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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 4
(8 of 20 pages)
In the parties themselves, as well, there is also a trend here in Yemen, I don't
know why, but it's almost a copy of the government. You have so many women at the bottom of the grass roots level
where they do most of the work on behalf of the men of the party, but whenever you go higher, you also find the
same thing. It's almost like an honest copying of the government practice. Maybe because we weren't really able,
we weren't trained and were not prepared as well to accept that new role of women, so the same thing is happening.
And now, of course, although we have a very small number of women represented in the middle of the high level decision
making in the parties, still no woman exists in any party whatsoever in Yemen in the highest level of representation.
By that I mean not in the first important body in each party and this is very very closed only to men.
There is also a dual kind of function here, because although so many people don't really trust women being in the
higher places, but also we have 34 women judges working in different judiciary levels of the courts. This particular
situation has been inherited from the former South where we had so many women who were working not on the basis
of Sharia (ph), they were working as judges in the civil courts. They are still there and they're doing and performing
as well certain activities, but their number is shrinking because they're not allowed to enter the elicitude (ph)
for the preparation and training of the judges, until today. For the women lawyers, we have now only 35 women lawyers
who are practicing and many of them have started a good initiation by having special offices really serving women
and offer to volunteer to represent women in front of different courts. That has also been another sign of women's
involvement in the NGO spectrum and we have now many many women missionaries and many women who are participating
in specialized agencies and also in specialized trade unions, so they are members of lawyers' syndicates, journalists'
syndicates, members of some many other syndicates, but again in very small percentages and they never make it to
becoming Secretary General or they never make it to reaching the higher places. So there's another copy and there's
no difference between all of these.
When it comes to economic empowerment, there isn't anything whatsoever written in any kind of form of law in Yemen
saying that women shouldn't do that or should do that, but again, socially the women most of the time, especially
the ones who are rich enough to have their own businesses, they prefer to do it most of the time through their
male relatives, their husbands, their sons, their brothers or whatever. But lately there has been a very interesting
new group forming themselves, exceeding 80 women now, and they're calling themselves Business Yemeni Women and
they have become a little bit influential in the economic life of Yemen because they are having their own companies,
managing their own companies and they are their own bosses, and that makes a big difference, because they are the
ones who are telling others what to do. They are not being told what to do and they are fortunate because they
have been capable of getting certain training and have been capable of jumping over certain social realities. But
for the majority of the women of Yemen, although they represent the vast majority of the working women in the agricultural
field where you have more than 78% of the labor force in the rural areas occupied by women, they are not even represented,.
for example in the Agricultural Union, which is the biggest union concerned with the issues of agricultural or
rural people. This is one issue.
The second issue is that the poverty which is striking the country, especially after the economic reform, of course
women, especially those with the families, are suffering more because the burden again is on them. They have to
perform well outside, they have to be good workers and also they have to be good mothers, good housekeepers and
all that responsibility and I'm going to connect that as well to the health situation of women, where it's not
at its very best. Actually it's one of the worst in the region too, because women here get married at a very early
age, they cannot use contraceptives, because they have no knowledge of it and it takes a long time to do that,
so by the time the woman reaches her 40's, she is by that time almost exhausted healthwise and most of the time
women die here at a very early age. We have a very scary percentage mortality rate for women, and infant mortality
rate as well. I think we are second to one other country in the region in that particular number.
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