Abstract
despite excessively high levels of violence and male control, Yemeni women have displayed remarkable resilience and a determination to challenge some of the unjust laws and norms that shape their society. They do this on the basis that such conventions do not derive from Islam but, rather, from imperfect interpretations, whether deliberate or not, by men. Yemeni women?s confidence comes both from outrage and humiliation and also a history of activism. In order to encourage political empowerment for women in Yemen, there need to be cultural changes and institutional changes. However, the deterioration in their status since the start of the war in 2014 and the escalating levels of violence against them illustrates in bleak terms how quickly progress can be reversed. The rise in male violence against women raises troubling questions about unbalanced gender relations and the propensity, during periods of instability, to punish women and exclude them from the national narrative.
Highlights
In April 2011, Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen, criticized women for „inappropriately mixing in public with men‟ at the massive demonstrations taking place in several cities across the country (Cole & Cole, 2011)
The Islamist Islah faction1, in particular, were keen to segregate the sexes and, in Sana‟a, „women were forced to sit in a separate yard... covered by heavy curtains and locked behind a thick iron gate‟; Islah members argued that „it was haram2 for men and women to mix publicly‟ (Haddad, 2012)
Throughout the narrative of Yemeni women‟s activism, we find a persistent thread of violence, especially domestic violence
Summary
In April 2011, Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen, criticized women for „inappropriately mixing in public with men‟ at the massive demonstrations taking place in several cities across the country (Cole & Cole, 2011). The Republic of Yemen „ranks as a lower-middle-income, least developed nation‟ (Carapico, 1998, pp.14) It is the poorest country in the Arab world, and has very high birth rates and low literacy, especially among women (Carapico, 1998, pp.14); almost 60 per cent of Yemeni women are illiterate (UNICEF 2012). A combination of poverty, a lack of education, a stagnant political situation and an entrenched patriarchal gender structure has ensured that Yemen‟s women are constrained in terms of choices and opportunities
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