阿拉伯妇女权利

THE sight of hundreds of women cheering a proposed law banning child marriage, as they did on March 22nd in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, was hardly amazing. No country has escaped the global trend towards greater equality between the sexes, not even one as poor and tradition-bound as Yemen, where half of girls are married off before the age of 18 and many even before the age of 10. Yet the day before that demonstration even more women (pictured right), nearly all wearing full face veils, gathered at the same spot to denounce the law as an imposition of unIslamic, Western values.

3月22日，许许多多的妇女在也门首都萨那为一部禁止童婚的法律草案庆祝的情景几乎不值得大惊小怪。任何国家都不能逆男女越来越平等这一世界潮流而动，甚至像也门这样贫穷的、深受传统束缚的国家也不例外。在也门，半数女孩在18岁之前许多甚至在10岁之前就结婚了。就在3月22日之前的一天，更多的妇女（几乎都披着完全遮面的面纱）示威者在萨那集会（见上图），谴责这部法律草案反伊斯兰、将西方价值观强加于人。

Arab women have made huge if uneven strides since the issue of their rights arose a hundred years ago. Female education, for instance, was once virtually unknown. Today, even in arch-conservative Saudi Arabia, two-thirds of university students are women. But still, among 134 countries in the latest Global Gender Gap Report prepared by the Swiss-based World Economic Forum, a survey that measures opportunity for women in education, health, business and politics, all 14 of the Arab countries that were included ranked in the bottom 30.

如果说为争取女性权利的艰难历程是从一百多年前起步的，那么今天的阿拉伯妇女已取得了巨大的成就。例如，曾几何时，几无女性接受教育。而今天，即使是保守的沙特阿拉伯，女性居然占大学生总数的三分之二。不过，由总部设在瑞士的世界经济论坛编制的涉及134个国家中关于妇女教育、卫生、商业、政治问题的最新《全球性别差距报告》显示：所有14个阿拉伯国家的排名仍然在最后30位内。

Not surprisingly, Yemen came last of all. But the clashing demonstrations in its capital illustrated an important aspect of the Arabs’ lag in women’s rights. Quite often the obstacles to their progress have been not just ill-educated male chauvinists and conservative clerics. Women themselves have also stood in the way.

也门排名垫底毫不奇怪。在其首都发生的示威冲突，对阿拉伯人在妇女权利保障上的滞后是一个重要证明。实际上，不只是缺乏教育的男性沙文主义者和保守的神职人员在阻碍妇女权利保障的进步，妇女本身也在助纣为虐。

In the relatively liberal and rich emirate of Kuwait, for instance, women got the right to vote five years ago and won their first seats in parliament last year. But to get there, reformists found themselves battling not only against apathy among many women but even deep-seated female hostility. By contrast Syria, long secular under the Baath party’s rule, denies political rights without sexual discrimination. But veiling and other forms of pious ostentation among women have recently returned, largely because of groups such as the Qubaysiyat, an all-female Islamist society which has schools, nurseries and mosques that now attract many of the Syrian elite.

例如，在相对开明和富裕的科威特酋长国，妇女于5年前获得了选举权，并于去年赢得了第一个议会妇女席位。但即便如此，改革者们发现其自身不仅要与大量的漠视女性现象作斗争，而且甚至要与根深蒂固的敌视女性现象作斗争。相比之下，长期在阿拉伯复兴社会党世俗统治下的叙利亚则公开承认，政治权利是带有性别歧视的。不过，主要得益于诸如Qubaysiyat（全部由女性的组成伊斯兰的团体，该团体有学校、幼儿园和现在已吸引了众多叙利亚精英的清真寺）这类团体的努力，在妇女权利保障问题上的犹抱琵琶半遮面现象和其它虚伪夸耀现象，在近期已出现改端。

Egyptian women, who fought to drop their veils in the 1920s and have voted since 1956, have made very slow progress ever since. Many retain deeply traditional outlooks. A survey in 2009 of 15,000 Egyptian youths, for instance, found that 67% of female respondents believe that a husband is justified in beating his wife if she speaks to another man. By contrast, a recent initiative by Egypt’s government to appoint female judges roused little general protest. But fellow members of Egypt’s ostensibly secular judiciary have proved harder to convince. Last month some 334 out of 380 judges on the state council, a grand body that adjudicates cases between individuals and the state, voted against accepting female members. The matter is still pending. Egypt’s supreme court has now ruled in favour of women judges but deferred a final decision to yet another all-male panel.

上世纪20年代埃及妇女们为不戴面纱而战，并自1956年获得了投票支持，但从始至今，她们取得的进步总是很缓慢。许多人根深蒂固地保留着传统观念。一项于2009年对15 000名埃及青年的调查显示：67％的女性受访者认为，如果妻子与另一个男人说话，其丈夫殴打妻子是合理的。相比之下，埃及政府最近任命女法官的行动，却没有激起普遍抗议。然而，已经证实：属于世俗[而非宗教的]埃及男性法官们却难以接受。上个月，埃及国务院——系一个专事裁决个人与国家之间的纠纷案件的宠大机构——该机构380法官中大约334名对接受女性法官投了反对票。该问题仍悬而未决。埃及最高法院们目前已经作出接受女性法官的裁决，但最终裁决得以推迟，尚需由另一个全部是男性组成的专门小组作出。

So the bigger share of blame for Arab women’s slow progress still lies with the usual suspects, namely men. Saudi Arabia recently ruled that female lawyers may actually appear in court. But the concession was heavily qualified. Women will be able only to represent women—and only in family cases.

由此可见，阿拉伯妇女取得权利的进展缓慢，主要责任者仍然是那些司空见惯的怀疑论者即男人们。沙特阿拉伯最近裁定，女律师如今可以出庭代理案件。但这种出庭许可受到严格限制。女律师将只能够作为妇女的代理人——而且仅限于家庭事务方面的案件。