Women Flexing Leadership Muscles

Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Friday, November 11 2011

The re-election of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina may draw the biggest headline for a woman’s achievement in the world in the last few weeks, but spotlights also should shine in areas of the world where women’s roles have not been as heralded.

There are many examples.

Tunisia, the country that launched the Arab Spring, held what are considered clean and enthusiastically supported elections with Ennahda (“renaissance”), a party of modern democratic Islam, garnering the most votes. What might this victory mean for women? Flexibility, rather than a religious rigidness, seems to be the answer. As Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda's founder, said during the campaign: "We are against the imposition of the headscarf in the name of Islam, and we are against the banning of the headscarf in the name of secularism or modernity."

Observers believe Tunisia will follow the lead of Turkey with one advantage: A ban on women wearing the hijab in schools, universities, and public jobs is enshrined in Turkey’s constitution. In Tunisia, the hijab ban was enacted by legislation and thus could be changed by the new parliament.

More light might be needed to illuminate a somewhat darker part of the world to see how women are advancing. After centuries of oppressive monarchy and a bloody civil war, the people of Nepal have been meeting and debating what a new constitution should state. Among questions such as balance of power between the branches of government and how the value of equality will be reconciled with the current caste system, the Nepalese are discussing what rights women will be granted and whether these rights will also apply to groups that still view women as property. Obviously, equal rights for women in Nepal have a lot of development to undergo.

Writing for the Common Ground News Service, Natana J. deLong-Bas, editor-in-chief of The (Oxford) Encyclopedia of Islam and Women, who teaches theology at Boston College, argues that the world should not focus on “women’s rights” because these are essentially everyone’s issue. “How women are treated in the eyes of the state and the law is a matter of citizenship, not womanhood,” she says. Using examples from Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, she contends that an analysis of the various revolutions shows that women have played pivotal roles as both participants in demonstrations and as leaders.

In the same region of the world, but in a totally different dynamic, it was a 25-year-old female activist in Israel who, in July, launched a tent city in Tel Aviv to protest the high cost of housing in Israel. Starting with a Facebook protest page, Dephni Leef invited people to join her protest after she was forced to find a new apartment and learned that rental prices in Tel Aviv had doubled in five years. Her act inspired the establishment of tent cities all over Israel and sparked the largest wave of mass protest in Israel’s history. On one Saturday night in September, about 450,000, or 7 percent of Israel’s population, rallied against the high cost of living in protests that stretched across the country. Leef and other protest leaders were pumping up the public for another rally the last Saturday in October. Observers are uncertain whether Leef’s efforts and the protests will actually change anything in the country.

Similarly, the recent re-election of Argentine’s President Kirchner could not be taken for granted. Two years ago, her approval ratings were below 30 percent. At that time, the country’s economy was reeling from rising inflation. But one year after her husband and predecessor died, the economy of Argentina is expected to grown by 8 percent this year, employment has risen, and the poverty rate has fallen. Still, the governments of Latin American countries are not known for their stability

Across the Atlantic, another female president is poised for re-election. In early November, run-off elections in the West African nation of Liberia will be held, and President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is expected to be re-elected. In mid-October, Johnson-Sirleaf scored 44 percent of the nationwide vote. The third place finisher, with 11.8 percent, has endorsed Johnson-Sirleaf for the runoff. Whether Johnson-Sirleaf, the first and only elected female head of state in Africa, retains her seat or not, the 72-year-old American-educated leader can claim victory on anther front. Just days before the vote, she was named a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

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Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.