Egypt is the worst Arab country for women
That was the headline of several news articles
and the conclusion of the Thomson Reuters report published this month studying
the status of women in the Arab world (which consists of 22 countries) and
Egypt is the worse according to their six areas of analysis:
·
Women in politics
·
Women in society
·
Women in the economy
·
Women in the family
·
Reproductive rights
·
Violence against women
Such a report and study methodology made me think
about WID and GAD methodologies a lot and where to place such a study within
these frameworks as a way to understand how different development agencies
address women’s issues in the Arab region in particular.
The methodology that is explained on Thomson
Reuters website isn’t written in an academic style, for example they don’t
state the type of sampling procedure followed or the theory of analysis used or
the ranking process, how did it occur and how did they account for the
differences in ranking among the researchers.
Regardless, what caught my attention is how they
justify the selection of certain individuals to be interviewed and surveyed on
the issue the below description:
“We targeted
local, national, regional and international humanitarian, development and human
rights organizations, academics, media professionals, health care providers,
refugee shelters, women’s shelters, legal advisers and activists, with a strong
preference for female respondents.”
It is mentioned here that they have
strong preference for female respondents within theses institutions, for me
that could be more accounting for women’s subordination. However here the
selection bias is one that neglects the voice of the community. Even if those
women could be reflecting that voice by one way or another, the experiences of the
women in the community who aren’t part of these organizations or who are
volunteering in these organizations aren’t counted for. These experiences are
important, as we have seen in Playing with fire by Nagar (2006) that even
though those women didn’t hold the most prominent positions in the NGO, they
brought perspectives to the status of women that are important to incorporate.
References:
Thompson Reuters Foundation. (2013). Poll: Women's rights in the arab world.
Retrieved November from http://www.trust.org/spotlight/poll-womens-rights-in-the-arab-world/
Sangtin Writers Collective, & Nagar,
R. (2006). Playing with fire. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of
Minnesota press.
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ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting about this poll is that the questions asked were based off of the United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
ReplyDelete(CEDAW). The six resulting categories do show attention to the many scales of gender mainstreaming that we have discussed in class from the readings such as Prügl and Lustgarten’s (2006) piece on gender mainstreaming within the United Nations.
Nihal, I like and agree with your point about who the poll is representing. The experiences of these women working within the NGOs certainly could be very different from other parts of the population. The article on Rueters’ says specifically that “gender experts” were interviewed, and this does leave room for questioning who these people are and what their background is. Is positionality a factor in this case? This less “intersectional” approach makes the poll seem very much WID-alligned. The complete focus on women rather than gender overall or including men also makes the poll more of a WID approach rather than a GAD approach.
I also wonder what the consequences of ranking the “worst” countries has in terms of future research, donors, and development. I get the feeling that rankings like this can be arbitrary, but would have real life consequences when it comes to the perception of the countries.