With New Laws and Fatwahs Behind Them, Jordanian Women Struggle to Claim Their Rights

The high profile visibility of Jordan’s Queen Rania, masks the challenges women face in Jordan.

WHAT BORDERS? Patrons at Sugar Daddy’s, which sells American-style cupcakes in the Middle East. Simon Milne-Day for The New York TimesIn the same Google search about women in Jordan, we have from the NYTimes American-Style Cupcakes Find a Niche in the Middle East and another article from The Media Line  Is the Women’s Cause in Jordan a Lost One?

We’re skipping the cupcakes.

A report on labor conditions in Jordan, published by the German based Friedrich Ebert Foundation, showed that at 14%, women’s participation in the labor market is one of the lowest in the region. 

Four Jordanian women serve in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nader Dahabi, and the quota for women serving in the 110-member house has increased from four to six.

Women’s rights activists were thrilled when Jordan passed the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), granting women freedom of mobility and choice of residence without consent of male family members.

The government’s decision went against the grain of deeply-rooted beliefs in many parts of Jordanian society, and drew immediate condemnation from influential Jordanian tribes and from the Muslim Brotherhood. Activists at the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the most influential party in the kingdom, warned “Families in Jordan face the threat of total collapse under CEDAW,” according to a recently released statement.

In July, top religious leaders issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that banned virginity testing after the numbers of women ‘required’ by future husbands to undergo virginity testing skyrocketed.

Yet future husbands prevail at private clinics.

Jordanian women carry pictures of Jordan’s King Abdallah II and play drums as they celebrate the release of four Jordanian prisoners outside Qafqafa jail, north of the Jordanian capital Amman, on August 20, 2008. via DaylifeThe complexity of these challenges underscores the severe challenges faced by women in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East, even when government and religious leaders try to expand their range of legal rights and opportunities. Anne