> on December six, 2005, which describes the aspiration of <inaudible> a Yemeni woman who lives in Paris and is the director of the Yemeni French cultural forum. She has nominated herself for the unlikely position of Yemen's next president.
Speaker 1 00:03:13 The fact that she has nominated herself for a position she is not likely to attain makes her candidacy more symbolic than realistic. This brief reports that Dahlia Judd declared herself it camp that just in case president <inaudible> made good on his promise not to run again. Russia noted that herself nomination as a woman would make him a pioneer in the region, her administration, she declared with transform the ambitions and hopes of Yemeni woman from words to actions, she would work for women's rights and make the level of participation of women in different fields rise. In addition to showing Mark civilized side of the Yemeni society, her platform, what comes straight from the concluding declarations of the women's rights conference recently held. And so now these declarations, if implemented would help him any woman to enjoy their full legal and constitutional rights, increase their participation in the professions and strive to achieve a more civilized side of Yemeni society postscript to the story I'm here remained in power and 2005, of course, and <inaudible> and probably candidacy never got the offer ground no fast forward to January, 2011, revolt in Sono am a new woman whose collective aspiration, some thought would make her the most realistic candidates thus far to become Yemen's first female president.
Speaker 1 00:04:49 Her name is Telecode c'mon token Karaman and long before the 2011 revolt had been fitted as a staunch defender of human rights in Yemen and showered with attention by the North American press, including the Washington post time magazine and Toronto star in an interview with him <inaudible> and a January, 2010, she enumerated the list of abuses by the Yemeni government that would come to a head a year later, including tea detaining during the list. Tyrannizing the residents of and providing a first time new ground for a car though. This is an observation that was made months before WikiLeaks uncovered and leaked the same facts, according to one profile by common ground, new service. What gave Carmen the stature of a president and the making was her visionary capturing of the common aspirations of all human needs, focusing, especially on curtailing corruption and an employment. She was not a voice for him, a new woman Marvel the profiler, but a woman's voice.
Speaker 2 00:06:01 It was for all Yemenis.
Speaker 1 00:06:04 No, let's go to our guest in this episode somehow. And Hamiltonian someone Hamadan is an independent analyst focusing on Yemeni political dynamics, the role of regional actors in Yemen's war and the obstacles and the path of transitional justice post-conflict previously, she was a nonresident fellow at the middle East Institute, visiting fellow at the center of contemporary Arab studies at Georgetown university and a fellow at the <inaudible> center for strategic studies. She's also the director of the Yemen cultural Institute for heritage and arts and nonprofit in Washington, DC, dedicated to many arts and heritage from 2011 to 2015, she wrote the blog femineity.com with the slogan off Yemen simplified, which helped expand Yemen's sociopolitical developments during the Arab spring and the subsequent civil and regional Wars. She has been published both in Arab and Western think temps <inaudible> has spoken at many events and forums, including Brown university, the Carnegie middle East center, the world bank, the United nations and Chatham house.
Speaker 1 00:07:16 She has also made appearances on France upon cat, BBC, world service, CNN and <inaudible> television among other outlets somehow holds a BA with a major in religion and peace studies and a minor in women's studies from George Washington university. Similar in our chat today describes the current situation of war and it's catastrophic implication on Yemeni, many people in general and Yemeni woman in specific. She also talks about the multiple roles that Yemeni woman are performing some imposed on them. And some they carry out to fill in the gaps and theirs and their family's lives. Some are also gives a historical overview of foreman and Yemen as they were, and the past touching on the potentials they projected and the misfortunes they faced.
