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“All the exposed belly-buttons walking down Oxford Street or New York put together, have not given women equal pay, not got women through the glass ceiling...”

Powerof Talk

By Vani Saraswathi

Everywoman’sQuest for

Empowerment

Any information you seek about any culture, law or practice in the world, is just a click away. Access to

knowledge has never been easier. And yet, the misunderstanding between cultures could not be worse!

How often do we turn around and look at a veiled woman and assume she is oppressed? Or at one not wearing it, and brand her ‘loose’?

It would probably take just five min-ute of dialogue to dispel either myth,

or reiterate it!And that is what Everywoman, a

magazine programme on Al Jazeera English, is trying to do. Get women from diverse backgrounds to tell their story.

The Editor of Everywoman, Maire Devine, says the programme provides a platform for women to voice their opinions.

“I have the right to ask a question, as the editor, but I don’t have the right to dictate the answer. Even if it goes

totally against what I believe in, I will put the answer out there.

I am just the conduit. I don’t expect people to apologise for their opinions, just as I wouldn’t.”

Maire speaks to Woman Today about what the programme set out to achieve and has managed to, and in particular about the special episode on Iraqi women to be aired, coinciding with International Women’s Day.

Religious Morality is GlobalThe programme wanted to look at universal subjects, ‘something that may not affect you directly, but will affect all of us by default.’

“Women’s lot is the same every-where. The nuances and complexities are different, but it’s a thread. So if we speak about female imams, then we talk about female priests, an issue that’s tearing apart churches every-where. And really, the basic issue is the same.

“We have explored rape for in-stance. In Malaysia, there are still no civil laws on this. We actually persuaded a young woman, from a village, who told her story, and of how the rapist was asked to pay two cows and two buffaloes!

“We don’t shy away from doing stories from all angles. We are not only doing stories that say ‘oh it’s under Shariah and isn’t it dreadful’. We went to Britain, and looked at the laws there...

“Last month, the Crime Prosecu-tion Services (CPS) came out with report saying that the record was just dreadful. That out of every 100 cases of rape reported only five got convic-tions. Which is a shocking statistic. Bearing in mind that 30 years ago Britain tried to put rape units within the police. And it turns out that the

training hasn’t been kept up, the awareness on how to deal with it is not there... You have had 30 years to deal with it, and you haven’t done much.”

Even if you have viewed just a few

episodes (over 15 have been aired so far), it is immediately obvious that the programme has stayed clear of cliches peddled by popular media.

So a story on domestic abuse, drew examples from the US, and it spoke to the men who were doing time for it. And one on AIDS didn’t look at Africa alone, but closer home, a case of an infected woman in Lebanon.

And then the obvious question is ‘ do you stay clear of controversy at home, in Qatar?’

Maire’s response is a vehement ‘no’. “Nobody says to us, ‘look you

cannot do these things in Qatar’. We have looked at divorce for instance, on why the rate is on the increase. About women wanting more inde-pendence, changing dynamics... That was about women in Qatar and the region. We have spoken about dia-betes, and how Qatar has one of the highest incidence.

“We also spoke about migrant women workers in the region. 95 million migrant women workers all over the world, but there is no law to govern them. Yes, we see news reports of women falling out of windows and

of being abused. Yes, 10 percent fall out of windows and 10 percent are very successful. But 80 percent have no voice. It is those who don’t make the headlines who are in the worst situation possible.”

Busting Myths“My real ambition for the programme is to get women talking. Forget you are from the West or East or Middle East. I am Irish, I grew up in Ireland, and we didn’t have a lot of divorce until a few years ago. It’s still very rare.

“My mother was a matron in a hospital and she was seeing cases of abused women. She was trying to do something about it, and was almost run out of town, because it just wasn’t done. The local bishops said you can’t talk about it, and if you don’t talk about it, then it’s not happening. Meanwhile, my mother was seeing women coming in every night battered black and blue, miscarrying, women who were raped...but, ‘oh no, there is no rape in the country’.

“When we did the interview with CPS, they said that Ireland still has a really bad reputation dealing with rape. Religious morality rears its head everywhere...”

She is quick to add that it is not all about rape, abuse and disease on Everywoman.

“We have positive stories as well. And those are equally powerful. We

Maire Devine joined Al Jazeera Eng-lish from BBC Radio 4 where she was a Senior Producer working across a range of programmes including the flagship Woman’s Hour, The Food Programme, Pick of the Week, All in the Mind and the award winning consumer programme You&Yours.

Prior to her stint at Radio 4 she was based at the BBC Bureau in Washing-

ton DC working as a news producer including producing on the 9/11 output.

An experienced producer of current affairs and feature documentary, her portfolio of work includes the Lonely Planet Travel Series, (Discovery) Too Much Too Young (Channel 4) World in Action (Granada TV) Late Show (BBC Music &Arts)

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To mark International Women’s day, Everywoman explores the lives of women in Iraq.

What we see of them on television are women in black, wailing, but not wailing loud enough to scare away the shadow of death and grief.

What happens when the cameras are switched off, the wailing subsides and the future is waiting to be faced.

Four women tell the stories of ‘Everywoman’ in Iraq.

But for Maire Devine, the editor of the programme, the bravest is the one who recorded the stories, stealthily and anonymously, at great risk to self and family.

“We would have loved to do an interview with the young girl who filmed this, but we thought long and hard about it and decided that we would be doing such a disservice to her and put her at risk, if we do so.

