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The term gender apartheid, like sex apartheid, is a term used to describe economic and social sexual discrimination against women, including strict sex segregation, as well as an "absence of justice for women in much of the non-Western world." It is used especially to describe treatment of women in Muslim societies. However, fundamentalist strains of Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism also have been described as practising "gender apartheid."

South African apartheid

The word "apartheid" - for "apart" - originated in South Africa under racial apartheid. Among other things, the government forbade African women from living with their husbands who worked in the mines, which Ali Mazrui describes as "gender apartheid." Some human rights advocates have argued for sanctions against states practicing gender apartheid, similar to those imposed on South Africa under apartheid.

Gender segregation in Islam

Women's rights activist Mahnaz Afkhami writes that the fundamentalist world view “singles out women’s status and her relations to society as the supreme test of the authenticity of the Islamic order.” This is symbolized by the institutions of Purdah (physical separation of the sexes) and Awrah (concealing the body with clothing). As in much of the world, institutions suppressing women were becoming less powerful until the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism at the end of the 20th century. Walid Phares writes that Marxism in the Soviet Union nations and China and "secular anticlericalism" in Turkey forced women to "integrate themselves into an antireligious society" resulting in a backlash of "gender apartheid" by Islamic fundamentalists. He notes that other religions also have "witnessed similar historical struggles." Phyllis Chesler describes Islamic gender apartheid as being "characterized by normalized daughter- and wife-battering, forced veiling, female genital mutilation, polygamy, purdah, (the segregation or sequestration of women), arranged marriage, child marriage, first cousin marriage" and punishment for not complying with these.

Countries accused of gender apartheid

Afghanistan

Afghanistan, under Taliban religious leadership, has been characterized by feminist groups and others as a "gender apartheid" system where women are segregated from men in public and do not enjoy legal equality or equal access to employment or education. In 1997 the Feminist Majority Foundation launched a "Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan", which urged the U.S. government and the United Nations to "do everything in their power to restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls." The campaign included a petition to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.N. Assistant Secretary General Angela King which stated, in part, that "We, the undersigned, deplore the Taliban’s brutal decrees and gender apartheid in Afghanistan." According to the Women's Human Rights Resource Programme of the University of Toronto Bora Laskin Law Library "Throughout the duration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the term "Gender Apartheid" was used by a number of women's rights advocates to convey the message that the rights violations experience by Afghan women were in substance no different than those experienced by blacks in Apartheid South Africa."

Iran

Iran has also been accused of implementing a "gender apartheid" system at the behest of religious leaders. In an article titled "Islamic gender apartheid" Phyllis Chesler asserts that:

"In a democratic, modern, and feminist era, women in the Islamic world are not treated as human beings. Women in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic world are viewed as the source of all evil. Their every move is brutally monitored and curtailed. The smallest infraction – a wanton wisp of hair escaping a headscarf – merits maximum punishment: Flogging in public, or worse. This is happening in Iran even as we speak. In 2005, a hospital in Tehran was accused of refusing entry to women who did not wear head-to-toe covering. In 2002, in Saudi Arabia, religious policemen prevented 14 year old schoolgirls from leaving a burning school building because they were not wearing their headscarves and abayahs. Fifteen girls died."

Malaysia

In 2006 Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia's former Prime Minister, and a campaigner for women's rights, described the status of Muslim women in Malaysia as similar to that of Black South Africans under apartheid. She was apparently doing so in response to new family laws which make it easier for Muslim men to divorce wives, or take multiple wives, or gain access to their property. Mahathir stated ""In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women." According to the BBC, she sees Muslim Malaysian women as "subject to a form of apartheid - second-class citizens held back by discriminatory rules that do not apply to non-Muslim women." Her comments were strongly criticized: the Malaysian Muslim Professionals Forum stated "Her prejudiced views and assumptions smack of ignorance of the objectives and methodology of the Sharia, and a slavish capitulation to western feminism's notions of women's rights, gender equality and sexuality." Dr Harlina Halizah Siraj, women's chief of the reform group Jamaah Islah Malaysia said "Women in Malaysia are given unlimited opportunities to obtain high education level, we are free to choose our profession and career besides enjoying high standard of living with our families."