Speaker 2 00:08:06 So sum up lovely to have you on a woman of the middle East podcast. Um, when we speak about a Yemeni woman, for example, an Arab woman, we found that they come under diversity Matika headings. We saw them as active agents under the theme of anger and resistance, um, and, uh, touched upon their role. Um, during the revolution of 2011, we also saw them under aspiration and drive, um, and under role modeling. Um, this was a bit of a change, um, to the persistent portrayal of Yemeni women as victims. I have my question to you basically is how do you describe Yemeni woman post 2011, especially during the last five to six years for
Speaker 3 00:08:56 First of all, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. It's quite the pleasure to be here. Speaking about Yemeni woman, a subject that is very important and talked about, but never talked about in just the right way. And so I thank you for this opportunity to discuss the realities of Yemeni woman, which as you had mentioned are quite diverse. Since 2011, there was a lot of coverage and media portrayal of Yemeni women going to the streets. They were angry, they were key components of the revolution. And what was really interesting about Yemen in 2011 it's that these women were acting free, right? It contradicted this image that we had of Yemeni women as victims. They were, they were taken to the streets, they were demanding their rights and they were staying outside late to late hours and they were mixing with men.
Speaker 3 00:09:47 So in a sense, it was this new idea for a Yemeni woman, a new image. And in fact, from the Arab spring, we had one particular woman that was the face of that revolution. At least the globally speaking, not in Yemen, because there are so many women leaders internally, but then we had the Nobel peace prize winner who was a woman from Yon because of the Arab spring. In reality, though, I would argue that the Arab spring was only a short lived phase where this portrayal of women was reality for a short time period within a month of that woman were already in, in the, in the Arabs square. Um, so in the chase square, the women that were protesting were already beaten. They were marginalized from participating on stage only woman who belonged to political parties were allowed to participate in the change process.
Speaker 3 00:10:39 So very quickly, the voice of independent woman with silenced and politics took over. So the status of women, even if we talk about the Arab spring, it was short lived. It was already controlled by political parties as, as we've seen in Yemen. Uh, but since, since the war, there are so many roles that Yemeni woman have taken some of the roles. If you want me to talk about them, we can talk about women as victims, right? That's the image that we see, you know, where they're killed. Um, they are the victims in the sense that if a man dies, they have to care for the children on their own. They're left helpless, they can't work. Uh, but then also there's a new type of victim, which is the kidnapped woman and the detained woman and the woman who gets fabricated political crime pinned on her, which is very new to Yemen's tribal culture, which always avoid the, doing that to women.
Speaker 3 00:11:33 So, so that's a new type of victim. Of course we have women as token. And in that sense, I want to highlight that the current Yemeni government has several female ambassadors and two, two ministers. Uh, if the hedge had command, who's the minister of social affairs and <inaudible>, who's the minister of legal affairs and of it would be great if they had a role on the ground. Unfortunately, the Yemeni government in general, not just these women, don't have much of a role on the ground. And therefore we see a lot of women still represented in political situations, but they have no actual role and they're tokenized. And this also happened, you know, ever since in 2006 onwards, ever since women have been part of the Yemeni government. So in Yemen from 2006 onwards, uh, women were always part of, of the Emni government, but back to the roles of women during Yemen's conflict, we have women as mediators.
Speaker 3 00:12:29 Um, this is a very traditional role for Yemeni women. Historically speaking, we're a tribal culture. And what these women do is that they mediate, uh, for, for, you know, between their family and a tribal shake when someone is kidnapped and they vouch for them, uh, they even helped release prisoners. That's quite a prominent role where women play a massive, massive role in this. Um, today, politically we see a group like, uh, the, the mothers of the abductor tees who kind of cross the round between mediator and activist. Uh, so women are mediators they're activists. They there's this global trend where they prefer to see women as peacemakers or voices that demand peace. And I think because of the politics in the country, we also see a lot of women doing that. Uh, we also have women as healers, as nurses, as doctors, as caregivers, as, um, uh, you know, birthing assistants as mothers.
