Support for women's rights

The Palestinian context is unique in the Middle East as one in which women’s activism has a long history which is both publicly recognized and perceived as socially legitimate up to the present.

In specific, various polls tend to show that there is high support for women’s political rights and a similar level of support for women’s economic rights, but far less support for changes in property relations between men and women or in the redistribution of power within the family or marriage.

Table II.4 Support for women’s political rights (%)

* The Palestinian Legislative Council, the only popularly elected representative govern­ment body allowed for under the Oslo Accords.

Popular support for women’s economic rights is also similarly high, but only in relation to women’s access to wage work. In 1995, more than 70 per cent of men and almost 90 per cent of women believed that women have the right to work outside the home. In comparison, in 1992 the FAFO survey found a significantly lower percentage of men (56 per cent) and women (78 per cent) supporting women’s right to work outside the home - attesting to the fact that economic crisis and political change can dramatically and quickly affect the way some aspects of women’s rights are viewed. Specifically, the post-Oslo period witnessed a relative betterment in physical security simultaneous with a dramatic deterioration in the Palestinians’ economic well-being.

Along with high support for women’s access to wage work, the 1995 survey found a similar level of support existed for women receiving equal opportunities and wages. However, in one of the few survey questions to attempt to assess women’s access to property, only 28 per cent of men and a similarly low 38 per cent of women claimed that women would be able to manage their property on their own (PCBS 1999a). This indirect question indicates the strong social reserva­tions towards women’s independent property ownership, which in the concrete is exemplified by the low levels of women owning immoveable property (approx­imately 8 per cent of all women). Despite common knowledge of women’s shari'a- based rights to property, it is clear that when practical interest contradicts religious prescription, the latter is easily superseded. This may be a negative example of where concrete interests supersede religious doctrine: in this case, the interest of men to continue the practice of withholding women’s inheritance shares to immoveable property (Moors 1995). However, the contradiction between religious doctrine (or what is perceived to be religious doctrine) and concrete everyday interests can also work in favour of women, as will be shown later in this chapter.

While strong levels of support exist for women’s political rights and rights to income through wage labour, these coexist with a much more limited level of support for women’s rights within marriage and the family. As Table II.5 shows, in contrast to rights in the public domain, within the confines of the private, and specifically in relation to marital relations, poll findings show a dramatic drop in support for women’s rights. While the relatively low support for women’s rights to divorce may reflect the deep social stigma attached to divorce as such, the significant gap (15 per cent) between men and women on this issue reflects the contradiction of interests between them.

Table II.5 Support for women’s marital rights (^o∕o)

Respondents’ reactions to the question on domestic violence show a similar pattern; the fact that the right of husbands to strike their wives is regarded by many as religiously sanctioned probably makes it difficult to condemn. Simul­taneously, women as potential or actual victims of domestic violence are more critical. The stark contrast between support for women’s public versus private rights tends to support the contention of a number of feminist critics of the Palestinian national movement that it focused on the political mobilization of women but either neglected or actively avoided addressing power relations be­tween men and women in the private domain. Clearly, nationalist movements, while creating new spaces and opportunities for women, tend like nation-states to construct citizenship rights only in the public domain, leaving the familial as a space in which males have rights and primary authority over females (Chatterjee 1993; Yuval-Davis 1997)∙ At the same time, the basic acquisition of popular support for women’s political rights represents the acquisition of major strategic assets for widening women’s rights in other areas.