Women in Kuwait Today Contrasted with Sandra Day O’Conner’s mid-20th Century America
Women in Kuwait Today Contrasted with Sandra Day O’Conner’s mid-20th Century America
By Kevin A. Stoda, Hawally (Kuwait)
This past weekend the BBC played a lengthy interview with ex-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner. In the interview with BBC-radio, O’Conner shared that the glass ceiling for women had been extremely high in the legal professions of mid-20th Century USA.
O’Conner related the fact that for many months after her graduation from the law school Stanford University, she had received no job offers.
Women were just not being hired at that junction in U.S history. The only direct offer of employment which O’Conner received in California that first year was to work as a legal secretary. (Naturally, she turned that offer down.)
It was 1949 when she had entered Stanford University. Many men had come home from WWII and with the GI Bill in hand were able to study for the first time in their lives. It was a decade when women made up only 1% of all law school students studying in the entire USA.
In desperation, and just prior to her wedding day--near the end of that same year of her graduation--, O’Conner finally wrote a distant county official who had once indicated that if he ever received more cash from his country supervisor, he would consider hiring her.
In the letter to this particular county attorney, O’Conner explained that she was volunteering to work for the man’s department for free--and even humbly sit at a desk next to his secretary in front of his own office for a many months until his department could at some future time have more moneys allocated by the county where he worked in order to eventually pay her a salary.
That county attorney agreed.
Luckily, after only three or four months, that particular county official was promoted to another higher post, whereby he had more input into the county’s budget.
That lawyer was then able to come up with cash for that legal department to finally be able to pay a salary to the young Sandra Day O’Conner for her various legal efforts
WOMEN IN GULF ARAB STATES: MID-CENTURY THROUGH TODAY
The former U.S. Supreme Court Justice O’Conner’s experience in America in the decade after WWII puts in clearer focus the world of women in Kuwait today—in 2007.
Around 1950, various Gulf Arab states, such as the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE (where I used to teach), didn’t even have a public school till 1954 and a school for girls followed sometime later.
The only university in the City of Sharjah, situated 10 minutes from downtown Dubai., through the end of the 1980s was a technology school.
Now there are 4 or 5 universities functioning in the Sharjah emirate. In comparison, in Kuwait, where I live now, there was no public school for boys till 1912, and it wasn’t till the late 1930s that the first girl’s school was opened. There was no university in Kuwait until 1965, and women weren’t initially allowed to attend, but now make up the majority of students on campus.
Similarly, as Justice Sandra Day O’Conner noted during her interview with BBC, even though American women only made up 1% of the law school population in 1949, by 2007 the majority of students in America’s law schools are currently women.
In short, both in the USA and in the Gulf Arab states, women’s opportunities to be educated grew substantially after WWII—just as both region’s economies grew.
2007 SURVEY OF WOMEN IN KUWAITI UNIVERSITIES
Roxanne Issurdatt recently published in a Kuwaiti weekend newspaper, the FRIDAY TIMES, an article entitled “What a Kuwaiti Girl Really Wants”.
Issurdatt, who holds a degree in Race, Ethnic, & Gender Studies from Trinity College, Dublin, surveyed young female university students in Kuwait in order to discover what most concerns these young women in that Gulf Arab society.
Issurdatt notes that many of those women interviewed had been too young to vote in 2006, the summer women voted in elections for the first time in Kuwait’s history. However, since these young Kuwaiti women are eligible and interested in politics, their opinions & responses are worth considering as one looks at the Gulf Arab populations today.
Similar to women’s historical experience in the United States, one of these Kuwaiti women’s greatest complaints was in the area of society which most any legislature in the world would have great difficulty in legislating.
This is the area of labeling or stereotyping.
For example, Issurdatte writes concerning these women in the survey: “Many demanded the right to work in any field, even those that are traditionally male (including running for public office) without being labeled a bad or immoral woman.”
Issurdatte explains, “As these young women discussed and disagreed with each other, it was evident that the most important thing was to be able to live their lives without judgment.”
Issurdatte’s analysis makes clear the linkage in experiences with “the glass ceilings” faced by women today in the Arab world to those “glass ceilings” found by women in most any country in the world historically, i.e. this current issue is not particularly to the Arab women’s struggle.
For example, in Japan, where there exist hundreds of university’s, there is only one university run by a female president.
In her BBC interview, Sandra Day O’Conner had indicated that women in America today still are frustrated in gaining key posts and promotions.
For example, O’Conner noted that to her chagrin, no qualified American women was nominated to replace her as U.S. Supreme Court justice. (O’Conner clarified that many women candidates would have been equally qualified to fill one of the two seats opened on the Supreme Court during George W. Bush’s tenure in Washington, D.C.)
On the other hand, Ms. Issurdatte’s survey does clearly elucidate other women’s issues and concerns which seem to be peculiar to parochial Arab states today.