Speaker 3 00:13:26 And then we have women as workers. So a lot of families that were hesitant to have their woman work, uh, because of the lack of jobs and the scarcity of it, they're now letting women work more than ever, except the problem is there are no jobs in Yemen. So it's kind of like a catch 22. Then you have a very important role that the media doesn't talk about as much, which is the role of women as fighters. And we have this happening across the political spectrum. Uh, first you have the Houthi movement that, that has organized a, a section of women called the Zaina BS and these women run security and intelligence, and they, um, they take care of all the female dealings that women have to go through. So they have woman handling security to deal with women. Uh, of course in the governor rates of MedApp as an identity NBN, you have women belonging to other political parties and other sex fighting for their land and fighting to protect their own families. And so in Yemen, we also have this woman as a fighter. So those are all themes that we can explore, uh, that have that woman, the roles that women have taken since 2011.
Speaker 2 00:14:36 What do you see about those various roles? When you look at Yemeni, I'm a woman outside Yemen, you see them also occupying, you know, variety of roles, um, and professions. Um, uh, many of which actually are geared towards, um, you know, defending women and women rights and human rights and Yemen during this conflict. Uh, some of whom are a filmmakers, um, others, um, you know, have delved into politics as well. In 2015, for example, the office of the special Envoy and UN woman, uh, created, uh, the Yemeni, a woman's pact, um, who have been also, um, uh, called upon for advice on peace, um, and peace negotiations in Yemen. Um, how do you see this? Do a woman outside them know what's happening to women inside the Amman and do they really speak on their behalf?
Speaker 3 00:15:31 Right? And so this is a very important question because I think that the woman outside of Yemen are also part of this woman as token category that we talked about, women outside of Yemen are Western educated. They almost always have a second language with very little roots on the ground. They may have grown up there like myself. Uh, I'm one of these women where I grew up in Yemen and was raised there. But at the moment I can't speak on behalf of these women. I can try to speak an empathy for them and to support them from outside. But of course, that doesn't substitute the voice coming from within now. The contradiction is all these women working from outside are working in a structured political programs. Like you mentioned, one of the examples is the UN woman category. And a lot of NGOs are lobbying for women's rights, but on the ground, there's a disconnect where the average Yemeni woman is not even aware of what these programs mean for her.
Speaker 3 00:16:26 How does it represent her? And not just that there's another gap happening where you have independent woman voices who are, and you mentioned filmmakers, women are making films and the dice sport trying to amplify and raise the voice of Yemeni woman, which I think is actually the most effective way to represent the voices of women inside Yemen. But it's still, there's still a gap. Now, a phenomena that we see today is the use of social media and on Instagram and Facebook, you'll find all these chat groups that talk about Yemeni, feminist movements. Um, and they talk about very daring subjects. They talk about rape, about sexual harassment, about polygamy, about women's right to, uh, to choose how they dress. And they get a lot of critique yet. There's a gap. Uh, first primarily because the conversations taking place are dictated by Western discourse of feminism.
Speaker 3 00:17:17 And second of all, because women on the ground in Yemen, most of the times don't even have phones and internet to access these accounts. And so you have these two realm, two realities happening. There are so many women who are part of the international diaspora that are part of the global economy that are part of the conversations that are taking place about women that affect women in general. And then you have women in Yemen who are affected by their own reality, who can't connect with what's happening globally and are struggling to have a voice. And I think it's really important note that Yemeni woman, we're not in this miserable condition that we see them in today before, um, like urban days. So before I was born, Yemen had quite the amazing feminist history and the Arabian peninsula. Tell us more about this. And please Yemen before 1990s to be two countries, we have the South of Yemen and we had the North of Yemen and the South of Yemen was called the PDR.
Speaker 3 00:18:13 Why people's democratic Republic of Yemen. And even prior to their independence from the British, because they had British colonialism there, women started going to schools in the early fifties. And so from even before independence from the British in 1967, women in the South of Yemen were already lawyers. They were judges, they were school principals. They always assumed the role of educators. They were even doctors and they gained more rights after independence because their country introduced the new font family law, which equated women with men in front of the law. The slot was phenomenal, no other, you know, in the entire middle East and North Africa region, uh, Tunisia and the South of Yemen had the most progressive family laws in the region at that time. And so what happened then is pretty much socialism, which was the ideology that they adopted, uh, equated men and women as workers and as workers.
