Youth viewpoint: The absent woman Embedded inequality, veiled as tradition or religious probity, is what women face and must change in the lived reality of the Egyptian social contract, writes Marwa Sharafeldin* During my student years studying political science, the words "social contract" were for me synonymous with all things good. For a fresh, hopeful, and an "I-will- conquer-the-world-once-I get-sanely-out- of-university" undergraduate, they signified freedom and equality between all. We were taught that a social contract was a contract made between equals to legitimise the government that is organising their affairs. And how did the government organise these affairs? By legislating and implementing laws of course, the highest of which is the constitution. For these laws to be legitimate however, they had to be endorsed by the people, who are supposedly all equal. If you haven't guessed yet, the catchword here is "equal". Many years after my graduation, and with a desperate attempt not to turn too cynical, I realised that conquering the world was not as easy as I thought. But more shatteringly, that real life did not necessarily follow what we spent so much time studying in books. The books told us that under the social contract we were all considered citizens. And indeed our constitution in Egypt does spell out in Article 40 that we are all equal before law, notwithstanding differences in religion, race, language or sex. However, beyond that things start to go a bit awry. For in that same constitution, Article 11 states that a woman is considered "equal to man in the political, social, cultural and economic spheres without detriment to the rules of Sharia." (Emphasis added) And in case we are in doubt, Article 2 tells us that the main source of legislation is indeed the principles of Sharia. Reading these articles over and over, something did not seem right here. It seemed that for some reason those writing this constitution felt that treating women equally to men as Egyptian citizens might be in detriment to Sharia. They therefore had to make sure this did not happen by spelling it out the way they did. Indeed, if we look around us today we find that many people believe that women and men are not to be treated equally based on a certain way of interpreting Islam. Initially I found this confusing because both the constitution and Sharia strongly advocate the general principles of equality and freedom for all. So where was the problem? The problem, obviously, lies in the details. It is these details that justified using Islam as the main reason for treating women differently than men, and reflected this in the Egyptian social contract, the Egyptian Constitution. Clearly no one denies that indeed men and women are biologically different and that this sometimes entails making space to accommodate such differences. However, this certainly does not entail that they receive unequal treatment as human beings with inherent equal public and private rights. For simply, both genders, with their biological differences, are equally important for the continuation of the human race and life as we know it. Complementarity, the famous argument for difference in treatment, does not have to mean inequality. So then, why are not the two genders considered absolutely equal in rights? I discovered that this is not merely a foolish, or heaven forbid, a "feminist" concern for equality at all costs, as we are often told. I probed further and discovered that there is a growing number of Islamic scholars who are not happy with the way their religion is being appropriated and used to justify inequality. Most of them agree that the impressive body of fiqh (Islamic teaching) tackling this issue was created by other human beings in a different time and place; that it is their responsibility today to read the Quran themselves and come up with an interpretation that is more suitable to the times. Today women have better opportunities for education and employment. Society as a whole has changed and the family unit itself has undergone significant transformations that cannot go unnoticed. Women share household expenses and in more than a quarter of Egyptian households they are the main breadwinners. On the international level, women's domestic work as housewives is gradually being viewed as work of value that is to be considered part of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For this and many other reasons, a growing body of knowledge is being created that tries to show that, indeed, equal citizenship rights for women are not going to be detrimental to Sharia. On the contrary, that a new reading of Sharia shows that women and men are equal human beings, and that Sharia is suitable for all times and places if only we manage to use the mechanisms within it to do so. So again, if this is the case, then where is the problem? You get a hint to the answer when one follows the huge opposition in the discussions around the Khul Law (Divorce Law) and the recent Child Law. Both laws were largely based on solid Islamic practices, reasoning and justification. Khul was practiced by the Prophet Mohammad himself, and the prohibition of FGM (female genital mutilation) in the Child Law was based on the undisputed Islamic principle of no harm to be caused to a human being. Nevertheless, they were largely opposed as un-Islamic, and aiming to destroy our Eastern identity (as if this Eastern identity necessitated living forcefully with someone you don't want to live with, and cutting a vital organ in the body of a helpless little girl). Yes, traditional Islamic interpretations of Quranic verses, on issues such as wife beating, wilaya, kiwama, witnessing, divorce and custody rights etc, do need to be revisited and re-understood in light of the more overarching Quranic principles of equality and freedom and justice. But I have a strong hunch that this is not mainly where the problem lies. It seems to me that even if religion is an ally to equal citizenship rights for women, as in these examples of laws mentioned above, the problem would still remain. The issue, it seems, is the patriarchal set of customs, traditions and power relations that dictate the way we appropriate religion and draft our social contracts. It is these that lie at the heart of a scenario where women end up being sub-citizens in Egypt. However, all is not doom and gloom, for who creates customs and traditions with their ensuing power relations? It is not God, rather it is us. And therefore it is, in the end, up to us -- the people, the citizens, women and men -- to transform these traditions and power relations to create more equitable social contracts. The question is, do Egyptian women and men feel that there is something wrong with their own social contract's treatment of women? For if they do, maybe then we'll discover that what we studied in the books was not so useless after all. * The writer is Gender and Development Consultant and PHD candidate in Law at Oxford University.
