--Statement on Women’s Rights in Iraq; Martha Burk, Chair, National Council of Women’s Organizations, February 25, 2004

ALL too often women in the so-called Western societies take for granted the freedoms and rights they have to acquire education, learn various skills and enter the careers of their choice. At this moment in the present civilisation, women are free to travel on their own to far-flung areas of their own countries as well as to foreign lands. They are free not only to choose childbearing, but also the privilege of spacing the births of offspring. Women can acquire loans and credit from banks and other funding agencies for the purpose of establishing small businesses for their own livelihoods.

Those women, who are unfamiliar with some aspects of human history, are usually dumbfounded when they learn of the subjugation ascribed to their sisters in some societies today. It was not until the Taleban were routed from authority in Afghanistan in 2001 that the world understood the full scope of suppression inflicted on females in that country. No woman was allowed to walk on the street unescorted by her husband or a male member of her family. Swathed in layers of gowns and veils, women were required to lead austere lives without access to education or skills training. In some of the wealthiest states, where technological modernity is embraced, the female species is still not allowed to sit in community or national councils; women are prevented from driving vehicles, and some are even denied the right to vote. Just two years ago, many groups around the world were horrified to learn of the possible fate of a Nigerian woman, who was condemned to death by stoning for a perceived act of adultery. Fortunately, Ms Lawal was spared this fate.

While women’s progress can be viewed as a sort of subtext to the socioeconomic evolution of humankind in general, the rights and freedoms enjoyed by the feminine gender in Europe and North America, have their genesis in the pioneering work of women authors and activists in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those courageous writers were convinced that women had a life outside the defined parameters of housekeeping and being the handmaids of their husbands, fathers and brothers. Women’s ideas and the pooling of their intellectual resources and abilities began to assume form about the time of the French Revolution and the industrial revolution in Britain. In the words of author Sheila Robowtham, those early feminists were bewildered and not a little dismayed when they learnt that liberty and equality were not to be theirs. History records a group of women telling the French Assembly in 1789, “You have destroyed all the prejudices of the past, but you will allow the oldest and most pervasive to remain, which excludes from office, a position and honour, and above all from the right of sitting amongst you, half the inhabitants of the kingdom.”

England’s Mary Wollstoncraft, who could rightfully be described as the mother of modern feminism, was influenced by the political ferment in Europe and soon became burdened with a concern for the social emancipation of women. She began her own study to determine the origin of women’s subjugation, and concluded that it was society’s perception of women’s weaker physical structure that contributed to the limiting of their role. Women were discouraged from exercising their minds on the political and social developments of the day, and were relegated instead to their drawing rooms in the case of the rich, and the factory in the situation of the poor.

The post-modern emancipation of women was no doubt ignited by the writings of Simone De Beauvoir and Betty Friedan. The spark became a flame when the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s gathered steam and momentum. These founding mothers of the new feminism must have been gratified by the power and radicalism of the movement, which began with a call for the burning of brassieres and a rejection of the perception that women should be treated as mere sex objects. In the years that followed, woman began scholarly investigations in the fields of history, religion and anthropology to unearth the origins of their subjugation. This heralded the birth of women’s studies.

Feminism can be defined as a system of analysis by which one views the world with its myriad distinctions between masculine and feminine genders. It is a tool whereby persons seek to redress the weight of discrimination against women in a world where social relations are determined by gender. Feminism, by its very nature is political since it challenges any system of thought or practice that allows women to occupy a socially inferior position.