Speaker 3 00:19:09 There's no distinction between men and women. And so women were enabled and, and kind of their rights were champions under the umbrella of working. Um, so it was really interesting because they were quite advanced, uh, the law, the family law that I mentioned actually even banned polygamy and women were participating in the presidential council in their government in 1968. You know, if you look at that Rabia peninsula, that's quite impressive. In the North of Yemen, though, there was a, an Ottoman rule. And there was, uh, as a D amendment, which was far more conservative than the South of Yemen, the Republic of Yemen there, women were not allowed to be lawyers or judges because the law and being a judge was always tied to the tribe and religion, which was really hard for women to break into. And, and it was really tough for women to, to fill these spaces that women in the South of Yemen had.
Speaker 3 00:20:05 Uh, there was also one school for women during the Ottoman rule in the North of Yemen in the mud, but it was only open to certain families. So women of like elite and ruling families were able to participate there and the entire education was actually religious. So it wasn't until 1962, when Yemen became a Republic and reenact the amendments that woman's education expanded and education became free for everyone that changed the game for women from 1962 until unity. The best thing that the Yemeni North government did is provide an education system for young boys and girls in the South. For example, you had women from the fifties already graduating from Oxford university, um, from, from the North, however, you started seeing women seeking education abroad from the seventies. They were being sensed by the Yemeni government. Uh, the Yemeni government at that time had a program that actually preferred sending women abroad over men to encourage women enrollment in schools.
Speaker 3 00:21:04 And, and this program was actually doing really well. It wasn't until 1990 when the North and South merged where you start seeing a lot of, you know, when, when you haven't became one, a lot of the judges and female lawyers that Yemen had naturally it came from the South as they historically held that position. And then women were, were trying to still, um, improve their status, but because of politics and because what was happening, the, the situation of Yemen deteriorated and the situation of women got worse and worse, you know, what's really shocking is that when we look at, at what's happening today, Yemen's war reversed, everything that happened in the last 50 years. So prior to 2011, Yemen finally reached 63% of young girl enrollment in school. That was the highest number that Yemen has ever gotten today in the war. That number is down to 30% and literacy was finally decreasing, but today it's coming back, you know, the war, and now top the top, you know, add on top of it.
Speaker 3 00:22:07 COVID-19 women are staying home. They're not seeking an education today. It's really hard for women to have access to contraceptive devices or to have access to hospitals. Domestic violence is on the rise. It's, it's incredible how Yemen is like this, this country that had so much potential for a woman and woman had, uh, some sense of like a promising, uh, presence in the region. You know, they were towards the end, you know, and still today we still have female ministers and ambassadors, but there, there was a sense that it was going to be a real representation. And not just one of, you know, we have a female, who's a, an ambassador, a minister, but they don't actually have a role.
Speaker 2 00:22:50 And Yemen has not reached a critical mass to change the status quo, to change policies, to change laws. For example, Yemen is also always deemed as one of the worst countries to live in as a woman. It's a country that is ranked, uh, the last and the world, economic forums, global gender gap index, you know, for 13 consecutive years, why is still Yemen, uh, so unfair and I'm just too
Speaker 3 00:23:17 Right. And the answer to that is actually going to be composed of two answers. Right? First of all, we have to look at what happened at the end of the seventies with the Iranian revolution and the rise of Wahhabism and religious extremism in general in the region. Yemen was the country as a whole, was a victim to religious ideologies and religious extremism. So the condition of woman declined in parallel to the expansion of, of religious doctrines in the region. And so what happened is that, um, as, as the country became more urban and more religious selfie or so on, the less woman had rights. And so, uh, today, for example, a woman's appearance is considered, I would out or a tabooed shouldn't be seen. Um, and therefore not just her face, even her voice, right? Let's not forget that Yemen is a country where there are portions of the country now controlled by religious extremists.
