Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Women of the Middle east podcast. Women of the Middle East. This podcast relates the realities of Arab women and their rich and diverse experiences. It aims to present the multiplicity of their voices and wishes to break overdue cultural stereotypes about women of the Middle East. My name is Amal Malki. I'm a feminist scholar and educator. This is Women of the Middle east podcast. Hannah Doery. Welcome to Women of the Middle east podcast.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: I'm a big fan. I've been following you for so long. You're one of rare women in the Gulf who dare to speak up. And of course, as all of us, we do pay the price. Hala, let's begin by speaking about women in academia. Tell us a bit about yourself.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: I grew up in a house where my mother is Egyptian. My father is a tribal, not the traditional tribal person, but a person who is more of an open minded figure, but of course very considerate of his own cultural consideration when it comes to raising his own daughters. We used to go regularly for holidays in Egypt and Alexandria, where my mother's family is from. Although we lived in Jeddah, very much of a cosmopolitan city. While in Egypt, I realized the quite different cultural standards. You know, men and women in the family eating together, talking together. We can play, you know, by bicycles and we can go to the beach and we as young women very much like, do anything we want. But going back to Saudi and we're talking about 80s and 90s at the time there was very much of a conservative culture, gender segregation. So you get all those questions that are unanswered. I think growing up there were two things that were very much disturbing for me as someone who is actively reading, actively noticing the cultural differences is the polygamy, the practice of polygamy and, you know, the idea of hijab. I'm saying that with caution because I do respect every woman's choice to have any kinds of dress code that they feel comfortable wearing. And I do, you know, remember many women have actually gained more opportunities in our society because they abdicated to hijab. So I really respect their choices and I feel it's certain situations, it's empowering for women to be wearing it and to get the trust that she needs to pursue careers and, you know, more of a mixed gender. But I'm talking about that time where I felt like why women have to guard, you know, against fit now or against. As a young teen, teenager, I would say. So I felt like it really stops you from pursuing a lot of things. One of them of course is going in public places, basically being free without having to guard against anyone who might look at you, might, you know, flirt with you. I remember these are my first basically impressions on of being a girl in that society and then pursuing a career as a medical scientist where I had to work with officers in an armed forces hospital. And I see the discrimination on every day. Like for instance, the discrimination that someone, because he's a male and with military rank, he gets to lead just because of that, regardless of your more competent, more qualified as a woman. Of course he gets the preference on basically being placed on a scholarship or being placed on training abroad because he doesn't have to go through the whole thing of having a chat or a male guardian. Of course, as many of us have experienced at the time, I didn't have to deal with the problems of the male guardianship, but I saw a lot of my colleagues dealing with this. And of course growing up in a society where women are severely restricted in a choice of marriage and divorce and children custody. So I've got through a lot of heartbreaking stories of women having to make very difficult compromises in order to make those kinds of choices. Some of them are very dear and friends and relatives and sisters. Of course this is not normal. You know, I think we're capable as well. We are very much like as intelligent as anyone and we should be able to make our own choices in our personal life and in the career that we're pursuing. I remember being talkative a lot that some of the women that have been talking to, they were actually commenting, well, did you get oppressed as a woman at one point? Did your father get another wife? In all kinds of, you know, very typical. As if your perceptions as coming from a trauma, which is not necessarily not a trauma personally, but you know, the conscience, basically the collective conscience of being a woman in a society that might not grant you all of these things. And then I led the lab for two years and it was like an eye opening experience. I got a lot of support from our predominantly male leaders. It was a very strange moment in life where you feel trusted to do very high level appointments and that's and responsibilities at work. But at the same time you're being perceived as women. So some of the colleagues would come and tell you why would you live in a city where your parents aren't here? So I get, you know, all kinds of the mixed messages. And of course at the time I had a lot of trouble accessing the Premises of my work as a leader in a lab where you can never access the premises because the driver who's getting you there is not under the sponsorship of your father. But then came the opportunities of being abroad on a scholarship for my graduate study, master's and PhD. And then I realized that, you know, there is a lot of prejudice against women who comes from Islamic countries for reasons of either, you know, supremacies or cultural lack of cultural understanding and cultural sensitivity. And basically judging women as passive and have no voice basically in the whole process, even if they are willingly, you know, choosing to be conservative and choosing to have a traditional dress code which is very discriminatory in its own, you know, account. And I noted how professors in academia and others are judging us as less basically important or, you know, there are certain lower expectations, if you would think of it from people from Muslim countries or from women in particular, which was very offensive to me at the time. I started writing obit articles by invitation