NOBEL INTENTIONS
One peace prize does not turn the west into the defender of women's rights worldwide
By Natasha Walter

October 13, 2003 – (The Guardian) In Tehran a few years ago I met Shirin Ebadi, the lawyer who has just won the Nobel Peace prize. Her integrity and bravery, even in the face of frequent threats and arrests, certainly make her an outstanding figure in her country and beyond - and of course a great recipient of the prize.

But she would be the first to argue that in many ways she is not unique in Iran. She is part of a growing reform movement, and in her views on women's rights she seems to speak for many Iranian women. The hardliners' struggle to keep control of her country constantly runs up against the growing awareness of women, and the younger generation has been inspired by Ebadi and other female lawyers and journalists and politicians. Everywhere in Iran there are educated, forceful women who are dissatisfied with their situation and who are arguing for reform. Ebadi herself told me: "Even the traditional women here - even those who have not been educated and who live at home - even they are looking for their rights."

We in the west often seem to believe that we have a sort of monopoly on feminism. Maybe it is hard for us to believe that women who wear those dark veils can be working for equality. But, as Ebadi says constantly, the clothes are not that important. "There is something more important than our hijab here in Iran," she said to me. "Other rights must come first. When a man can easily divorce a woman and she struggles to get a divorce from him - this is more important than whether or not we cover our hair. When men automatically get custody of children, this is even more important. When we have solved our other problems, then let's talk about headscarves."

It is important to listen to women such as Ebadi and to remember that the traditions which are often seen to divide women are not as important as what unites them - the desire for those irreducible human rights, such as equality before the law, equal political power, and protection from violence. If this award helps us to recognise how women in every culture, including Muslim countries, feel that they own feminism, then it is a precious gift not just to Shirin Ebadi and the Iranian reformists, but to us in the west.

But in another way the award was a rather easy one for a committee based in western Europe to give out - not so much for what it celebrates, but for what it criticises. Of course we all hate the Iranian government right now: part of the "axis of evil", with its nuclear programme and its wicked views on the United States and Israel, Iran is an easy country to demonise.

But let's not forget that women elsewhere in the region still face almost insurmountable problems - and that some of them are made harder because of the behaviour of the west. It would have been interesting to see how western governments might have responded, for instance, to an award for a feminist in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, where the regimes that have held back women's rights are actively supported.

And if you are looking for women to honour in the Muslim world for their human rights struggles, it is hard not to talk about the activists in the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (Rawa). Their work against the Taliban has become legendary; they are the women who kept hope alive through their underground work in Afghanistan and among the refugees. Yet their struggle has not stopped since the UN-backed government took over. These women still work under threat to their lives, and they are still silenced and sidelined.

Although Rawa has made constant demands to the UN - and to the American and British governments - for more respect for women and children's rights, they have seen women's interests pushed aside in the outside powers' eagerness to appease the warlords. Now Afghans are seeing the small advances that women have made threatened by continuing insecurity on the ground and the outright misogyny of the ruling factions that are backed by the west.

But to give such public recognition to one of their activists, such as the charismatic Sahar Saba, or the group as a whole, would be very troubling for the west. It is much easier for us to reward a woman who is working against a government no one loves than it would be to reward a woman working against a government the west has created.

As Ebadi reminds us, the struggle for women's rights is an international struggle. But it is a struggle where western powers are not automatically on the right side.

n.walter@btinternet.com

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1061652,00.html

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