New York Times, May 26, 2007
A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women Sixty percent of Algeria’s
university students are women, researchers say. This group was waiting for a
bus Thursday at a university in Algiers. More Photos >
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: May 26, 2007
ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal
Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is
under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in
the rest of the Arab world.
Algerian Women’s Growing Participation in Society Women make up 70 percent of
Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine.
Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent
of university students are women, university researchers say. In a region
where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible
everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and
wait on tables.
Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still
make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share
a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as
well.
“If such a trend continues,” said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd,
a magazine of social criticism and analysis, “we will see a new phenomenon
where our public administration will also be controlled by women.”
The change seems to have sneaked up on Algerians, who for years have focused
more on the struggle between a governing party trying to stay in power and
Islamists trying to take that power.
Those who study the region say they are taken aback by the data but suggest
that an explanation may lie in the educational system and the labor market.
University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career
or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to
simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North
Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.
But for women, he added, university studies get them out of the house and
allow them to position themselves better in society. “The dividend may be
social rather than in terms of career,” he said.
This generation of Algerian women has navigated a path between the secular
state and the pull of extremist Islam, the two poles of the national crisis of
recent years.
The women are more religious than previous generations, and more modern,
sociologists here said. Women cover their heads and drape their bodies with
traditional Islamic coverings. They pray. They go to the mosque — and they
work, often alongside men, once considered taboo.
Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing
the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed
themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered
women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be
seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.
“They never criticize me, especially when they see I am wearing the hijab,”
said Denni Fatiha, 44, the first woman to drive a large city bus through the
narrow, winding roads of Algiers.
The impact has been far-reaching and profound.
In some neighborhoods, for example, birthrates appear to have fallen and
class sizes in elementary schools have dropped by nearly half. It appears that
women are delaying marriage to complete their studies, though delayed marriage
is also a function of high unemployment. In the past, women typically married
at 17 or 18 but now marry on average at 29, sociologists said.
And when they marry, it is often to men who are far less educated, creating
an awkward social reality for many women.
Khalida Rahman is a lawyer. She is 33 and has been married to a night
watchman for five months. Her husband was a friend of her brothers who showed
up one day and proposed. She immediately said yes, she recalled.
She describes her life now this way: “Whenever I leave him it is just as if I
am a man. But when I get home I become a woman.”
Fatima Oussedik, a sociologist, said, “We in the ’60s, we were progressive,
but we did not achieve what is being achieved by this generation today.” Ms.
Oussedik, who works for the Research Center for Applied Economics and
Development in Algiers, does not wear the hijab and prefers to speak in French.
Researchers here say the change is not driven by demographics; women make up
only a bit more than half of the population. They said it is driven by desire
and opportunity.
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