to Al Ha'at newspaper. At the time I didn't expect that they would publish, but they did publish and I started getting a lot of feedback. I think it was one year after writing that I had to put my article somewhere like in a blog. But then the minute I started, you know, categorizing them based on themes, I realized that I've written a lot about women. And of course I felt more responsible to talk about that as someone who led allowed for two years. And I've seen the potential of women and I think if you talk to anyone from Saudi Arabia, they will talk more about the potential of women workers and how much they're more committed. I don't know if it's because the chances for them to find opportunities are more limited than that for for men. So they're more dedicated, they're more responsible. And of course there was prejudice as well, because I remember while leading it and I was in a committee of hiring, my director told me, please do not focus too much on the resumes of the female interns and give more opportunities to men. And I asked him why. He said, you have no experience like I did, because these women, once they get married, they will not perform as you've expected. They will not accept the night shift, they will have long maternity leaves and their husbands might object on them working in gender mixed environment. And he will demand that they resign or just being transferred to somewhere where they're not really as dealing with men as in the usual work setting, the undercourse engagement with the readers, engagement with the women writers We've created writing campaigns about cases where we felt women are not treated fairly, victims of violence, victims of child marriage, personal status law. So we created this kind of writing campaigns. Let's all write about those issues because there is a, like a landmark case at the time. So all those engagements made me the women who I Am, which geared my interest in academia afterwards to study women's health and in particular the adverse events of health events that happens to women, survivors of violence. So it took me back to Saudi Arabia for my field work and I started talking about violence and started connecting with activists so that we can translate the knowledge that we have into action. I blogged about it. I've made a resource for women in Arabic, women survivors and healthcare providers. In my postdoctoral fellowship at Hopkins, I tried to organize a national research inside Saudi Arabia, which I got the approval for, where healthcare providers can be trained on, on how to screen high risk women for violence if they come with certain signs or symptoms, and how to create a very effective referral system. Because we did have the law implementation was very weak. Doctors knowledge might not be optimal or first responders knowledge might not be optimal. So I wanted to create this app that would help doctors, guide them basically into a short training course, support women. And of course the arrest of women happened at the time and I couldn't go back. My pursuits basically for feminism had allowed me to connect with women of different backgrounds from Saudi Arabia and from the civil society in the region. We were able to launch several campaigns to ease those kinds of restrictions on women's autonomy and mobility. The driving campaign, abolishing the milgardianship system, the violence against women campaign and the personal status law, which basically something that was highly discriminatory. It's a little bit better now, but it is not equal or egalitarian as we hoped it would be. And of course creating this kind of voice by those campaigns, though they're very much like digital, but at least there are some voice which was crafted of course, in the last decade.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: You know, your, your story resonates because it is the story of many feminists, many scholars, many scientists in the region. So for someone who is a scientist who wanted to work from within the system to better the system for women, how do you see academic freedom in our part of the world, especially when it comes to women issues?
[00:10:00] Speaker B: I can answer this question in two ways. Women in academia in general, whether they were within our countries or globally, and their position and of influence so that they can get the same opportunities, the same support as their male colleagues and of course, the other aspect of it, women in patriarchal society who are in leadership position in the academics, institutions and how much their position could be supportive for the females who are coming. So from my experience, women are very much trusted within the academic institutions within our countries, especially in Saudi Arabia, as long as they're following the status quo, as long as they're not challenging the status quo. We have had women leaders in academic institutions with very much impressive track record, but they're not really presenting themselves as advocates for gender equality or advocates for more representation of women. Before I pursue my postdoctoral fellowship, once I finished my PhD, I was exploring position. One of the largest universities in the region and in Saudi Arabia is Princess Noura University. Some of the women who are on leadership positions are women who are like me, they're feminists. At least personally, they define themselves as feminists, though they're not really part of any kind of public movement to push for gender equality. So these women had a very similar academic pursuit. Like myself, they went to the U.S. they pursued their education. They wanted to come back and to educate women. And then something really weird happened when I applied for position there. So I had a meeting. You know, the professor there, a young woman who just, you know, got the position after finishing her education abroad, she told me, hala, before we start, we're going to have to wait for an older scholar who has led a leadership position in the university before there comes the other women. And they started advising me on how to phrase my public messaging in ways that doesn't really show defiance, so that doesn't really critique so much and somehow create this kind of personal space, personal public space with the