Al-Attar: First Arab Woman Vice President

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Al-Attar: First Arab Woman Vice President
Syrian women look to al-Attar for improvements

Haian Nayouf (hayyan)	Email Article Print Article

	Published 2006-05-13 07:13 (KST)

Although Najah al-Attar is the first Arab woman to hold the position of vice president in Syria, the country is still facing the problem of social discrimination against women. New human rights reports indicate that Syria should empower the situation of women socially, politically and economically.

In March 2006, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad named Najah al-Attar, as Syria's first woman vice president. Attar, 68, served as minister of culture from 1976 to 2000 and was most recently in charge of the ministry's translation department. She is the first non-Baathist to hold this position since the Baath Party came to power in March 1963.

Human rights activists welcomed the Syrian decision as a promotion of gender equality at a time when the rights of women in some other Arab and Islamic countries are still mere dreams--when not real nightmares.

Women Rights

But as the number of women running for parliament has increased--in 2003 they occupied 30 seats--social discrimination has also grown.

Under Syrian law, children of women married to non-Syrians have no right to citizenship, unlike children of Syrian men with foreign wives, said the study, conducted by the United Nations Development Fund for Women and the Syrian Commission for Family Affairs.

Discrimination in employment is rife, the study said, adding that only 20 percent of the workforce is women, and most women are housewives or "committed to family."

The education gap has narrowed, however, to the point where half of higher education students are women, said the study.

Traditional social practices are enshrined into law, making women subjected to men, while men are looked at as independent individuals with a respected identity," the study said.

Two days later after this report a Syrian family killed its daughter to "wash shame." It was a new "honor crime" in a country celebrating Najah al-Attar's new vice-presidential position.

It remains a big question how Syrian women have come to succeed politically while violence still surrounds them in society.

One in four married women in Syria is a victim of domestic violence, noted a report released by the state-run Syrian General Union of Women.

According to the study, funded by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 22 percent of married women were assaulted either verbally or physically, with 50 percent of these citing verbal abuse and 48 percent saying they were beaten. The 60-page report also noted that 72 percent of assaulted women were beaten by a male family member, such as a husband, father or brother.

In Syria’s justice sector, 19 percent of lawyers are women and there are also 150 female judges.

Syrian Woman in Time Magazine

But in Syria also, there are few "outspoken" women who have criticized the absence of equality in Islamic society.

Psychiatrist, writer and activist Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian expatriate has become one of the most famous Muslim heretics in modern times, As American newspapers like to describe her.

In her speech to media, she called the "clash" between Islam and the West "a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."

Time magazine counted Sultan, 47, as among the world's 100 most influential people for pioneering public criticism of Islam by Muslims.

American journals noticed that Sultan didn't reserve her criticism for Islam alone. She faulted President George W. Bush for referring to Islam as a religion of peace. She said that America has the responsibility and right to lead the ideological change that needs to occur among Muslims, to liberate them, but through "books -- not only tanks."

"We don't only need [Donald] Rumsfeld, we need Dr. Phil and Oprah," she remarked, to applause and laughter.

It remains to mention that Al-Attar was appointed on August 7, 1976 the minister of culture and national guidance as the first woman to serve as a government minister in Syria. In the early 1980s she served as a spokeswoman for the Syrian government. Issam Al-Attar, who is currently in exile in Europe, once led the Islamist group The Brotherhood, is Mrs. Attar's brother.