Two stories this week, oceans apart from one another, showcase strange wrinkles in gender inequity:<\/p>\n
One from Egypt<\/a>, where we learn that the brothers of the Muslim Brotherhood preach a socially conservative message to women who nod along:<\/p>\n Women are erratic and emotional, and they make good wives and mothers \u2014 but never leaders or rulers. …<\/p>\n \u201cA woman takes pleasure in being a follower and finds ease in obeying a husband who loves her.\u201d \u00a0…<\/p>\n \u201cCan you, as a woman, take a decision and handle the consequences of your decision?\u201d he asked. \u00a0A number of women shook their heads even before Mr. Abou Salama provided his answer: \u201cNo. But men can. And God created us this way because a ship cannot have more than one captain.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The article goes on to explain that the Brotherhood’s hold on segments of Egyptian society come in part from the social services it provides, like “financial support to struggling households” and “mass weddings for low-income couples.”<\/p>\n The second story<\/a> comes from Coconino County Arizona, where Judge Jacqueline Hatch played the old game of blame the victim. \u00a0Quoting her own mother, the Judge scolded a sexual assault victim:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you blame others, you give up your power to change.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As if it wasn’t bad enough that the POLICE OFFICER who was convicted as the assaulter received a light slap on the wrist. \u00a0Judge Hatch later apologized<\/a> for her “poorly communicated” words.<\/p>\n As a bewildered outsider to both stories, I guess I can explain the complicity of some Egyptian women to the Muslim Brotherhood’s patriarchal agenda. \u00a0This is the use of tradition and religion to reject the hegemony of western liberalism in the form of women’s lib. \u00a0Moreover the Brotherhood speaks to a population trying to come to grips\u00a0with<\/em> tradition and religion<\/a> after decades of Hosni Mubarak’s reign. Then there is the matter of the Brotherhood as an institution dispensing social services, etc.<\/p>\n But, I’ve got to ask, what makes a judge in America, who is also a woman, give voice to Judge Hatch’s kind of nonsense?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two stories this week, oceans apart from one another, showcase strange wrinkles in gender inequity: One from Egypt, where we learn that the brothers of the Muslim Brotherhood preach a socially conservative message to women who nod along: Women are erratic and emotional, and they make good wives and mothers \u2014 but never leaders or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":473,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/473"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4187,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions\/4187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}