Middle East women must seize the moment

Harare, Zimbabwe. I change channels from BBC to CNN to Al Jazeera and back again, watching the turmoil in the Middle East and feeling I am missing something. And then it suddenly dawns on me. Women! Everywhere! Wearing veils and burkas, in jeans and T-shirts, old and young, but undeniably charismatic and powerful women speaking out so confidently.

It continues, day in, day out, a seamless parade of articulate, passionate and committed women before the camera. They are on my screen right now, out in the streets and in the public squares looking for change, they are leading the revolutionary fight in many cases and they are doing so with amazing finesse and determination.

Who can now ever forget the sight of the brave mothers in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, cooking through the long nights, building barricades and bringing their children along so they too could witness history? Young women unafraid to stand shoulder to shoulder with young men in public – perhaps for the first time in their lives – and articulating so calmly and courageously why they were there and what they wanted from their revolution?

Reporter Lama Hasan has profiled Libyan lawyer and political activist Salwa Bugaighis on ABC news. Bugaighis has been working tirelessly behind the scenes taking every problem thrown at her in stride, talking with worried fathers whose sons are fighting in the rebel forces, keeping up with casualty figures and organising hospital supplies and meetings to keep the revolution going. “Maybe we will die, so? History will not die,” she bravely proclaims.

All my previous experience of gender and media monitoring, the statistics which show women’s voices are not being used in the media and my knowledge that we still have a long way to go in gender-sensitising our media, has been turned upside down by these incredible women. Suddenly everything seems possible again.

Gender balance in reporting the present uprisings? Certainly. Only one TV channel getting it right? No, it’s on every channel. Something has changed on the ground and not just at the broadcast stations. The stereotypes about submissive, quiet Muslim women have been completely blown away in the last two months.

Even on Facebook and in blogs the sheer numbers of women commentating, analysing and organising for change in the Middle East is phenomenal.

The new social media seems to suit the style of these young women with its lack of hierarchies and no male bullying voices trying to shut them up or drown them out. Within seconds thousands of friends and supporters know exactly what is happening on the ground. They in turn tell thousands more.

The gendered nature of the struggle in the Middle East is unique. I’ve looked for religious factors, or the youth versus old guard analysis, or economics and corruption arguments, and I’ve missed what was staring me in the face. This is a women’s revolution as much as anything else. Their struggle for gender equity and transformation is not a diversion from the “main struggle” but is complementary and indivisible. This has involved both men and women sharing their objectives and respecting each other’s aspirations and priorities.

It really is business unusual in the Middle East. Something crucial in the untapped agency of women rising above years of oppression is happening there and we need to fully appreciate it. A barrier has been broken.

Now comes the inevitable note of caution. We’ve got to this stage of struggle for gender transformation in Southern Africa many times before: in colonial liberation wars and more recently in post-colonial struggles for democratic change in countries such as DRC, Malawi and Madagascar.

Gender transformation, however, has sadly always been left out of the mix when it comes to the “victory”. The gap between our leaders’ rhetoric about gender equity and their subsequent lack of action once they gain power has always been too wide to bridge.

Women, despite their heroic roles in the liberation struggles in our region, have time and time again been told to “defer” the realisation of their own struggles for gender transformation in our own times of great revolutionary change (mainly by male revolutionaries and subsequent Heads of State).

Josephine Nhongo-Simbanegavi gives a fascinating narrative of how women’s aims were systematically sidelined in the Zimbabwean African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) struggle in her book, For Better or Worse? Women and ZANLA In Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle. She cites how, for example, “despite a background of liberation movement claims that by 1979 more than a third of its combatants were women the gross under-representation of women in the liberation movement’s decision-making organs was pathetic. Out of 28 seats on the ZANLA High Command only one was held by a woman (Sheba Tavarwisa).”

Not much seems to have changed with all major parties today fielding dismal numbers of women candidates and appointing fewer women ministers to cabinet than ever before. Business as usual, I am afraid.

Can the women we see in the Middle East now make the final push and ensure their own desires for gender transformation are not left in the gutter? It will take a massive and sustained effort to translate their enormous street power and advocacy into a real presence in the new halls of power. I believe and I hope that they can do it.

Many have benefited from the underpinnings necessary for a vibrant citizen democracy – access to media never seen before, the power of social networking and other internet activism, mass education of young women in universities and exposure to feminist and human rights concepts and campaigning.

Our women across Southern Africa share all these new experiences of access to information and the power that this brings with their sisters in the Middle East but perhaps the biggest lesson is one our own history teaches us. If we allow gender transformation to be postponed for “patriotic” or any other reasons in the heat of revolutionary success then we lose it – and we may not forgive ourselves easily for that loss in the years to come.

Trevor Davies is a gender activist and Director of the African Fathers Initiative. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service.