Women in Society

The role of Women is important in our society in which man is still
dominating and playing the most important roles. In the last few years, Women
position in society has been greatly overseen in comparison to their profile in the
past; when they were seen just as housewives and their only role is taking care of
children and obeying man orders. Moreover, they were not allowed to do any kinds
of jobs out their homes like voting, studying or writing.
A Century before, women started to think about the importance of their roles
in society. In all over the world and by all the means, women wanted to change their
situation or traditional place in the society this lead to series of strikes marches that
aimed to prove their equality to men. During the first and second world war, woman participation in the society emerged because she replaced man who went to the war
inside and outside the house. In addition, she worked double shift to earn more
money for helping her family

Why women need education

Women were kept away from learning and education because knowledge
would make them question the obligatory power of the conventions and beliefs,
which held them in their place; and it, would show them how to achieve their
freedom, and might even encourage them to assume leadership. Therefore, Feminist
researchers and writers emphasize on the importance of education in woman‟s life
like Marry Wollstonecraft who paved the way to other Feminists to look for equal
opportunities for both girls and boys in learning.

In all over the world governments started to realize the importance and
the necessity of educating females not only for her benefits but also for the
development of society in all the domains. They started to encourage parents to let
their children especially girls to study to decrease the level of literacy. Recently, the
African countries started to help children to inter the school especially children from
the rural areas. In sub-Saharan Africa in 2005, the World Bank found that 83.6 girls
for every 100 boys were enrolled in primary schools.
Primary school enrollment figures do not tell the whole story because the
gender gap in higher levels is more dramatic where there is more boys than girls,
which results the lack of leadership capacities.

Catherine Beecher was among the famous feminists who were asking for the
education of woman. She added to her work in schools a general propaganda for
woman's education, and she devised large plans for its development. In 1852, she
organized the American Woman's Educational Association to help American women
to have education, honorable position, and remunerative employment. She was able
to affect the opinions American girls and raising their awareness in the importance of
education14
.
Finally, Education should be considered as important as voting and working
and should be in the priority of all the governments because teaching fits them to be
good mothers and helpful citizens. By improving the educational capacities of
women, they would be able to form the characters of girls and boys; and by building
their personalities, they are building better societies.

Women and Economics

In her book “Women and Economics”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman mentioned
that humans are the only species in which the female has to depend on the male for
survival this why she was asking women change their cultural identities and to be
independent. In addition, women who sacrifice to be nurturers and educators will
produce better children. Gilman believes that others can assist with these tasks or
even do them more effectively. She was one of the first to propose the
professionalization of housework, encouraging women to hire housekeepers and
cooks to release them from housework. This would allow women to participate in
the workforce and lead a more worldly life. Gilman believed that women could
desire home and family life, but should not have to retain complete responsibility of
these areas and she stated that these changes would eventually result in better
motherhood and fatherhood, better babyhood and childhood, better food, better
homes, better society.19

Woman participation in the workforce was uncompleted since she was
under unfair rules in which there was always priority for man. During the 19th
century, women used to work 12hours a day with a very low salary whereas men
worked only 6 hours. As a result, feminists refused this segregation and started to
ask for more equality in working conditions by forming organizations and
Institutions for woman workers

Europe for example, Governments gave women more space
in which they required a minimum representation of 40%. The first one who adopted
this policy was Norway with 25% in 2004 to 36% in 2006 and 42% in 200920
.
In 2007, Spanish government wanted to reach a minimum quota of 40%
by forcing Companies to use more employees and encourage equal opportunities for
both gender. In 2000, Denmark required states companies to have balance
participation of men and women and to have at least 35% of women members.
However, only 18% of women were employed.
Despite all the laws used by the different governments to bring change in
the representation of woman in the work force but not all the countries rise the
quotas genders.

Women and Health

The importance of health can be in
the first range. Feminism from the beginning was calling for the importance of taking care of woman not just by giving her jobs or letting her vote but also by giving her health a priority since she has the most sensitive and fragile body structure in addition the pregnancy and other mother activities
.
In order to give cost-effective and high-quality health care, governments need to adopt a gender point of view based on the physical differences of men and women but also other social and cultural factors.

The costs of preventing and treating disease
and ill health in men and women differ over their lifetimes. Gender-specific diseases and reproduction needs should be in the top of health care policy in all over the
world.

According to the World Health Organization Health (WHO) the biological, social and environmental factors interact and affect the health of women and men.
There is insufficient knowledge of the
prevalence and incidence of
physical and psychological risk factors related to women‟s work patterns in combining two jobs and being generally underpaid.

