July 31, 2014

The laughter of women

editor:	Murat Suner

Alaa Al Aswany, the author of the novel “The Yacoubian Building”, recently wrote an article in the New York Times, describing how sexual harassment became epidemic in Egyptian society. As in several countries with a muslim majority it wasn't always like that.

"In 1899, the Egyptian thinker Qasim Amin published “The Liberation of Women,” a book that ushered in Egyptian women’s struggle for labor and education rights" he says. Eventually, in 1933 the first Egyptian woman graduated from university, in 1956, women gained the vote, and six years later, Hikmat Abu Zayd became the first woman to serve in the cabinet.

Due to the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey, has a similar record of women's rights and its path of modernization. In 1930, Turkish women gained the right to participate in municipal and, in 1934, national elections - eleven years earlier than in France. In 1936, Sabiha Gökcen was the world's first female fighter pilot, and the first Turkish female combat pilot, aged 23. Atatürk said at that time: "If a society does not wage a common struggle to attain a common goal with its women and men, scientifically there is no way for it to get civilized or developed."

For most of the 20th century, women succeeded to maintain these civil improvements. In Egypt this has radically changed. According to Al Aswany two conflicting views determine the situation of women: "a reactionary one shared by the fundamentalists and the supporters of authoritarian government, which reduces women to no more than their bodies, and a progressive one held by the revolutionaries, who regard women as deserving full civil rights. The revolution looks to the future, whereas the reactionary outlook harks back to the past."

And Turkey? The ruling AKP's moderate Islamist politics are steadily transforming the country founded upon secularism. Prior to Turkish residential elections, Bülent Arinc, Deputy Prime Minister and founding member of AKP, said a few days ago: A woman “should not laugh loudly in front of all the world and should preserve her decency at all times.“

An instant anti-campaign in social media occurred with thousands of laughing women (and men) posting selfies. Resistance to moral intervention, to the undermining of civil rights and to the erosion of secularism is alive, particularly since last year's civil uprise of the Gezi movement.

As it seems the state of women's civil rights is a permanent indicator whether a society becomes reactionary or civilized. A laughter of a woman is always a good sign!