Something could happen to her. That kind of television is not worth it.

“200 people are killed everyday, of whom a 100 are married, that means a 100 widows a day. Highest rate outside of a war zone. Though we ‘see’ images of Iraq on the news, we don’t see the women. We don’t hear their stories.”

The four women who expose their identity, grief and fear are a

journalist (Amna Frayeh), a widow (Nadia Hussein) with four children, the housewife (Iman Abd El Sataar) with seven, and an activist (Dalal Al-Rubai).

The journalist talks about the hardship of reporting the war in her country. The housewife talks about her seven children and her fear for

them. The widow talks about finding her husband... her two younger sons were with her, the two older were with her husband at the shop, and one of them runs home to tell her that his father had been shot. And the sons were a witness to it.

What they have to say is poignant.“The activist says we were under a

terrible regime under Saddam, but we were at least alive,” recounts Maire.

“In many ways they are just telling their story, it is political, but with a small ‘p’. You are talking about a female journalist who risks her life, and who has been shot seven times.

The housewife has seven children, six of them girls, and she talks of her fear of kidnappings. She has en-

couraged them to put the veil back on, even though she herself never wore the veil.

“We talk about the widow who is alone now, and reliant on charity to survive. They are mundane stories, and for that very reason very pow-erful.”

On the filmmaker, she adds, “She was smuggling the camera around to film the four women, she had to smuggle the tapes out, then go back to Iraq. And it was not an easy journey for her, she was stranded in one airport, and then her plane had to turn back before reaching Bagh-dad, because there was a bomb-ing... yet she did it for us.”

And what is most admirable about all these women?

“It’s so easy to leave sometimes, so easy. And these women will not leave. These women have such faith and belief in their country and themselves.”

War, Women and Will

Nadia HusseinAmna Frayeh

Iman El SatarDalal Rubai

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have done one on women in hijab, training to be bodyguards and on the first batch of Qatari female paramedics.”

Unveiling the VeilSome of the positive stories, especially from the region, make a mockery of the debate on the veil that goes on in the west.

“Here the veil is also a fashion state-ment. But in London or New Zealand, it becomes political and religious... People always say that you are a west-ern woman and you are here in Qatar, what understanding do you have. But it is not that simple. Qatari women here and Qatari or Lebanese women living in London can’t understand each other either. Their experiences are different.

A perfect example of this miscon-ception is the story of DJ Shaimaa that Everywoman aired recently.

“She was a hip hop DJ on Qatar radio, and a news reader, and she was into water sports and she wore the scarf. She had a full life. Then she gets married and goes to England, and there she is a housewife, and she finds it difficult. She can’t get a job. People look at her and think ‘oh, you are wearing a veil, you must be an op-pressed woman.”

And with that we come to the no-

tion of ‘wearing less equals empowerment’.

Ridiculing this, she says, “It’s worse when women think showing their belly-button is empowerment. That has nothing to do with empowerment. If your world forces you to show flesh or forces you to cover up head to toe, it’s the same thing.

“All the exposed belly-buttons walk-ing down Oxford Street or New York put together, have not given women equal pay, not got women through the glass ceiling...”

A Question of ChoiceWhat empowerment boils down to ultimately is the right to choose.

Just as the veil is a matter of choice for many, there are other choices that come under scrutiny, too.

“We did a story on Tania Major, an Australian criminologist, an aborigi-nal. We showed her at work and we showed her going back home and baking. And there were people who said maybe we shouldn’t show that. But why not? It’s about choice. To bake or not to. It doesn’t take away or add to her success. That is who she is. Her choice.

“Similarly, we did one on IVF which is a multi-billion dollar busi-ness. I may have my reservations on a 67-year-old woman giving birth post-fertility treatment. But I will not bring my view to the programme. We talk about how invasive the procedure is, and how its long-term contraindica-tions are as yet unknown. We do not set the agenda, we ask the questions – Where do you take away choices? Where do you regulate it?”

As Maire reiterates, the programme allows women to talk to each other, and see if they can find a way to help one another.

“We get feedback from all across the world. And we get story leads as well. We have women writing to us from Saudi Arabia and East Timor... We even had women from Austria writing and asking us not to ignore European women and their issues.

“However, my favourite is one we received from a gentleman who ac-cused us of having a ‘hidden feminist agenda’, and that’s funny, because it’s not hidden...”

Dealing with ChangeThough no stranger to the Middle East, having worked in the region before, Maire still had to make a calculated transition from the western media – “I am a very privileged woman. I came here and was given a blank page to do what I wanted.

“Coming from BBC, it was a conscious decision to have a totally new outlook. Certain things were a continuum. There is a kind of formula for a magazine-programme, and that’s international. How the stories were presented, the mix, the angle – that became a completely different thing, a completely different treatment.

“For that you had to go out and talk to people. You have to ask questions. And you have to listen to the answers they give, not tell them what they should think. Then they would ask for my view... it’s a discussion, it’s a debate.”

And will we see Everywoman go beyond a TV feature to a forum for something more?

“We have talked about it. Maybe an Everywoman conference. Just looking at the idea of education and empow-erment and build on it. You may be educated, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into empowerment. There are definitely opportunities...”

“My favourite (feedback) is one we received from a gentleman who accused us of having a ‘hidden feminist agenda’, and that’s funny, because it’s not hidden...”

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