Zawaya

Women's status reflects society's maturity and the awareness of its elites

By: Said Elakhal

Arab societies are witnessing social and political mobility in terms of women’s rights and respected legal status as citizens, while the situations of Arab women show obvious discrepancies from a country to another.

The political and civil rights that women enjoy in Maghreb societies (the right to vote, nominate, and assume political and judicial positions, etc.), are not offered to women in some Gulf societies such as Saudi Arabia.

Democratic women’s associations and human rights organizations are struggling to grant women more rights. However, the conservative forces represented by the political Islam trend in alliance with the tribal trend, withstand women’s demands aggressively by sticking to the nomadic values and customs, which they turn into doctrinal provisions coated in religion to force the Parliament and the government to abide by them, as it happened in Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria. In Algeria, President Bouteflika and the Algerian parliament had to drop the first version of the Family Code that eliminated the requirement of having a legal tutor for the marriage contract of a female adult.

The same current tried to block the Moudawana in Morocco, but the effectiveness of women’s groups and democratic forces, and the support of the King for women’s issues, both gave a strong and signifcant push to women’s rights. The Moudawana brought substantial changes in terms of women’s rights, setting the minimum legal age for marriage at 18, and granting women the right to tutor themselves, the right to accumulate marital property, and the right to divorce that was exclusive to men.

These gains were strengthened by Morocco’s ratification of conventions preventing all forms of discrimination against women, as well as offering them the right to give their nationality to their children from mixed marriages. In order to provide the necessary and actual protection for family and women in Maghreb societies, their governments should open up to successful experiences, especially in Tunisia and Morocco, and follow their example to modify the clauses that degrade women and expose them to exploitation and marginalization.

The amendments brought by the Moudawana in Morocco since 2004 have certainly have positive impacts on family and society, although little time has passed since their application. Some of these positive results are as follows:

1- Promoting the registration of marriages: many families in the countryside and rural areas have their sons and daughters get married by simply reciting al-Fatiha in front of witnesses and family, without documenting the marriages before the Adoul (public notaries).

Thanks to the Moudawana, and the awareness-raising campaign accompanying it, the pace of marriage documentation accelerated, and the numbers of registrations were as follows: 6918 in 2004, 14,817 in 2005, 16,832 in 2006, 18,751 in 2007, and 23,390 in 2008.

2- Reducing the phenomenon of female minors’ marriages for those aged under 18: a total of 33,253 marriages were registered in 2009, i.e. 10.58 per cent of the total number of marriages, knowing that 96 per cent of the authorized girls to marry are approaching the age of 18.

3- Wives taking advantage of the disunity procedure: presenting up to 94 per cent of the total number of divorce cases in 2009. This increasing demand for divorce “shiqaq”, or the disunity procedure, protects women from extortion and exploitation exercised by husbands when resorting to Khul’ (divorce in exchange for compensation by the wife).

4- The significant decrease in the divorce rate: 27,935 divorces in 2008, falling to 24,170 cases in 2009.

Despite the positive results brought by the Moudawana, the lack of awareness about its articles and the male dominance prevailing among some judges, require the intensification of governmental efforts to activate the Moudawana, in order to ensure family stability and protect the rights of wives and children.