From the Margins to the Center: Women and Democracy in the Middle East

Leading human rights activists from the Middle East will discuss women’s increasingly public role in demanding equal rights as citizens. Building on a decade long effort to mobilize diverse constituencies and foster alliances across political, religious, and ideological divides, women in the Middle East are playing a deciding role in changing public opinion, laws, and policies in order to build democratic, tolerant, and inclusive societies.

Women leaders from Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, and Bahrain will share the challenges and successes of campaigns for justice in the family and society that grew out of local experience, interacted across national and regional divides, and gained momentum. The campaigns include Iran’s One Million Signatures for reform of family laws, the Arab regional CEDAW campaign “Equality without Reservation,” and the Claiming Equal Citizenship for reform of nationality laws.

The event will include the launch of Iranian Women’s One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality: The Inside Story. The book recounts how diverse women’s groups organized to bring public awareness of the injustice of the laws that dictate gender apartheid, and require male permission for women to marry, travel, work, or hold guardianship of children. It tells the moving story of activists reaching out to others through door to door visits, impromptu street theatre, and the use of alternative media. The campaign’s coordinated efforts, fraught with great risks and sacrifice, contributed greatly to the cohesiveness and solidarity that resulted in the public protests after the contested election of 2009.