For example, a primary concern of young Kuwaiti women today has to do with the inequality found in the Kuwaiti legal code, especially concerning a woman’s own right to her own children following a divorce.
Issurdatte clarifies, “With divorce rates in Kuwait some of the highest in the Arab world, this issue was the main concern for many of the young women polled.” This is why “many advocate an overhaul of Kuwait’s divorce laws, which are biased towards men.”
The inability of Kuwaiti women under the current legal code to pass on Kuwaiti citizenship to their own children when married to a foreigner is a second major point of concern related to family and citizenship laws that adversely affect women.
A Kuwaiti male can marry an American, European or Asian and his children will be eligible for citizenship. That child will have rights to a welfare state that provides millions of dollars of assistance to the Kuwaiti child—including nearly $250,000 for his or her first home.
In contrast, if a Kuwaiti female marries, for example, a Saudi or Bahraini, her children have no such access to citizenship nor citizenship benefits.
Moreover, Kuwaiti females continue to be burdened by a legal code which prohibits full-grown females from traveling abroad unaccompanied by a male escort. Some of the young Kuwaiti women surveyed certainly find it ridiculous to be forced to get around these rules by taking a tiny male nephew as companion along on excursions abroad—i.e., simply to fulfill the letters of laws dating back to time-periods when even Islam had not yet taken root in the Gulf.
Western readers of this article might find these laws bizarre, indeed.
However, let us in the West not forget that modern countries, like some U.S. states, into the 1970s required husbands to sign certain legal documents.
Likewise, a country, like Switzerland, didn’t even allow its female citizens to vote in canton and national elections until the 1970s.
In short, with so many young women upset and finally ready to vote next time around, perhaps more changes lie in store for Kuwaiti women within the next 10 to 20 year—just as occurred in the West between the 1950s and 1970s.
Perhaps, too, there will eventually be many female lawyers and Supreme Court justices in Kuwait at some future date.
NOTES
Issurdatt, Roxanne, “What a Kuwaiti Really Wants”, FRIDAY TIMES,
November 9, 2007, p. 3.
By Kevin A. Stoda, Hawally (Kuwait)
This past weekend the BBC played a lengthy interview with ex-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner. In the interview with BBC-radio, O’Conner shared that the glass ceiling for women had been extremely high in the legal professions of mid-20th Century USA.
O’Conner related the fact that for many months after her graduation from the law school Stanford University, she had received no job offers.
Women were just not being hired at that junction in U.S history. The only direct offer of employment which O’Conner received in California that first year was to work as a legal secretary. (Naturally, she turned that offer down.)
It was 1949 when she had entered Stanford University. Many men had come home from WWII and with the GI Bill in hand were able to study for the first time in their lives. It was a decade when women made up only 1% of all law school students studying in the entire USA.
In desperation, and just prior to her wedding day--near the end of that same year of her graduation--, O’Conner finally wrote a distant county official who had once indicated that if he ever received more cash from his country supervisor, he would consider hiring her.
In the letter to this particular county attorney, O’Conner explained that she was volunteering to work for the man’s department for free--and even humbly sit at a desk next to his secretary in front of his own office for a many months until his department could at some future time have more moneys allocated by the county where he worked in order to eventually pay her a salary.
That county attorney agreed.
Luckily, after only three or four months, that particular county official was promoted to another higher post, whereby he had more input into the county’s budget.
That lawyer was then able to come up with cash for that legal department to finally be able to pay a salary to the young Sandra Day O’Conner for her various legal efforts
WOMEN IN GULF ARAB STATES: MID-CENTURY THROUGH TODAY
The former U.S. Supreme Court Justice O’Conner’s experience in America in the decade after WWII puts in clearer focus the world of women in Kuwait today—in 2007.
Around 1950, various Gulf Arab states, such as the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE (where I used to teach), didn’t even have a public school till 1954 and a school for girls followed sometime later.
The only university in the City of Sharjah, situated 10 minutes from downtown Dubai., through the end of the 1980s was a technology school.
Now there are 4 or 5 universities functioning in the Sharjah emirate. In comparison, in Kuwait, where I live now, there was no public school for boys till 1912, and it wasn’t till the late 1930s that the first girl’s school was opened. There was no university in Kuwait until 1965, and women weren’t initially allowed to attend, but now make up the majority of students on campus.
Similarly, as Justice Sandra Day O’Conner noted during her interview with BBC, even though American women only made up 1% of the law school population in 1949, by 2007 the majority of students in America’s law schools are currently women.
In short, both in the USA and in the Gulf Arab states, women’s opportunities to be educated grew substantially after WWII—just as both region’s economies grew.
2007 SURVEY OF WOMEN IN KUWAITI UNIVERSITIES
Roxanne Issurdatt recently published in a Kuwaiti weekend newspaper, the FRIDAY TIMES, an article entitled “What a Kuwaiti Girl Really Wants”.
Issurdatt, who holds a degree in Race, Ethnic, & Gender Studies from Trinity College, Dublin, surveyed young female university students in Kuwait in order to discover what most concerns these young women in that Gulf Arab society.
