CAIRO: There is plenty of evidence that women are underrepresented in Arab societies, stated the speakers at a conference organized by The Egyptian Society for Equality and Anti-Discrimination (ESEAD). Besides the low figures indicating women's participation in Egypt with only 5.9 percent of the parliament's and Shura Council's seats being occupied by women in 2005, the average female income is a quarter of the male's average income in Egypt, explains Hassan El Labidy, ESEAD's chairman. El Labidy says that change is pending on the effort to spread a culture of human rights. He recommends the calibration of civil society with media personal. He also notes the importance of enlisting the help of enlightened religious scholars. According to Maged El Sherbiny, ESEAD's secretary general and member of the legislative committee at the National Council for Women, women's status is based on old traditions that fail to stand the test of time or logic. Thus, El Sherbiny continues, those people resort to religion to find justifications for these worn-out traditions. The bigger problem, however, is that it is not only the men that believe in these traditions and convictions, but women too. Aside from Labidy's and El Sheribiny's suggestion, most of the speeches focused on describing the status of Arab women, which leaves a lot to be desired. No suggestions were made pertaining to the mechanism of change during the brief ceremonial event. Hanaa Sourur, the head of the Women's Unity office at the Arab League, notes that with the will to change there is a four-part encyclopedia of women related legislations that would aid any entity aiming at legal changes. She adds that the available issues of this encyclopedia are limited in number. Although, it was held yesterday, the conference came in celebration of International Women's Day, held annually on March 18. Similar conferences and events have been taking place throughout the week but with different focal topics depending on the associations or societies organizing the event. During the event, which featured participation by the United Nations' Division for the Advancement of Women's Department of the Economic and Social Affairs, 22 women were honored for their achievements, each in her field of specialization. The list of honorees covered fields like education, politics, media, entertainment, medicine, government offices and community service. The list of honorees included Mo'mena Kamel, ESEAD's vice president and the head of the Pathology Unit of the Abu El Rish Pediatric Hospital, Medical School and Cairo University. Ambassador Nancy Bakir, veteran parliamentarian Faida Kamel, TV host Nehal Abdel Aziz, Mona Ragab, Al Ahram's deputy editor, Suzan Hassan, president of the Egyptian TV, businesswoman Amal Ebrahim and actress Ragaa El Giddawy were among the honorees.
