Women in the Middle East were, and are still, facing many hardships and challenges on different economic, social and cultural fronts. When the winds of change started to blow throughout the Middle East, Arab women were on the front lines organizing, volunteering and even leading the protests across Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. Arab women shared a strong belief that the time had finally come to demand their fundamental rights after decades of political and social stagnation in their countries. In spite of the uncertainty that still surrounds the future of these uprisings, women in the Middle East are increasingly aware of the obstacles in their way and determined more than ever to overcome these hardships and to realize their long-awaited aspirations of equal citizenship, parity and equal opportunity.
On February 21, 2013, the Kelly Day Endowment for the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute will host an important conference on “The Arab Awakening and Gender: Challenges and Opportunities for Women.” This conference will bring in a group of the most prominent female figures in the Arab world, with very diverse backgrounds ranging from blogging and journalism to entrepreneurship, economics, religious law, sociopolitical activism and civil society organizations. The goal of the conference is to shed the light on the achievements as well as on the existing obstacles for female empowerment in the region, and to highlight the importance of a more active role for U.S. foreign policy in the field of gender equality in the region after the Arab Awakening.
Join us at 9:30 am on Thursday, Feb. 21, for ““The Arab Awakening and Gender: Challenges and Opportunities for Women.” The conference is open to the public, but an RSVP is required.
Our participants are:
- Lina Ben Mehni
Cyberactivist and blogger, A Tunisian Girl
- Nabila Ramdani
Columnist for the UK newspaper, The Guardian
- Malika Benradi
International lawyer and professor at the Faculty of Law in Rabat, Agdal, Morocco
- Hatoon Al Fassi
Women’s rights activist, Saudi Arabia; and King Saud University, Riyadh
- Judge Kholod Faqee
Judge Sharia Law Ramallah, Palestine
- Nabila Hamza
President, Foundation For The Future , Tunisia
- Neveen El Tahri
Founder and chair, Delta Shield for Investment, Egypt
- Nayla Tueni
CEO, Al Nahar newspaper, Lebanon
Marwa Shalaby, Ph.D., is the postdoctoral fellow for the Kelly Day Endowment on the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East at the Baker Institute. Her research is in the field of comparative politics and research methodology, with a concentration on Middle Eastern politics, democratization, and gender and politics.
Isabel Kuri is the program coordinator for the Kelly Day Endowment on the Status of Women and Human Rights in the Middle East.