Work on Gender Issues in the Middle East
Promoting women's equality and gender democracy is a central theme of the Heinrich Böll Foundation's work in the Middle East. Through its feminist programmes, the Foundation supports women's organisations with organisational and content-related development and strategy, and also fosters the networking of social and political initiatives. Its goal is to strengthen the legal status of women in public and private life and to improve their chances to influence political decisions and become politically active. At the same time, promoting gender democracy is a cross-departmental task that affects society as a whole. For this reason, we try to integrate this important aspect into all subject areas of the Foundation's regional work and in cooperation with partners, as well as in democracy promotion, work on climate change and the environment, and dialogue and conflict-related work.Women's Rights in the Arab World
In the male-dominated, patriarchal societies of the region, the political, social and economic discrimination against women is a constraint to development that it will take painstaking work to overcome. More than 50% of the population currently has no equal rights and no fair chance or possibility for development in social and political life. Discussions of gender democracy play only a marginal role in political debates and in public life. One example of the inequality and discrimination in this area is the lack of opportunity that women have to take part in political life. Women are not included at the levels of communal, regional or state policy, and the portion of women in parliament is vanishingly low. In some Arab countries, women have yet to be granted the right to vote. In the area of civil law, overwhelmingly conservative family law retards the development of women's equality with men.
Even though there has been some headway, the authors of the Arab Human Development Report 2005 reached a sobering result on the position of women in Arab society that continues to be valid: they are denied basic freedoms and the right to fully develop their abilities in many areas of life. Their civic and political freedoms, education, health, welfare and personal safety are affected. The authors of the report conclude that the struggle for equal rights for women in Arab countries is about more than just fairness and reparations for historical injustice. Indeed, they write, women's social advancement is the basic prerequisite for an expected "Arab Renaissance".
Political approaches to gender democracy, however, are still a new subject for the Arab and Persian world. If we are to be able to motivate and mobilise women to take part in political and social processes of change in the Middle East, we must pursue a multitude of diverse approaches.
The Foundation's Work in the Region
The goal of the Foundation's promotion of gender democracy projects and measures is to enable women and men to have equal access to economic, political and social resources. In order to achieve this goal, the Foundation is concentrating on the areas of women's legal, social and political equality. The issue of violence against women, and the struggle against it, is an important aspect at all levels. The Foundation supports organisations that aim to achieve equality for women through their campaigns, political lobbying and educational measures, as well as bans on sex-specific violence and the repeal of discriminatory laws. The discrimination that women face in public life should be made clearly visible and it should be made an issue of political reform and social change.
In view of the political and social realities in the region, the achievement of advances in gender democracy is a long-term goal strategically, one which must be reviewed constantly and adjusted to development. At the same time, the point is to achieve both gradual improvements at the grass-roots level of society and to support women partners of the Foundation, who have already successfully risen to influential positions, in their work against discrimination and for gender democracy.
Just as it does for the other main issues in this region, the Foundation supports its partners of both sexes in their work on gender issues by offering global exchange and networking through conferences, seminars, specialist and expert lectures, political contacts and society meetings.