Speaker 3 00:24:14 First to have, uh, regions of the country that are controlled by that. And ultra where they've, they've come out publicly and condemned woman going to hospitals, they bend them from going to hospitals. Even if the doctor is a woman, that's how radical it is. And then in the North of Yemen, you have the healthies who are also extremists in the sense that they banned a mixing of men and women in coffee shops, right? And they, they started controlling the social life of women and their appearance and movement. And so you have all these systems on the ground that are not allowing women, the opportunity to have a say in who governs them and how their lives are lived. This is what what's happened in Yemen progressively over time, unfortunately in Yemen's realities because the government is so weak. And that's the only system that provided a national agenda.
Speaker 3 00:25:05 That's the only system that can provide women the rights to education. It's the only system that could protect women and empower them forward. Uh, in the presence of the Yemeni government, you can only have militias and in Yemen's militias, they're ideological and they are, they are not per woman. And this is of course to say, you know, that's not to say that this is just this them, of course, we know that this happens in every religious movement, whether it was a Jewish or Christian, they tend to be conservative when it comes to women's rights and they tend to disempower them. Right. And so you have that as part of the answer, and then in today's in today's world. And I kind of tied that into the second answer, which is look at the realities on the ground. How can you change laws when you're, when the government is living into y'all when they're struggling to even be present. And then with the majority of the country's divided in the arms of militias and political parties, and there isn't a structured way to do anything. And the absence of peace woman will never have the dignity that they deserve to have.
Speaker 2 00:26:07 Yeah. Well said, um, you spoke about how women are tokens and there are parts of the political agenda, propaganda and a media campaign and agenda. Let's see. Um, but what about women's associations? What's what, is there a hope for breast root change in the among do you have a woman associations as part of the NGOs,
Speaker 3 00:26:29 Right. There's pro Yemen. I have to say this. You haven't had a, um, a decent civil society organization landscape in Yemen. What the war did though, is, uh, what we built on as civil society organizations has now changed into becoming aid organizations. So instead of working on projects that enable the youth and women and so on, they now work on delivering aid. And that's because of the demand for Aden Yemen, um, because millions of people are starving. Yemen situation is really dire add to it. We want to talk about women's issues, right? And so what happened, I think is when we talk about women's issues, a lot of outside donors, whether it be the you, or the UN or the us or the UK, they always want to jump and fund women's programs. And so you had this discrepancy that was happening as early as 2011, where the Arab spring happened.
Speaker 3 00:27:26 And then there were a lot of projects funded in Yemen that were supposed to support women, to be part of the parliament, to support women, to nominate themselves, to run for elections. There were programs that sounded really great on paper, but weren't really applicable on the ground. And that's where I think I, in a sense, I blamed the donor for writing a, you know, this is, this is the amount of money that we have. This is how much we want to give, but the project has to be this, um, and Yemen's case the project. Yeah. It tends to be a little bit different. Now today, fast forward, there are female alliances. There's women's solidarity group. Uh, there's the mother of abductees there, all of these women groups that are coming together, pushing for agendas, but, you know, implementing something first, you have to pass it with the UN, uh, the Yemeni government get approval, you know, new, you have to get a consensus on it, and then you have to figure out a way to apply it in Yemen, again, because of the war, because there's an absence of, of law and order on the ground, you really can't protect women or men, right?
Speaker 3 00:28:31 We're talking about a time period where no one is safe, not just, and so then that's really important to emphasize that a lot of the conversations taking place with the UN and abroad are a bit disconnected. They're a bit mature for the realities that are happening in the ground. For example, a lot of the conversations assume that Yemen will continue to be one country and that, um, if the word just stops, everything will go back to normal and we'll hold the elections. In reality, the ground is playing out to look like Yemen will fragment. It's looking like there won't be elections right away. And it looks like militias will continue to hold the ground for a really long time. And so the conversations that are being dictated from the top down are a little bit irrelevant to what's happening in Yemen is COVID-19 really a challenge that they're facing among the many other serious challenges.
