Mick Hartley

In Iran:

Female public employees in Iran will soon have to wear a uniform abiding by new Islamic dress code rules. The measure, under which all female employees will be given two uniforms, is part of a new “moralisation” campaign that kicked off last month under which Iranians who do not abide by Islamic dress rules can be jailed, said Fereshteh Sasani, a top official at the office for women’s affairs of the presidency. Sasani said the measure will cost Iran the equivalent of two million euros.

The government has also ordered all public institutions to abolish open space offices as they do not guarantee an effective separation from female and male employees.

And:

A prominent Iranian professor has been sacked for offending a fully veiled woman during class amid mounting protests at a prestigious Iranian university over insults to Islam, the press reported Monday. The reports said that Noureddine Zarrinkelk, a professor of fine art known as the father of Iranian animation, “insulted” the female student at Tehran University by questioning why she wore the full Islamic chador covering.

In Saudi Arabia:

The Canadian embassy in Saudi Arabia Sunday protested against a decision to shut down its booth at an education fair because it was staffed by women.

“Such unprofessional incidents are very damaging to Saudi Arabia’s international reputation,” the embassy said in a statement following the closure at the 12th Middle East education fair in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

“Prior to the event, we specifically inquired whether women staff would be permitted at the exhibition and we were told by the organizers, the Harithy Company, that they would,” it added.

The booth was closed because there were two women among the staff, an embassy official said, requesting anonymity.

And in Egypt:

According to a Demographic and Health Survey carried out by USAID in 2000, 98 percent of baby girls are subjected to this procedure [Female Genital Mutilation]. Furthermore, a staggering 75 percent of Egyptian women in the survey said they supported FMG – down from 82 percent, in an earlier survey carried out in 1995. This widespread custom is more cultural than religious and is carried out by both Muslims and rural Coptic Christians…

While the lack of human rights in the region affects both genders, women are subject to a host of additional gender-specific rights violations. For example, family, penal, and citizenship laws throughout the region relegate women to a subordinate status compared to their male counterparts.

Many of the laws, based on Sharia or Islamic law, treat women essentially as legal minors under the eternal guardianship of their male family members. They deny women equal rights with men with respect to marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Decision-making is left to the males of the household who enjoy, by default, the legal status of “head of household.” All of these concepts are supported by the family courts.

While husbands can divorce their spouses easily – often instantaneously through oral repudiation – wives’ access to divorce is often extremely limited, and they frequently confront near-insurmountable legal and financial obstacles. Although Egyptian women can now legally initiate a divorce without cause, they must agree not only to renounce all rights to the couple’s finances, but must also re-pay their dowries.

Violence against women in Egypt also continues to be a major issue with 35 percent of women in Egypt reported as being beaten by their husbands according to a recent Amnesty International report. Honor killings, whereby women who are suspected of tarnishing the family’s reputation through their sexual indiscretions are murdered by male family members, are also carried out periodically, but the Egyptian government isn’t interested in researching or providing statistics. Furthermore, the penal code of Egypt has a partial or complete “defense” for this crime.