Gender Equity: What does it REALLY mean?

By: JBogle

For the last three weeks I’ve been struggling with this blog post. What did gender equity really mean? I started to write on three separate occasions, stopping shortly thereafter. Who was I to write on gender equality anyways? That’s when I enlisted the help of my friend who holds a Master of Gender and Women’s Studies. Surely she would know where to start

Rawan Arar is dual citizen. She was born and raised in America, Houston to be precise, and both of her parents are from Jordan. This duality was a double-edged sword throughout her experience living in Jordan. On one hand, she was treated like a ‘local’. She rarely received the whistles and honks that other ex-patriots were subjected to. Shopkeepers would go into detail about their life story when she started to speak to them in Arabic. She saw Jordan from within in a way most ex-patriots simply aren’t able to see. But these privileges also meant that she was held to the same standards that local women upheld. That all seems logical, but when these standards contradicted her sense of ‘normal’, she had to default to the Jordanian standards; even if these standards disagreed with her own personal views. And this internal conflict would rear its head in the most awkward situations. Rawan had to control her lively laugh, as ‘ladies shouldn’t be too loud.’ The 25-year-old woman had to be home before 10pm, not for safety measures, but so that neighbors wouldn’t loose respect for her or her family if they saw her coming home at a later hour.  She was once even followed home, as a potential suitor ‘just wanted to know where she lived’.

If I had read this story before having the context of life in Jordan, I would have thought that her rights were infringed upon. And after returning home, I’ve had some heartbreaking conversations with people who are confident that women are subjected to a horrible life ‘in the Arab world’. But I’m here to set the story straight.

Women in Jordan or Pakistan or England or Kenya all live in unique environments with different standards of ‘normal’. One standard isn’t ‘right’ and another isn’t ‘wrong’. Through the Western lens, we see the ‘Arab environment’, one that has stringent rules on public etiquette, as male dominant. But what people forget to appreciate is the respect women are given, particularly in the home setting.  Women are treated like queens, worshipped by their children (in particular their sons) and very much the head of their household. Men have a greater financial obligation, and together the unit flourishes. It was only 60 years ago that this same standard was applicable in Western societies.

I now realized that talking about gender equality really isn’t that scary after all. For years I had stayed away from the topic, afraid of being labeled a ‘feminist’. Regardless of the label, I have experiences that obligate me to share stories, attempting to show that life looked through a different lens isn’t all that different.