Speaker 3 00:29:22 There is no doubt that COVID-19 is shaking Yemen. The only issue with it is that we don't have a clear idea of the numbers there. We don't have enough tests to test everyone. And the numbers have been really low, even though in reality, we know that there was, there was at least a period of time, a two week period where tons of people died in the South of Yemen and in the North of Yemen to the point where they had to dig up mass graves and they were just dropping bodies. And that's how, how hard COVID-19 was hitting Yemen. And I think it will continue to hit Yemen in the same way. Uh, the, the hospital system was already really weak. The hospitals, the clinics, they were already in really bad shape trying to, to work, uh, under war, under a siege. Um, trying to get medicines into the country sometimes is just like a complete nightmare, especially today with, with fuel shortages, you can't even fly medicine into some portions of the country. Um, hospitals collapsed, the healthcare system collapsed with COVID-19. That's terrifying, not just for woman, again for men and woman, Yemen, Yemen at this point is not just an awful place for women to live. It's an awful place to live in period.
Speaker 2 00:30:35 You speak about, um, the challenges that, um, um, that TM, any woman face. It's always about, um, violence against women and where it's not to reduce of course, um, the impact of violence and, and the severity of violence and that it actually takes place. Right. There is a focus on, um, tried marriages. How is this right now? Is this something that is talked about? Is, are there any associations, the committees that are actually, um, uh, looking into that and Yemen helping a young woman or children actually were forced into marriages, or it's not something that is as important as what, you know, we have many woman are facing,
Speaker 3 00:31:22 Right? So child marriages in Yemen has always been a key talking point. It's been a buzzword in the West. And it's, it's kind of interesting for me because I wrote a massive research on child marriages in Yemen. And then I was part of a, a fiction film on child marriages. And so I strongly believe that we need to protect young girls from being married under age. But I have to say that it's, it's getting to be a bit of a cliche of how the West is fixated on it. There are so many issues that women are facing that are far worse starvation, um, not having a home, being displaced, being a victim of, you know, not just child, marriage, but also just being a victim of possibly being raped by anyone and in the circumstance of war. Um, and so I think it's, it's one of those things where it's focused on upon, like in a way where they want to say Yemen's culture is bad.
Speaker 3 00:32:23 When in reality, a lot of these young girls are being married at that age due to economic strife and due to deteriorating economic conditions. And so if you improve the living conditions of families and have children, I doubt that we'd see this high number of child marriage has taken place. And I also want to take this opportunity to note that in Yemen, it's not just girls who get married young. It's also young boys. When I was in school, there was this young guy who was married at the age of 14, and his wife was just the same age as him. And so in, in Yemen's mentality, you're a child. And then you become a man or a woman in a sense, we cross out that teenage phase. And that has to do with the fact that in Yemen, you have to take on so many responsibilities at such a young age.
Speaker 3 00:33:11 Life is not fun. Like there's not a leader and therefore you just assume those roles a lot quicker. Um, so I just want to highlight that when it comes to child, marriage is of course it's continuously talked about, but is it materializing into any real change? I don't think so. In 2012, 2013, when we had the national dialogue conference, one of the things that they discussed was the, the constitution of Yemen. And they were talking about the articles that would go in. And one of the biggest problems that they had was about the age of consent to get married. Um, again, we had set a few groups and religious groups like the <inaudible> and others who wanted to keep that age low. They did not want it to be 18. Um, so as long as, as long as Yemen is being run by certain ideologues, they will defend the ideologies and beliefs that they have. And so this is going to be Yemen's battle for the next 30 years. How do you find tolerance in, in ideologies that want to promote control?
