Newsletter 30 September 2009
Listening for Women's Voices
Janet Bohren
I participated in a 14 day trans-cultural
study trip organized by United Theological Seminary. While on this trip, I
made a concerted effort to listen for the voices of women in the places we
visited. I wanted to know about their lives at work and at home and their
dreams for the future of women in their countries. An important goal of this
trip was for us to hear perspectives from both sides of the Wall separating
the West Bank and Israel. To this end a variety of meetings were set up for
us to talk with different groups working to promote understanding across the
complex political realities of this region. This is a brief reflection on
what I was able to observe relative to women’s and girl’s rights
on a trip to Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel in January 2008 with the Society
for Biblical Studies. My trip gave me a brief view of how important it is
for us to support those in Jordan, the West Bank, Palestine, and Israel as
they struggle for women’s rights in the midst of the complex legal,
political and cultural environments in which they live.
On one of our first nights in Amman, Jordan, we met and spoke with Reem Najjar,
President of UNICEF for the Middle East and North Africa. Reem is Jordanian,
Palestinian, and Christian. She spoke fervently of her earlier work for the
YWCA in Jordan during which she helped set up counseling centers, kindergartens,
and legal help for women in refugee camps who had fled conflicts in Iraq and
other countries. Later on our trip we visited a women’s center at a
refugee camp in the West Bank and saw the efforts there to provide women with
computer skills, a market for their handcrafted items, and to provide girls
with English instruction so that they could do better in the local schools.
In the refugee camp I noticed that the girls were very shy and hesitant to
approach us, while the young boys were full of energy and surrounded us at
every turn.
While in Jerusalem we met with a spokeswomen for B’Tselem, the Israeli
Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. She spoke
about how B’Tselem works to gather data on human rights violations in
the occupied territories and to make this information available to the Israeli
public. She explained that they need to send women interviewers to speak with
the women in the West Bank and to encourage these women to accept video cameras
to record their lives. She said it is harder to get the women’s stories
then the men’s.
Mikhael Manekin, a spokesperson for Breaking the Silence: Israeli soldiers
talk about the Territories, explained that young men in the Israeli Defense
Forces face severe ethical dilemmas in the territories that they are not trained
to deal with. Breaking the Silence, established in March 2004, has gathered
and published examples of these ethical dilemmas from soldiers after they
finish their service so that the Israeli public will have a better idea of
the realities their young soldiers face. When I asked if the issues differed
for women, he said yes, that the women must deal with “male domination”
in their units.
During the week of Jan.10-18 the weekly Jordanian English language newspaper
The Star had an article by Fida Khalil on violence against women. It noted
that Jordanian law supports equal rights for women. During a 16 day campaign
to abolish violence against women held last fall, the Jordanian National Commission
for Women, other women’s groups and the United Nations in Jordan developed
a list of 16 forms of violence against women. The list is similar to what
we would list in the United States. “Deprivation of education”
stood out for me. This issue was emphasized by the speaker at the refugee
camp, who talked about their efforts to assure the girls the same educational
opportunities as the boys.
Finally, in a pamphlet entitled This Week in Palestine, Issue 17, January
2008 that I found on the front desk at a resort hotel where we were staying
in Jericho, there is an article entitled Palestinian Women must Speak Out
by Maha Mehanna. In this article, the author described the real and severe
problem of sexual harassment in the work place for Palestinian women. She
wrote “they keep their silence and tears inside and remain utterly alone.”
She explained why women are afraid to speak out and made a number of suggestions
for improving the situation. But it all needs to begin with Palestinian women
not fearing to speak out and that is a very hard thing given the culture,
laws, and other political problems.
How do we hear each other’s stories and work with each other to assure
equal rights for women and girls? Although I had only a few brief glimpses
of the challenges women in Jordan, Israel and the West Bank face, I learned
how the women in these countries are working hard for women’s rights.
They face many legal and cultural barriers. Some issues are unique to their
lives and cultures, but the issues for violence against women are similar
for us all. The educated professional women I met cared about the women and
children of their countries and were working hard to improve rights and opportunities
for all across a large range of legal, health, and educational issues.
Dr. Janet Bohren is a student at United Theological Seminary, Dayton,
Ohio
