A series of conversations on gender in Jordan and Iraq

My work here doesn’t focus on gender, but it’s a topic I’m interested in. By asking questions about how men and women, girls and boys experience life differently, you can understand much more about a community’s opportunities and vulnerabilities. Sometimes I ask about it specifically, and sometimes it just comes up in conversation. Here is a collection of these thoughts:

An Iraqi Colleague: My friend just forwarded me an announcement that Iraqis who worked for American companies are eligible to apply for refugee status to the US. I worked for an American company in Baghdad for three years, but I don’t know what to do. How hard is it to find work in America? And are the schools co-ed? When you live in Iraq, you feel like you are in a prison. You cannot go to the north (the Kurdish region); Syria and Jordan do not give you visas. I want a better life for my kids, but I don’t want them to totally lose their culture. To go to co-ed schools, this isn’t what we believe.
(Yesterday she was beaming. Her husband and kids were finally granted a visa to enter Jordan, three months after her arrival here).

An Iraqi (referring both to his nationality and expertise) political analyst: Female empowerment is key in (a specific region of Iraq). Women are second class for sure, and not very educated. For example, if she were cleaning that desk there, she wouldn’t really know what clean is, what the meaning of “perfect” is. But she is strong, like a donkey, I’m sorry to say it like that. If you were to give her some education and a few more rights – it would change the living conditions for the whole region.

An United Nations staff: the recent report on gender-based violence in Iraq surprised us all. I had no idea there were so many reported cases. And I say that knowing that the vast majority of cases are not reported, and that the vast majority of cases that were reported are from the north (the Kurdish region) where we have much more access to information, so who knows the rates in the south . . .
(Approximately 21,000 incidences of GBV were reported from May 2003 to June 2008, including: domestic violence, rape and sexual violence, serious burns linked to oil-stove explosions, and ‘honor killings,’ when a woman is killed because she has brought dishonor to the family).

A Jordanian colleague: I wrote my thesis ‘honor killings’ in Jordan (when a woman is killed because she has brought dishonor to the family). They happen more in the poor areas of Amman and the rural areas outside Amman. I interviewed fifty judges, all educated in the US and Europe, and they nearly all said the equivalent of “she deserved it.” It’s the mentality. It’s accepted, so the men guilty of the murder are given light punishments and celebrated for saving the honor of their families.

A democracy specialist on Jordanian politics: The new generation could change things. In the last election, we had one woman elected above the quota for female parliamentarians. Yes, seven compared to fifty is not much, but still, to go beyond the quota system is something.

A Scandinavian social scientist: The Filipino maids who live in the apartment above me eat with me every day, as their family doesn’t feed them. I want to organize a research project with my Filipino maid – interview maybe 200 Filipino maids to document exactly how widespread is the mistreatment and harassment.

A Jordanian helping me figure out how to get a visa: His father's Lebanese, then no problem! Oh, it's his mother? (Laughing) Mother's don't count; we don't care about the women.

An American who has worked here for years: The more I learn about Jordanian and Iraqi cultures, the more secretive I become. You might expect that you let your walls down more with people, but I find I just raise them higher.
(Ok, this one has less to do with gender but I thought it very interesting).