Speaker 2 00:34:13 It's unfortunate. Exactly. And due to those circumstances, now they want kids to become others. So you see a children fighters, um, 10 and 11, um, and their own living and such yes, that's
Speaker 3 00:34:28 The children, the boys fighting and the woman getting married at 14. And that's a side effect of where I truly believe that, you know, we were doing so well in terms of reducing the number of child marriages, my grandmother's generation, she got married when she was very young. My mother got married when she was older. And then, you know, it's kind of a generational thing that with education and with opportunities and, um, just the ability to, to, to give women alternatives and alternative life. If, if a woman can't get a job and can't do anything, then her destiny is always to just have children. So why not do it? So, yeah,
Speaker 2 00:35:07 Let's pick up on the educated youth in Yemen who, whose education has been interrupted, who cannot be a part of that fight. And their fight is to maybe mitigate between what's happening in Yemen to the world outside. How do they, how do they communicate to the outer world? What do they do slope
Speaker 3 00:35:28 On the subject of youth and, and how they feel? I w I mean, I feel like the generation that was born in the nineties onwards, they didn't really have a chance to live with decent life in Yemen. They didn't get to see the highs that the generations before us saw. And I think that's really tragic because what happened with the war is they feel that they don't control their own lives and destinies. And that's very disempowering when you feel caught up in a, in a world where nobody gives a damn if you live or a few die, um, you can't find a job. The only jobs that you can find would have to involve violence and war, which means that you would have to join a faction in order to survive and have dignity, which is unfortunately, what's happening with the key of national identity and the rise of micro identities, or the, the need to belong to a religious sect or a geographic region in Yemen.
Speaker 3 00:36:23 You, you see that the only way for you to have some sort of meaning is to re identify yourself, or align yourself with someone else's interests that are not really yours. And I think that's really tragic. I think the Yemeni stuck in Yemen, they feel trapped. They can't get out. They can't, you know, even the smart ones, if they want to go and pursue education abroad, it's really difficult for them to get visas in the first place to go abroad. And if they go abroad, then they can't cover the living costs of, of studying abroad. So when they leave abroad, if they want to pursue education, they can start working because the costs are so high and their families living in Yemen, not only can they not support them, they are now dependent on their relative who's abroad to send them money back remittances, which is a whole other issue.
Speaker 3 00:37:13 So in a sense, they're there, their dreams are rubbed from them, right? If you talk to someone who's like, I always want it to be this. I always want it to be this, but instead I had to do this to survive. I feel like that would be the most common narrative that is taking place amongst the youth. Um, of course you have Yemeni in the Yemenis, in the dice fora. A lot of them are taking it upon themselves to amplify the voices of Yemenis, but that's really hard because you, you, when you do that, you struggle with, with subjects like survival's guilt. You struggle with the responsibility to tell someone else's story, but you can never really tell someone else's story. Um, no matter how hard you work, you're still working from outside your country. Therefore you can't really make real change on the ground.
Speaker 3 00:38:03 Uh, it's a quite frustrating process. And I think for a lot of the nominees that are educated and working abroad, it's 10 times harder to get to the position that you need to get to in life when it's not in your own home country, where you have more, uh, support or dignity or access to certain things, you're going to have to work 10 times harder. And you're going to have to prove yourself. Um, of course, a lot of times when young Yemenis make it abroad, they just want to focus on their own lives. And, and that's totally understandable because when you look at what's happening in Yemen is not determined by Yemenis. It is determined by regional actors. Yemen has been hijacked in the score. And so for peace to come or for war to come, it's no longer in the hands of Yemenis. And I think that stripped almost every Yemeni from any sense of self esteem. And when you operate in life with that psychology, you are hopeless. You are sad, you are barely surviving. And unfortunately as dark as it sounds, I think, I think that's, that's where a lot of young people are there
Speaker 2 00:39:06 Be something that we could do a small thing, right?