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's practices with respect women have been referred to as "gender apartheid". Women’s rights activist Wajiha Al-Huwaidar describes Saudi Arabia as the ‘gender apartheid kingdom.’

Azar Majedi, of the Centre for Women and Socialism, attributes sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia to political Islam:

Women are the first victims of political Islam and Islamic terrorist gangs. Sexual apartheid, stoning, compulsory Islamic veil and covering and stripping women of all rights are the fruits of this reactionary and fascistic movement. Political Islam has committed countless crimes both where they are in power, like the Islamic Republic in Iran, the Mujahedin and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in the Sudan and in Saudi Arabia, and where they are in opposition, as in Algeria, Pakistan and Egypt. Terrorising the population is the policy and strategy of this force for seizing power.

According to The Guardian, "n the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sexual apartheid rules", and this sexual apartheid is enforced by mutawa, religious police, though not as strongly in some areas:

The kingdom's sexual apartheid is enforced, in a crude fashion, by the religious police, the mutawa. Thuggish, bigoted and with little real training in Islamic law, they are much feared in some areas but also increasingly ridiculed. In Jeddah - a more laid-back city than Riyadh - they are rarely seen nowadays.

Andrea Dworkin referred to these practices simply as "apartheid":

Seductive mirages of progress notwithstanding, nowhere in the world is apartheid practiced with more cruelty and finality than in Saudi Arabia. Of course, it is women who are locked in and kept out, exiled to invisibility and abject powerlessness within their own country. It is women who are degraded systematically from birth to early death, utterly and totally and without exception deprived of freedom. It is women who are sold into marriage or concubinage, often before puberty; killed if their hymens are not intact on the wedding night; kept confined, ignorant, pregnant, poor, without choice or recourse. It is women who are raped and beaten with full sanction of the law. It is women who cannot own property or work for a living or determine in any way the circumstances of their own lives. It is women who are subject to a despotism that knows no restraint. Women locked out and locked in.

Saudi Arabia's treatment of women has also been described as "sexual apartheid". Colbert I. King quotes an American official who accuses Western companies of complicity in Saudia Arabia's sexual apartheid:

One of the (still) untold stories, however, is the cooperation of U.S. and other Western companies in enforcing sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms, for instance, maintain strictly segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The men's sections are typically lavish, comfortable and up to Western standards, whereas the women's or families' sections are often run-down, neglected and, in the case of Starbucks, have no seats. Worse, these firms will bar entrance to Western women who show up without their husbands. My wife and other women were regularly forbidden entrance to the local McDonald's unless there was a man with them."

Christian churches

The terms gender apartheid and sexual apartheid have also been used to describe differential treatment of women in institutions such as the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church. See, for example, Patricia Budd Kepler in her 1978 Theology Today article "Women Clergy and the Cultural Order". Courtney W. Howland describes the patriarchal family structure of evangelical Christian churches in America as maintaining gender apartheid.

Other uses

Nora Ephron, who worked as a journalist in Japan, described it as a "society of 'gender apartheid.'" Peter Gran writes that the treatment of prostitutes in many societies is gender apartheid upheld by the state. Attorney Gloria Allred called the Boy Scouts of America refusal to admit girls "gender apartheid."