students if they were intrigued to ask a question. So, for instance, because we're teaching female healthcare allied healthcare professionals, so only when, when it comes basically in the discussion, I can talk in private with the women without having to have this kind of public label that there are laws, there are legislation that we need to promote. This kind of pushback narrative on our, you know, social media accounts or in the media was very disappointing to me. And I felt that that sets the ground that I'm not going to be accepted, which of course, I've never heard of them after the meeting. And we have to remember deans in those university and deputy deans are appointed by recommendations from purity apparatus in the state and by a royal order. So they cannot really say whatever they think if the atmosphere is not conducive for freedom. So in this kind of, you know, atmosphere, it's very difficult for, you know, Academic freedom to thrive. You cannot really feel free to challenge intellectually or give arguments or phrase any kinds of observation on the culture that you're living in that might affect women's health or opportunities. When I started publishing, you know, the term that I've used, which is the standard international term, it's the intimate partner violence against women and its adverse health effects. That was the title of my dissertation and my papers, when I send that to the journal, the World Health Organization of the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean, which is the journal that publishes research for the region or from the region. And this is the term that is used by the World Health Organization and by scholars worldwide. So if you want to compare your research to research from similar countries, you don't basically use any other term but this term. Now, the editors called me back and said, well, the research is great. We want to publish that, but you have to change that because you're not really talking about intimate partner relations outside of marriage. Of course, given my own research was for married women within Saudi Arabia. He said, just write spousal violence against women. Because I'm, you know, a novice researcher. I just wanted to publish like many other researchers. So I just changed it into spousal violence against women and of course, put the term afterwards in the introduction and in the. But it wasn't one of the key words that you can search the research with. Again, another issue when it comes to, you know, the hypersensitivity when it comes to guarding the personal space of women in academia in general. You know, I teach actually these issues in policy where funding for research that looks into women's health, that looks into policies affecting health or in women's health issues in general are very much skewed towards, you know, more of a very much least represented in at least the funding opportunities first, because they're not that much research that looks into women beyond the reproductive issues, for instance, for older women, younger women, those issues are not yet as supported in terms of interest in terms of women who are invested in it, or in terms of funding from the National Health, National Institute of Health or CDC or other entities. And of course, the representation of women as leaders. In most of universities, if you have a political opinion that is not favored, as we've seen with Harvard, you know, women could be easily removed. They don't have the same political clout and the support that men have. And by nature, they are not as supported historically to be leaders in these positions, especially in certain disciplines, though it's slightly changing over the last two decades. But in certain Profession where male are mainly historically been the most prevalent. Basically scholars or academics, those disciplines, you get to see more representation of men in leadership. And of course, in our own part of the world, relationships play a role. I see women promoted in a far longer period than men simply because men socialize and understand each other and help and support each other because of that relationship, more than their engagement with their female colleague. It's just that habit that, you know, because we're segregated by gender. That of course add another layer to the discrimination when it comes to academia.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: I know for sure that women are not paid like men and academy and that woman, when it comes to promotion, are not in seriously either because of the research, because a majority of women comes from humanities and social sciences, for example, where it's considered less an impact than, you know, sciences. So there are multiple levels of academic oppression that I haven't recognized until I was a part of it, trying to fight against it. So this is as an academic leader, as a professor myself, I saw how my identity as a woman, my identity as a mother, my identity as a feminist was used against me within my academic context that I thought was safe and embracing because I add value to it through my research, through my teaching, through my work. And I saw that unlike men, whom no one would scrutinize their private life, no one would look at their interviews and come back biting them because God forbid he said, I'm a feminist or I believe in human rights, right? This unfortunately happens to us. And this leads me to this phenomenon of vilifying women academics or feminists. In academia, there is this movement of vilifying us as if we are there to spoil generations instead of educate generations.