Speaker 3 00:39:09 The smallest thing we need to stop the war. That's literally the first step to any possible solution. You can come up with six or seven solutions or approaches or mechanisms to solve a female displacement or young marriages or whatever it is that you're trying to solve, whatever mechanism you put in place. The step number one is peace. That is the step number one. And I want to add something here. You know, historically in Yemen, Yemen had Queens, so pre Islamically. We had Queens pre Islamically women were priestesses. They had the highest levels of, of power when it comes to religion and politics. And even after Islam, we had a queen, uh, <inaudible> found the Gibler and even her aunt who, uh, I think her name was Asma bin Shahab. She paid the way foot on what to be queen. And we had, you know, in, in ancient history, we had poets, we had Dana, but she had him because that had the sheet.
Speaker 3 00:40:05 And we, I think historically women played such a key role in politics and in, in just social, like they helped empower communities. I think that because of the history and the heritage, that Yemeni woman have, that role is not going to disappear. I personally, I'm not afraid of that. I think that women are facing a lot of challenges. They're being silenced. They are being, um, pushed aside marginalized, but I don't think that this heritage is going to die. I think that it is embedded in, in, in what we inherit from our parents. It's, it's, it's in us, it's available to us. And I think that if we can secure peace in Yemen, then these women would take off. They just need a little bit of support. All these programs that are working in Goodwill abroad. They can't do anything for Yemeni woman, unless there's peace. Once there's peace, the outs, the people working from abroad or outside can connect with the people inside. And that's when we'll see the push.
Speaker 2 00:41:09 I totally agree with you. I see that power. I see that power in you. I see that power. And even the students, my students who are from Yemen, who's doing their masters and PhD. You see that much power and you see how much they're vocal and they, they, they know their history. They know, um, how they're disadvantaged at this time of history. And they do have hope that things will change. Right.
Speaker 3 00:41:34 Well, I want to also add, you know, that it's very interesting as I meet women from different cultures, that the first chalk that really happened to me when I went to America, is that a lot of the characteristics that I have in my personality, as I studied feminism in school, I realized they would be described as masculine in a Western culture. So resiliency, strength, um, speaking your mind, being honest, uh, all of these things were kind of, you know, categorized as masculine characteristics than the West, while in Yemen, it's embedded in us that a decent good woman is this way. And so in our own culture, we, you know, if we are to study Yemeni feminism, women are vocal. They are assertive. A lot of times they are ahead of households, even though there are a lot of stories where they're not, uh, and so the first from one family to the other, but there are many families where women are heads of households.
Speaker 3 00:42:28 Um, and they always have a say, somehow, I want to highlight that Yemeni woman is a huge group in Yemen. And it would be really difficult to always talk about them as one homogenous group. Uh, they are diverse, right? So women's identity intersects with other things. You might be a Yemeni woman. Who's also of African descent. You might be I'm any woman who's young and marginalized. It might be you have any woman who tribal and elite. Um, so you have this intersectionality of being a woman from Yemen and with it comes different challenges or the floor, the identities that intersect in you. And so I expect everyone's fight to be a different fight. And so the solutions that are prescribed for helping the status of women in Yemen have to take into consideration how their realities are different based on the geographical regions that they live in based on their own identities, based on the, their ability to access school, health care, so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 00:43:31 I think Yemen should be as tragic as it is. It should be an easy fix in the sense that we get to focus on healthcare education, basic rights. When you hear that you would have a massive transformation across the entire country. And I, you know, the, the positive note that I, that I can add is that despite all the negative things that I know, and despite being an, a hardcore realist, I truly genuinely believe that Yemen will see better days and that it won't be too far away from today. I truly, I know for a fact that the younger generation of Yemeni women will be leaders, that it will have a strong voice and that they will impact their own communities. That's lovely. Thank you so much, Simone, thank you for this,
Speaker 0 00:44:17 The full discussion. I end the episode with a treat. It's a Yemeni traditional song that takes us back to a time and a place that is so different than the one that Yemen lives in today. This song is a gift from the magnificent boric and Arabic singer and producer. So enjoy, and until next time take care and Stacy
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Speaker 0 00:46:41 <inaudible>.