References

1. Stopping discrimination key to ending poverty, Reuters report on United Nations Population Fund annual report, October 13, 2005.
2. ^ Barbara Arneil, Editor, Sexual justice/cultural justice: critical perspectives in political theory and practice, Volume 23 of Routledge innovations in political theory, Taylor & Francis US, 2007, 180, ISBN 0415770920, 9780415770927
3. Susan C. Mapp, Human rights and social justice in a global perspective: an introduction to international social work, Oxford University Press US, 2008, p 134, ISBN 0195313453, 9780195313451
4. Hamid Dabashi, Islamic liberation theology: resisting the empire, Taylor & Francis, 2008, p 135, ISBN 0415771544, 9780415771542
5. Ali A. Mazrui, Cultural forces in world politics, J. Currey, 1990, p 180, ISBN 0435080474, 9780435080471
6. Courtney W. Howland, Religious fundamentalisms and the human rights of women, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, p 62, ISBN 0312293062, 9780312293062
7. Mahnaz Afkhami, "Gender Apartheid, Cultural Relativism, and Women's Human Rights in Muslim Societies," in Women, gender, and human rights: a global perspective,Marjorie Agosín, Editor, Rutgers University Press, 2001, ISBN 0813529832
8. Walid Phares, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy, Macmillan, 2008, p 102, ISBN 023060255X, 9780230602557
9. On the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day -- What Are Feminists Doing About Honor Killings Fox News, March 08 2011
10. Hunter, D. Lyn. Gender Apartheid Under Afghanistan's Taliban The Berkleyan, March 17, 1999.
11. The Taliban & Afghan Women: Background, Feminist Majority Foundation website, Accessed June 25, 2006.
12. Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan (PDF), Global Petition Flyer, Feminist Majority Foundation.
13. Women in Afghanistan, Women's Human Rights Resource Programme, University of Toronto Bora Laskin Law Library.
14. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3327/is_199409/ai_n8033813. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
15. Phyllis Chesler, "Islamic Gender Apartheid", , December 16, 2005
16. ^ Kent, Jonathan (March 11, 2006). "Malaysia 'apartheid' row deepens". BBC News.
17. Kent, Jonathan (March 8, 2006). "Malaysia women 'suffer apartheid'". BBC News.
18. Jensen, Rita Henley. Taking the Gender Apartheid Tour in Saudi Arabia, Women's eNews, 03/07/2005.
19. Handrahan, L.M. Gender Aparteid and Cultural Absolution: Saudi Arabia and the International Criminal Court, Human Rights Internet, Human Rights Tribune, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring 2001.
20. Saudi technology guards against women escaping , B. Joffe-Vault, JPost, 25 Jul 2010.
21. Majedi, Azar. Sexual Apartheid is a Product of Political Islam, Medusa - the Journal of the Centre for Women and Socialism.
22. Whitaker, Brian. Veil power, "Special Report: Saudi Arabia", The Guardian, February 21, 2006.
23. Dworkin, Andrea. A Feminist Looks at Saudi Arabia, 1978. In "Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1989", Lawrence Hill Books, Reprint edition (May 28, 1993). ISBN 1-55652-185-5
24. http://www.rationalist.org.uk/newhumanist/5thColumn/WomenandIslamicLaw.shtml
25. King, Colbert I. Saudi Arabia's Apartheid, The Washington Post, December 22, 2001.
26. Bates, Stephen (2001-10-25). "Church persists with sexual apartheid, say women priests". The Guardian. London: Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 2010-05-23.
27. http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1978/v34-4-article6.htm
28. Courtney W. Howland, Religious fundamentalisms and the human rights of women, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, p 11, ISBN 0312293062, 9780312293062
29. Ulf Hannerz, "Foreign news: exploring the world of foreign correspondents," The Lewis Henry Morgan lectures, University of Chicago Press, 2004 p 94, ISBN 0226315754, 9780226315751
30. Peter Gran, Beyond Eurocentrism: a new view of modern world history, Syracuse University Press, 1996, p 131, ISBN 0815626924, 9780815626923
31. Paul Scott, She's the ruthless lawyer Heather's hired to rebuild her image. And guess what? She's even madder than her client, Daily Mail, 27th March 2008.

See also

• Sexism
• Apartheid (disambiguation)
• Separatist feminism

External links

• Against Sexual Apartheid in Iran Interview with Azar Majedi of Workers Communist Party of Iran

• Sexism
• Islam-related controversies
• Women's rights in religious movements
• Gender
• Sexuality and society
• Sex segregation
• Single sex societies