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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A recent episode of NPR's Talk of the Nation focused on the consequences of the "Arab Spring" one year out. In response to a caller's question about how the overthrow of ruling regimes has affected women's rights, a correspondent in Egypt replies:
I think it's an extremely important question [AE: I wish reporters like this Garcia-Navarro would be asked why, exactly, is a question like this "extremely important"? Surely there are many other potential consequences of the 'Arab Spring' that are of greater importance to the West than this one is.], and I think, you know, it depends on which country you're looking at, but across the board I think many women who were involved in the revolution, certainly in Libya, certainly in Egypt, they do feel that they - that it hasn't necessarily empowered them.
For one, the "women who were involved in the revolution" don't appear to have much influence over what is replacing the regimes they helped topple:
The tally, with the two groups of Islamists together winning about 70 percent of the seats, indicates the deep cultural conservatism of the Egyptian public, which is expressing its will through free and fair elections for the first time in more than six decades. ...

A coalition of parties founded by the young leaders of the revolt that unseated Mr. Mubarak won only a few percent of the seats.

Upon news of the Egyptian parliamentary elections, Razib wrote:

Back in the heady days of the Arab Spring some commenters infected by revolutionary fervor would scoff at the purported Islamist sympathies of the people. What this goes to show is that enthusiasm and hope does not translate into reality. If secular liberals in Egypt bow before the principle of popularity, then they accept that it is right and proper that they present their throats to their new overlords. I don’t view this as an apocalypse. It is what it is. But it was predictable.
As are, I suspect, the prospects in Egypt and other Arab Spring countries for what in the Western worldview constitutes women's rights. The WVS probes respondents in participating countries about their feelings on multiple indicators of Western conceptions of women's rights. The following tables show responses from select Western nations and Muslim countries, and to provide a miscellaneous angle, Japan, collected from 2005-2008 (with the exception of the Egyptian response to the question on abortion, which was collected in 2000):

Agree that when jobs are scare, men should
have more right to them than women
Men
Women
United States
8.0%
5.6%
Great Britain
18.2%
14.4%
Canada
14.1%
14.4%
Germany
19.5%
16.3%
France
16.2%
19.8%
Japan
28.7%
25.8%
Malaysia
59.4%
38.7%
Turkey
58.8%
47.7%
Iran
75.1%
63.6%
Iraq
87.4%
80.6%
Egypt
93.1%
84.9%

Men make better business executives
than women do
Men
Women
United States
21.4%
11.7%
Great Britain
25.0%
9.5%
Canada
13.5%
9.4%
Germany
23.9%
10.2%
France
18.4%
10.5%
Japan
45.2%
29.0%
Malaysia
66.5%
42.6%
Turkey
59.5%
47.9%
Iran
85.6%
71.6%
Iraq
n/a
n/a
Egypt
89.2%
82.1%

Men make better political leaders
than women do
Men
Women
United States
27.2%
22.3%
Great Britain
26.2%
13.9%
Canada
20.5%
16.4%
Germany
25.2%
12.9%
France
24.3%
18.3%
Japan
51.9%
37.7%
Malaysia
77.4%
59.2%
Turkey
66.5%
56.2%
Iran
85.3%
71.9%
Iraq
92.2%
88.1%
Egypt
94.7%
90.1%

Approve of single motherhood
Men
Women
United States
49.0%
55.1%
Great Britain
28.9%
37.7%
Canada
44.0%
48.7%
Germany
33.3%
38.3%
France
59.6%
64.8%
Japan
20.6%
22.3%
Malaysia
16.9%
18.0%
Turkey
9.0%
8.0%
Iran
3.0%
2.3%
Iraq
n/an/a
Egypt
1.5%
2.0%

University is more important for
a boy than for a girl
Men
Women
United States
11.4%
4.5%
Great Britain
9.4%
4.5%
Canada
5.6%
4.3%
Germany
19.7%
10.2%
France
8.3%
5.3%
Japan
31.0%
18.8%
Malaysia
56.3%
36.1%
Turkey
22.3%
17.2%
Iran
64.2%
46.9%
Iraq
52.3%
46.0%
Egypt
46.7%
31.8%

Abortion is never justifiable
Men
Women
United States
24.4%
26.6%
Great Britain
20.2%
19.8%
Canada
25.0%
27.0%
Germany
15.0%
15.7%
France
12.8%
14.6%
Japan
15.2%
14.5%
Malaysia
40.7%
45.3%
Turkey
62.7%
61.6%
Iran
61.0%
61.6%
Iraq
83.6%
85.7%
Egypt
61.8%
50.9%

Turkey and Malaysia are considered religiously moderate Islamic countries, yet mainstream public sentiment on the items above (and on a whole host of other social issues) in these places are significantly to the right of the Republican party in the US, and of course public sentiment in more fervently Islamic countries like Iraq, Iran, and Egypt is more conservative still.

By way of example, the question on abortion is on a ten-point scale, with all but one of the possible responses allowing for abortion in at least some cases. The respective table above includes only the percentages of respondents who share Rick Santorum's view that it is never--even in the case of rape--justifiable for a woman to have an abortion. Throughout the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, majorities of both men and women feel the same way the "champion of the extreme anti-choice movement" in the US does.

The impression one gets from listening to major media organs in the US like NPR is that the putative rights of women are being squelched against their wishes. In reality, most women in Egypt don't want what the feminists in the West are selling. Four of five Egyptian women feel that men make better business executives than women do, and nine of ten feel the same way when it comes to political leaders. An overwhelming majority think that the workplace is a man's place before it is a woman's. Almost unanimously, single motherhood is censured. If a mainstream politician in the US were to express an opinion on any of these "women's rights" issues that most Egyptian women hold (and more power to them as far as I'm concerned--it's their country and their lives, not ours), it could easily spell the end of his political career.

WVS variables used: V44(1)(2-3), V59, V61, V62(1-2)(3-4), V63(1-2)(3-4), V204(1)(2-10), GENDER

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