Gender And Gender Inequality In Arab Women

The Arab world is traditionally and originally a male-dominated culture, where male authority is the norm throughout most Arab countries. Subsequently, even with the introduction of Islam and the acknowledgement of women’s rights coming about in the early 20th century, as will later be described, there still remain those traditional components that affect male-female interactions and relationships in Arab societies. Gender and gender inequality are present in Arab societies still today and are at the forefront of Arab societies. Aspects of gender inequality, for the most part, appear with respect to those of employment and education opportunities, political rights, and justices in marriage. As a starting point, one can stress that there is a general view, on a large global scale that Arab society is one where gender issues and gender relations exist despite the recent protests/riots.

Gender being the sexual role a society gives their members, that is, the behavioral norms (gender roles) that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex. Gender roles are illustrated in several distinctive ways throughout the materials read in class. The novel, Girls of Riyadh, by Rajaa Alsanea gives many detailed encounters of men and women, especially as they are related to social class. This novel is an eye opening, nearly shocking, look inside the dating scene in Saudi Arabia, whose Sharia-based law rulings indicate there is to be no face-to-face interaction between unrelated men and women. Unmarried couples, in this novel, conduct relationships via cell phone and internet at late hours of the night. Within the novel the women try to break out of the social norms of their Arab culture; however, their gender often...

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The Arab view of gender is a conservative approach that is most often implemented by force. The Middle East as a region doesn’t acknowledge the complicated realities of multiple and changing positions of gender and identity. Gender in general is a hard topic to understand; however, gender in Arab societies is even harder to wrap the mind around. When studying gender in the Arab world it is imperative to take into justification sexuality. Likewise studies of sexuality cannot be studied separately from gender analysis. Questions of gender rights and gender relations are not new to the Arab world. While the majority of Arab countries still have laws against women having basic rights, some countries, like Kuwait, help to testify that the Arab world is progressively moving near gender equality and recovering gender relations between the opposite sexes.