Things I am not especially qualified to pontificate on..

I started this post last night but fell asleep - I had a belly full of delicious food and not even Turkish coffee could snap me out of the ensuing coma. I joined co-workers for impromptu visit to an Iraqi restaurant after work, so I didn't have my camera (I like posting pictures of food adventures!) but you're not missing much because the dishes weren't too far off typical Egyptian cuisine. A bit heavier on the rice, and with flatter bread, but the same grilled meats and salads and vegetables. Sudanese and Yemeni restaurants are next on the list - hopefully sometime this weekend.

This week has had me thinking a lot about the current situation of women in the Middle East, sparked by publication of a piece by Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy in Foreign Policy. (You can read the full article here - its worth your 15 minutes). The article, titled "Why Do They Hate Us?", sparked a firestorm of extremely polarized debate in the blogosphere, picked up by everyone from NPR to Al Jazeera.

Eltahawy's basic premise is that the root of oppression of women in the Middle East is men's hatred for the opposite sex. She highlights the most horrific examples of gender discrimination and violence in Arab and Central Asian countries - FGM, lack of voting rights, child brides, sexual harassment, etc and laments the Arab Spring's return on the investments made by female revolutionaries and protestors. Its incendiary, its damning, and it made a lot of people (including many Arab women) very, very angry.

I applaud the Eltahawy's willingness to bring the skeletons out of the Arab world's closet. I am also in favor of shock value for waking people up to issues that are taboo. On top of that, she's just a damn good writer. But I have one major bone to pick with this piece - I don't buy it.

Distilling several thousand years of social, economic, and religious factors affecting women's status in the Arab world into a single element, "hatred", is so overly simplistic that it places all gender relations in a vacuum, governed solely by (an implication of all) Arab men's feelings toward women. No one can deny the deplorable women's rights records in the Middle East - but is this due to a collective societal hatred (whatever that word even means), or multiple elements that have contributed to a self-perpetuating system of oppression?

In my limited experience in Egypt, I see two bigger factors at play - power and wealth. The two are often inseparable. Those who have power and wealth hold on for dear life, and those who don't live with a palpable lack that affects almost every facet of their lives - what schools their children can attend, what jobs they can hold, where they can live, whether they can pay the bribes necessary to navigate the mundane bureaucracies of life. There are too many people clamoring for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie. In a system where women have long had less power and influence due to historical religious and cultural factors, it is in men's favor to perpetuate the current system and hold on to the superiority and power they currently have - whether through religion, politics, or unquestionable social norms.

Eltahawy ironically does a disservice to the empowerment of women in her argument. By painting women's situation as a result of a collective "hatred" on the part of men, she disempowers them to address the situation. Its a basic human tenet that you can't change anyone but yourself. You can reason, you can explain, you can try and convince - but in the end, it is the other person (or people) who have to decide to change their attitude and feelings. Institutions, policies, and cultural practices on the other hand, CAN be addressed, as they are external things.

This begs the question of how to change those external things. It seems there is no formula. My thought is that when women have the power to make their own decisions, these collective decisions will generate enough influence to tip the economic and power balance of the system. Of course, how do you even get to a point where women are able to make those decisions? Its a chicken and egg dilemma.

I have hope - Egyptian women are strong, opinionated, and have the advantage of having tasted several decades of work outside the home. I do not think a return to women's place in the home, as the Salafis would desire, will be accepted by either men or women - the household economic consequences are too dire.

Of course, change is slow, and the more powerful sectors of society will likely have their turn before women. Eltahawy ends her piece with the dramatic assessment that the Arab Spring was started by a Tunisian man, but will only be finished by a woman. Unfortunately, she is probably right.