go women

I was reading this blog entry on Huffington Post, and it reminded me of my experiences this past year, specifically in Israel when working with the women's groups through Shatil. Being a feminist to an Arab Muslim woman does not mean removing their veil or anything like that. How about having a community in which women can talk about reproductive health, sexual issues, and other various subjects that are important to women? When your society prevents you from discussing these issues, they can become amplified and lead to larger issues in society.

At some point during my job with Shatil, I wondered whether or not my efforts were imposing in some sort of vague imperialistic way. The work that I did was not an attempt to direct the organizations, and through simply listening to their goals, objectives, and activities through which they realized these without offering my suggestions, I learned a lot about what is important to these women and the other groups that I worked with. Arab women in Israel are living in the Arab society that is not promised a role in the state, and on top of that there are different obstacles to their full participation in their own communities.

One of the women I worked with explained it to me in this way. Imagine two women like to meet and talk about issues in their respective marriages. Every day around a certain time they talk about these things in each other's houses, but they don't discuss these issues with other women because they are not comfortable with that. Information spreads quickly in the community, and God forbid, it should come back to hurt them that somebody hears a personal issue that one of them is having. However, even meeting with the woman one on one every day in such a fashion causes suspicion among neighbors. People start talking about the two women and how they see each other so frequently, and why?

The incredible woman I worked with decided to make a center in which women can come and share all of these issues about health, both physical and emotional, grow as a community of women, and feel empowered to bring progressive ideas to other women in their community in a way that does not create fear of destabilizing the community. These women don't want to wear what the girls are wearing in New York, they just want to vent--and know about their bodies and how to keep them healthy. Despite the fact that many Arab women, especially in Israel and Jordan, have the opportunity to pursue graduate degrees, they do not necessarily have access to information about their own bodies.

These concepts are a brand of feminism that we take for granted in the United States. All kinds of attention is poured into raising girls so that they can take care of their bodies by seeing the right doctors and checking the right places in order to prevent serious illnesses. However, some societies are a bit more shy about these issues, and as a result, many people are suffering from lack of information.