Posts Tagged ‘Women’

Posted on May 5, 2010 - by mira

A young nation with growing problems

First appeared in The Daily Star

SANAA: Teenage pregnancies are common in Yemen. In fact, Yemen is a nation raised by young mothers. In the remote northern village of Al-Qobai, local villager Hassan and I talk about our homelands. The conversation turns to women in Lebanon and Yemen.

He suddenly tells me, “Ask Mohammad why he wants to find a husband for his 8-year-old daughter,” and points to his friend sitting in our group.

Teenage and child marriages are widespread here, particularly in rural areas, where the majority of Yemen’s population of 22 million lives. In 2008, 10-year-old Nujood Ali made headlines locally and worldwide when she escaped from her older husband’s home to a courtroom and succeeded in getting a divorce. Something like that had been unheard of before. She helped bring much attention ¬ to some, too much attention ¬ to the plight of child brides in this country.

But Nujood was both brave and lucky. Her courageous feat did not open the flood gates of young brides demanding divorce, and the practice continues. In September, 12-year-old Fawzia Youssef died days after giving birth to a stillborn baby, the closest hospital some 15 kilometers away from her village.

It’s not a lack of action to combat early marriage and other problems facing women. Non-governmental organizations, both Yemeni and international, and women’s groups are numerous here. They have been working tirelessly both at the grassroots and in lobbying government. Earlier this year, for example, they saw Parliament pass a law setting the minimum marriage age to 17 for both men and women ¬ not 18, as they had wanted, but at least not 15 or nonexistent, as it had flip-flopped in the past.

However, the law has yet to be ratified as religious conservatives and some tribal leaders strongly opposed it and sent it back to Parliament for review, possibly to lower the minimum age or eliminate it altogether.

Tackling an issue such as early marriage, so deeply rooted in tribal traditional practices and sacredly held values, has been a balancing act for the government, especially as these traditions and values are further exacerbated by the realities on the ground in rural areas.

To illustrate the situation in rural areas, consider the following fictitious scenario: Amal is 10 years old and lives in a village with her six brothers and sisters. The village has no running water, and the nearest school is at least an hour’s walk away. All or some of her brothers may go to school in the morning then work in their father’s store in the afternoon.

The girls leave home early with their mother, sometimes accompanied by some of the brothers, to take the goats out to graze, tend to their field, and bring back water and wood. In rural Yemen, these are women’s responsibilities.

Even if Amal’s parents could afford to send all seven of their children to the school in the next village, logistics get in the way. The girls are needed to help at home and in the field. The distance to the school poses a problem for the girls. Any “immoral incident” on the way would bring shame to the family and would be the end of the girl’s life.

In addition, though most schools are segregated, teachers are usually male, another obstacle as girls grow up. Fathers do not want their teenage daughters to be taught by men.

Social fears further obstruct a girl’s education. Protecting a girl’s honor means protecting the family’s honor. As she becomes a teenager, there’s the dread that she may have a relationship or that education will make her less appealing to suitors. Even though this mentality is changing in urban areas, where the situation is much better, rural men do not want educated wives. They prefer a submissive, religious and hardworking woman. In their view, education for a girl is not a profitable investment since she will become a housewife; besides, it might make women unmanageable. They may recount the story of so-and-so in the city whose wife is difficult and neglects their children.

So our Amal ends up with very little, if any, education.

Soon, she is married off, one less mouth to feed. Her mahr, money paid by the groom, helps her father’s finances. She has children of her own. She follows in her mother’s path, working in the field, dexterously balancing firewood on her head as she walks back home later, preceded by the goats, followed by her daughters, bravely carrying her family’s burdens.

Mentalities and traditions are difficult to change. But they could evolve if the conditions change.
Yemen’s civil society, with the support of international organizations, is hard at work against the odds to get more schools built, more female teachers trained, and more female health workers in clinics, one village at a time.

Sometimes there are projects giving financial incentives to parents to send their daughters to school.
Activists raise awareness and try to gain the village men’s trust. They explain the detriments of early pregnancies to a girl’s young body and the well-being of her baby. They demonstrate how literate mothers can lead to more prosperous families with higher incomes. They use religious evidence and examples. They are trying to transform village life and, with it, perceptions uninhibited by tradition, social fears and deep poverty.

World Bank figures show that these efforts are paying off, however slowly. For example, literacy among women aged 15 and older improved from around 34 percent in 2005 to over 40 percent in 2007. And 46 percent of girls completed primary education in 2007, up from 36 percent in 2000.
But it’s an uphill battle. Among the forces working against Yemen, besides the on-going war in the north, is rapid population growth combined with poverty, unemployment and rising religious conservatism. A recent World Economic Forum report put Yemen at the bottom of the list, in the region and among 134 countries worldwide, criticizing it for being slow in closing the gender gap.

Back in the village of Al-Qobai, at the foot of the towering Shihara mountain, reached after almost two hours’ exhaustingly bumpy ride on a dirt road, I ask Mohammad why he wants to find a husband for his 8-year-old daughter.

We were sitting on a makeshift seating arrangement of wool blankets on a rocky ledge, the view extending across a wide stretch of harsh but beautiful terrain to the horizon.
The men lounge here every afternoon to chew qat, Yemen’s mild narcotic leaf. Sometimes joined by tourists, they watch dreamily as the sunset casts dark shadows on an arid land and ends another day of their troubles.

Mohammad admits the reason. He needs his daughter’s mahr to marry a second wife. There is nothing lustful or mean about him, and his admission of it is candid. It’s just the way things are.

He adds, “We have a saying: Marry off an 8-year-old girl and rest assured.”