Issurdatt notes that many of those women interviewed had been too young to vote in 2006, the summer women voted in elections for the first time in Kuwait’s history. However, since these young Kuwaiti women are eligible and interested in politics, their opinions & responses are worth considering as one looks at the Gulf Arab populations today.
Similar to women’s historical experience in the United States, one of these Kuwaiti women’s greatest complaints was in the area of society which most any legislature in the world would have great difficulty in legislating.
This is the area of labeling or stereotyping.
For example, Issurdatte writes concerning these women in the survey: “Many demanded the right to work in any field, even those that are traditionally male (including running for public office) without being labeled a bad or immoral woman.”
Issurdatte explains, “As these young women discussed and disagreed with each other, it was evident that the most important thing was to be able to live their lives without judgment.”
Issurdatte’s analysis makes clear the linkage in experiences with “the glass ceilings” faced by women today in the Arab world to those “glass ceilings” found by women in most any country in the world historically, i.e. this current issue is not particularly to the Arab women’s struggle.
For example, in Japan, where there exist hundreds of university’s, there is only one university run by a female president.
In her BBC interview, Sandra Day O’Conner had indicated that women in America today still are frustrated in gaining key posts and promotions.
For example, O’Conner noted that to her chagrin, no qualified American women was nominated to replace her as U.S. Supreme Court justice. (O’Conner clarified that many women candidates would have been equally qualified to fill one of the two seats opened on the Supreme Court during George W. Bush’s tenure in Washington, D.C.)
On the other hand, Ms. Issurdatte’s survey does clearly elucidate other women’s issues and concerns which seem to be peculiar to parochial Arab states today.
For example, a primary concern of young Kuwaiti women today has to do with the inequality found in the Kuwaiti legal code, especially concerning a woman’s own right to her own children following a divorce.
Issurdatte clarifies, “With divorce rates in Kuwait some of the highest in the Arab world, this issue was the main concern for many of the young women polled.” This is why “many advocate an overhaul of Kuwait’s divorce laws, which are biased towards men.”
The inability of Kuwaiti women under the current legal code to pass on Kuwaiti citizenship to their own children when married to a foreigner is a second major point of concern related to family and citizenship laws that adversely affect women.
A Kuwaiti male can marry an American, European or Asian and his children will be eligible for citizenship. That child will have rights to a welfare state that provides millions of dollars of assistance to the Kuwaiti child—including nearly $250,000 for his or her first home.
In contrast, if a Kuwaiti female marries, for example, a Saudi or Bahraini, her children have no such access to citizenship nor citizenship benefits.
Moreover, Kuwaiti females continue to be burdened by a legal code which prohibits full-grown females from traveling abroad unaccompanied by a male escort. Some of the young Kuwaiti women surveyed certainly find it ridiculous to be forced to get around these rules by taking a tiny male nephew as companion along on excursions abroad—i.e., simply to fulfill the letters of laws dating back to time-periods when even Islam had not yet taken root in the Gulf.
Western readers of this article might find these laws bizarre, indeed.
However, let us in the West not forget that modern countries, like some U.S. states, into the 1970s required husbands to sign certain legal documents.
Likewise, a country, like Switzerland, didn’t even allow its female citizens to vote in canton and national elections until the 1970s.
In short, with so many young women upset and finally ready to vote next time around, perhaps more changes lie in store for Kuwaiti women within the next 10 to 20 year—just as occurred in the West between the 1950s and 1970s.
Perhaps, too, there will eventually be many female lawyers and Supreme Court justices in Kuwait at some future date.
NOTES
Issurdatt, Roxanne, “What a Kuwaiti Really Wants”, FRIDAY TIMES,
November 9, 2007, p. 3.
posted by Kevin Anthony Stoda at 7:49 AM
4 Comments:
Mr. Kevin,
Your articles are really enlightening...Thanks for your efforts!
Keep up the good work
Sherifa Ozturk
Thanks for the compliment. You had asked in an earlier e-mail about good books.
I read articles usually these days, but I suggest as one university possibility for you to study at: University of Colorado at Boulder. When Elise and Kenneth Boulding were there, it used to be the best in the coutnry.
I don't know how it is today.
Interesting article Kevin, things are changing quickly in Kuwait.
My daughter, a Kuwaiti is doing a report on the subject of women's voting rights and other political rights. The fact is, until women become truly interested in these rights they will remain as they are.
In the U.S. women fought, went to jail, and were tortured for fighting for rights. Men never release power, women have to stand up to them. When women are ready, they will receive these rights.
My daughter's point in her writing is for people to not pity these women, they are content with where they are.
I agree, pitty, gets no where. What is needed is getting people to be aware of options--either through education, personal hard-knocks, or by living abroad.
Any other ways to get peoples attention? make suggestions.
A war or natural catastrophe usually wakes people up--but is there any other way?
Post a Comment
<< Home