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: We're an agent of change in a way. But this change and the forces that aim to protect the status quo, these are actually very patriarchal nature, very traditional and conservative. And not only it might be manifesting more in tribal societies, but it, we've seen it here at play as well, seeing, you know, how that really plays in most of the countries that tend to proclaim themselves as democratic countries. I totally agree. And I believe that all these issues create this kind of self censorship for women academics or women who have a feminist interest, or more of a holistic approach of explaining basically the lived reality of women and how policies should accommodate the needs of women in a different way than the status quo. I believe that the self censorship that comes to women academics, the personal cost that they have to pay, and the level of competition and challenges that they, they have to face, all of that really affects their potential to fully realize this kind of, you know, method of change. Basically, I can tell you for, you know, for sure that most of the women that I know who have studied abroad from at least Saudi Arabia and went back are very much, you know, are having a lot of potential to challenge the patriarchal norms, to challenge the discrimination. And not only against women, they understand that from a feminist perspective, but also against minorities. You know, you see the nationality withdrawal against the divorced women in Kuwait. The movement against those kinds of practices were led by women in academia and of course, labor rights, the migrant workers rights. At the forefront of pushing for more inclusion, pushing for more understanding and representation are women in academia or women scholars. We are losing potential by not allowing women in academia or in places where, you know, challenging the thoughts and improving the understanding. We are losing the potential of our own, losing an opportunity basically to have more peace and more prosperity for everyone.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Exactly. Because women and feminists call for diversity and inclusion and a better future for everyone. And this is the problem is when women are targeted in one field and doesn't have the backup, doesn't have the critical mass of women all across fields to stand for one cause.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: You know, it is very important observation, but then goes back to the real life of freedom of speech, speech and freedom with simply. I remember one of the great intellectuals in our country who usually had this kind of public message that we should protect first and foremost our ability to speak up, our ability to get, you know, the words, you know, to others and to have this kind of support. Of course he is imprisoned now. He was imprisoned for seven years. It goes to the idea of the person that is political. There is no way that we can have personal rights and freedoms without the political climate and the political context that can protect, protect us to actually speak up and change and you know, most of the discriminatory and most of the class divided countries such as Britain, it was actually the movement of intellectuals and the movement of people in bars, in schools and universities, in books that allowed the change to happen. Of course it was a gradual change, but again, it was like the seeds of change and the seeds of creating the new state. It is not an ideal state. Most of the states are hijacked by business elites or tycoons and political elites. But unfortunately, this is, this is something that we're really missing, which is the political context in which we can safely express our thoughts, argue against harmful practices or thoughts, and at the same time receive the support from those who are like minded and who believe of the same thing. You Know, the, the movement, for instance, of the abolish the male guardianship system started, you know, by discussing those ideas on our own social media accounts and writings and articles. And shortly after, like maybe two to three years after, I posted the petition with other women activists online and we've received in a matter of two weeks, 15,000 people supporting it, men, women from all walks of life who have posted their national id, even imagine something as private as that, just to prove that they're not caught or they're not really anonymous. They felt, you know, safe enough to express the support for that. It was a moment of building momentum and of course creating, you know, reaching, you know, more and more people because, you know, 15,000 people are talking to their circles about those issues. It means, you know, 30,000 or maybe more are actually contemplating the ideas. And of course it paved the way to the actual change. So when the government decided that if we're going to ease the restrictions of the male guardianship, there is hardly any kind of reasonable resistance from the society because society has actually thought about those ideas, society has actually contemplated about those ideas. But when you come with a top down approach where people are actually faced with those ideas of the government without having more of a societal exchange of those ideas, why are we having this? What are the pros and cons of those ideas? They didn't have a chance basically to contemplate or to deliberate those ideas peacefully, that they felt like those ideas are discredited because they just come for political reasons. We're seeing people who are coming from outside to dance and you know, have immodest, basically performance on stages or immodest dress code and we just reject. And when a Saudi woman does that, you know, she's being arrested. People do reject those kinds of forced basically values. So it's not a voice from the people. It's not a voice that is important to the people or relevant to the people. It's just something that is geared towards rejecting an outsider image, something that is western centric rather than organic or national or natural. The personnel is political and we need to have a political freedom first and foremost in order to ensure that we can have the academic freedom, have the personal voice reaching out and for people to feel safe enough to engage.