Women are more interested in health more than men are.
Usually we find that feminists are always calling for the importance of creating now and helpful methods for health not only for woman or children but also for all members of society

Why women need to be in politics

When speaking about woman representation in the political fields one can say
that it improving in comparison with the last years. Woman now is occupying all the
domains and all the positions especially in politics. She is now a president, minister,
diplomatic and parliament member. Although 40 to 50% of party members are
women, they hold only about 10% of the leadership positions within those parties.
Ensuring women‟s equal participation in the decision-making structures of parties is
essential for promoting gender equality within them. This why nowadays many
international organizations like Woman Rights Organization, United Nations
Development Programmers (UNDP) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in
additions to many national and local institutions in all the world are trying to give
woman opportunities to show her abilities to effect and change the political fields
When speaking about woman‟s role and position in any country we will find
that woman is always in the second position after man. Decades before, woman was
not allowed to participate in any social, political and religious ceremonies in her
society and she was under the total control of man (as father, husband and brother).
In all the means, woman was just a servant in the house; her only job was only to
clean, cook and arise children

Why do we need women in politics?

According to the same study done by IPU, female parliamentarians gave
priority to issues like childcare, equal payment and mother issues in addition to
topics like violence, poverty and raping. In places such as Rwanda and South Africa,
an increase in the number of female lawmakers led to legislation related to land
inheritance and reproductive rights. In France and some European countries, women
are more involved in topics like human rights and more importantly in women‟s
social, political and economical rights. As more women reach leadership positions within their political parties, these parties tend to prioritize issues that influence health, education and other
quality of life issues.

In relation to that and according to a research made by the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 19 member countries they
found that there is an increase in the number of women legislators results in an
increase in total educational spending. In addition to that, this study showed that
many countries like India, South Africa and other European countries who gave
woman more political positions noticed a huge development in education, health and
transport

According to President of Chile Michelle Bachelet: “When one woman is a
leader, it changes her. When more women are Leaders, it changes politics and
policies. ” Many Feminists, researchers and Human rights leaders already presented
what the president of Chile has said. All of them agreed by giving woman the floor
to vote, work and to become a leader this would affect the society positively.
Woman Leaders usually work for the benefit of the society rather than working for their own benefit.

Black and muslim feminism

1. Black feminism

Obviously, when speaking about women rights, equality and suffering we can
automatically refer our explanation to Black Women Segregation. Although feminism
claimed in its symbols and goals to the equality of all women from every ethnic and
social belonging, it did not give importance to the problems of Black females. In
practice, feminism concentrated on the needs of middle class white women in Britain
and America while posing as the movement for the emancipation of women globally.
Patricia Collins as one of the Famous black Feminists considered that feminism did not
bring any rights to the black woman at all. Moreover, the Black woman was separated
from participating in any social, economical or political activities done by feminist
Organizations, which were controlled at that time with white woman.

Black women started to revolt against this unfair classification and make them create
another variant of feminism called “Womanism”, a term coined by Alice Walker in one
of her great collection of essays. It was titled as “In Search Of Our Mothers‟ Gardens:
Womanist Prose” (1983). Thus, Womanism established a new space for the Black
female literary experience to express their wishes and dreams. Womenism was not able to give its
fruits in practical way and black women were not able to make this hypothesis became
a theory.

2. Muslim

Muslims believe that justice and equality are intrinsic values and cardinal
principles in Islam. Human beings are equal whether they are black or white, man or
women. This idea of equality between sexes emerged in Muslim societies by the
coming of Islam centuries before, but a Muslim extremist were always trying to
remove the right given by God to women and makes her a servant or less. By the end
of the 19th century and the beginning of 20th century people started to think differently
by forming new ideologies, organization and departments of women, most of the time
called “Islamic feminism” or “Arab Feminism”

Every aspect of life presented already in the Quran whereas some political rules
in the Arabic-Islamic countries were sometimes with women and other times against
her. Early in the 20th century, feminists from different parts of the world made efforts
to join hands in international meetings and conferences to strengthen the role of women at home and abroad. Islamic feminists were including in those meetings to show the
real image of Muslim women as a mother, wife, teacher, doctor and parliament
member.
The Islamic Feminism is one of the most powerful movements of feminism in
the world; they have approximately the same goals of the western countries but still
with differences. The leaders of this activity are mostly an elite educated, cultivated
group of women from different countries of the Arab and Muslim world.

Dr.
Lale Akgün is also one of the famous woman‟s rights leaders in the Muslim
community. She emphasized on the importance of social relations; Family life, trade,
penal law and of course gender equality are covered by that .By the help of other
Muslim Feminists like Prof. Irshad Manji, Dr. Alia Hogben and Zainab Al-Suwaij they
were able to move the Muslim Woman image to another level by deleting her
negative stereotypical image.

Woman in the past was living unequal and unfair life. She was prevented from
doing any political, social and economical activities and her only job is being a
housewife who takes care of home and children. At that time, woman was under the
control of man who dominates all the fields in which he represents the symbol of
power.
By the coming of Feminism, woman was able take back her rights in addition to
changing her negative image. Feminism proves that woman is capable to play
important roles the same as man. Moreover, the most important goals of Feminism
were giving woman her total freedom in addition to equal opportunities in the
representation of the political and social events.