--- In [email protected], "Anna Ghonim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Dear Marco, > > Thanks for posting the Women Judges from Egypt article. > > I lived in Egypt from 1998 to last summer. In the last two years I lived there, I worked on an American USAID funded project which (among lots of other things) has been working on this "gender issue" behind the scenes with the National Center for Judicial Studies and they are ecstatic right now. You would not believe how hard it was to move forward on it for Egypt. The judges who make these sorts of decisions tend to be older and quite conservative so the issue has just gone nowhere for a long time. As the article points out, Tahani Gibali was a figurehead, given that in her position she did not hear cases. > > While there I heard all the ridiculous "anti" arguments like "women will be too emotional when they are on their periods" and "judges have to serve in different places and what if the woman's husband does not want her to move" and other stuff like this. It was always infuriating. > > This is the type of thing that makes one happy to work in international development, though a lot of the time it seems so one step forward two steps back. Obviously Egypt is a police state, but I consider the judiciary to be an institution capable of progress and reform and am happy to see they've taken this important step. > > Other recent (in the past few years) legal reforms benefiting women in Egypt: > - Getting rid of the law that says women must have written permission from their husbands to leave the country > - Allowing Egyptian women married to foreign nationals to confer citizenship on their kids - Except for women married to Palestinians (because of the whole messed up system regarding keeping these people stateless in order to pretend that Arab countries are supporting the right of return issue, whereas actually they are only hurting the palestinians who live in their countries and keeping them from having the ability to freely travel and have citizen rights in places like Egypt and keep them being used as political footballs). > > Anna in Portland (Formerly Cairo) >
and I thank you for your replay which as coming from direct experience is more informative then any work made by a reporter Marco