[00:24:11] Speaker A: Even the feminist movement in Saudi Arabia has been hijacked by state feminism. But you know that it's done not for the right reasons. And you know that if you don't involve the people of the cause, the women themselves, the feminists themselves, and give them credit for what They've gone through historically. It's a fake movement, after all.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Most of the women, when we started getting together and speaking about strategies, tactics, ways to amplify our voices or connect with influential groups or media outlets so that we can talk about those issues, most of them had one comment. All of us are going to die before seeing any kinds of change. And maybe other people will take the credit. They know that these things are more of a public good things rather than personal reward or gratification. We are either imprisoned or in exile now, most of us, or silenced. Of course, many of us are within Saudi Arabia, are struggling to find even jobs on the basic level of survival. And they are very much of a worthy women like women who are have a lot to contribute in their own professions. You know, in cases with state feminism, the state feminism is problematic because again, as mentioned, it's for political expediency, not for women's rights. And whenever women tested the boundary of basically pursuing, and I've mentioned that the case of some women like Fozal Etabi, a lot of young women now are pursuing professions outside of the traditional job because of the restrictions exist, political or professional. So she used to live in Dubai and she got a lot of followers and she started plugging her daily life. And then because of her huge following, she started advertising. The government issued a mandate that anyone who's using their account, any Saudis who are using their account, whether they are within Saudi Arabia or outside for business or for basically creating revenue, they're going to have to have something called mouzouq or a permit from the Saudi Ministry of Information. So she did, and a lot of other women or men who are using their huge social media influence for business applied. It gave the government more of a way to censor those accounts because they have now all the accounts to censor and to follow on the track. In the case of Fawza Le Tehibi, because she portrayed the Western lifestyle that was very much promoted and now flagged as the new Saudi Arabia, the global Saudi Arabia that is open to tourism, to performance, to that is basically Western centric rather than anything else. So when time comes for renewing her permit, she was told that she has to go back to Saudi Arabia in order to obtain that in person from the ministry. Once she's there, she was asked to have an interview with someone who is obviously working the Ministry of Interior or basically what they call the national security. So he told her, how come you are a woman who comes from a reputable tribe, such as posting yourself Online, you know, wearing those kinds of flimsy clothing and having, you know, intimate times with your husband, you know, hugging and things like that. And she told him, well, that's the new Saudi Arabia. Isn't that what other women, Cristiano Ronaldo and her and Georgina are doing everywhere? That's what the value projects for the people of Saudi Arabia that were not in the Wahhabi time anymore. This is not for you. This is not for you as a Sally. This is for tourists and for foreigners. His perception that he is protecting the integrity of the family, the integrity of the women, of the Saudi women has this kind of personal mandate. So she felt like she is going to be arrested exactly like her other sister who also had her, you know, account being used for projecting herself, going in Riyadh without Abaya in a gym clothes. And she was arrested and sentenced for it was 11 years or more in prison. And she was abused of course in prison. So she felt that she's going to be arrested. So she decided to flee Saudi Arabia with her husband and she now resides in Europe. You get to see those signs of when women are trying to test those signs of barriers that exist when you are not part of the allowed women actually written about about that when the government decided to abolish the nil guardianship system, I said that there will be two classes of women in the Saudi society. Those who come from originally come from supportive, from open minded families who will be able to pursue those kinds of opportunities without much restriction unless of course they cross the head of any kind of official. Those women will actually, you know, flourish without any kind of restrictions in, in terms of choosing basically a career or choosing to travel or choosing to stay in a hotel or to choose to pursue a certain living arrangement because she comes from supportive family. The government wouldn't usually put any kinds of restrictions. Of course the society might affect, affect her decisions. But then comes the women from conservative families and whether those new openings would mean anything for them. And I've seen that repeatedly in my research on women survivors of family violence or domestic violence. For them to choose to live in a different country for work or a different city for work in a different home from her abusive home and to travel, she could face a disobedience case in law. She could be pressured within her family. All the family would actually try to stop her from pursuing these things. She could be coerced into marriage, coerced into leaving her children if she was divorced, coerced into choosing a profession or education. So there are all kinds of things the families still enjoy when it comes to power over the women that prevent her from pursuing those things. And the government will not come to rescue her, not come to protect his rights. And this is where we talk about rights when being granted in law, are not necessarily implemented and not protected. So when they are implemented, when you're not having to basically worry about that, you know, being respected by official institutions, but then even when you're trying to do that and you get, you know, the pushback from your family or from other people in your society, you're not protected.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: No. I think this is a commonality between most of the countries in the Gulf conflating between protecting women and controlling women, because there are two totally different things. It's. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much. I really, really thank you.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: This is Women of the Middle East. Thank you for listening and watching. To Stay up to Date with Women of the Middle east podcast. You can subscribe. And don't forget to rate us. If you would like to contact me directly, you can do so on Instagram via email.
