Increasing Muslim Women’s Significance through Mediatization, Part II

December 15, 2010 By

Yesterday, I went over the presentations at the NVIC conference “Female Actors in the Egyptian Islamic Public Sphere-Increasing Significance through Increasing Mediatization;” today, I’ll cover the speakers’ day.

Four female speakers were invited, representing different messages and perspectives. The speakers were Dalia Younis, a final year medical student who is the moderator for her mother’s website and preaching business; Dr. Suzan, a neurophysiology professor who is also a female preacher; Kawthar Kholy, the head of the social department in OnIslam; and myself.

First session, each of the speakers had 20 minutes to describe what their messages are, what tools they use and who their target audience are. I went first. Then Younis spoke about her mother’s preaching work, which started few years ago. Younis’ mother insists on two things: she only preaches in mosques and she never takes any money for it. Her audience is women of all ages, and recently they started dedicated classes for children, where they use playing as a teaching and preaching method. She showed some pictures of a simulation for the Hajj and sacrifice to teach kids about these Islamic rituals. When she created the website, she told us that the fact that most of her students are not familiar with computers (according to her)—they were mainly concerned with having a website that is easy to use for someone who has no computer experience.

Kholy told us about the beginning of OnIslam as one of the projects by MADA Media, an Egyptian corporation for media development, and that the main goal behind establishing this website as a whole was to create a peaceful website for the cross-cultural dialogue that could lead to a more tolerant world: [Read more...]

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Increasing Muslim Women’s Significance through Mediatization, Part I

December 14, 2010 By

A very interesting workshop was organized on November 24-25 by the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) titled: “Female Actors in Islamic Public Sphere – Increasing Significance through Increasing Mediatization.” This was a great conference, and I wish I could recap it all for you. But I’ll keep my review to the media-related panels.

Maria Roeder from Mannheim University discussed how private life could be highly political: she raised the questions of who is defining what is public and what is private, and also who speaks in the talk shows, because half the speakers only represent themselves, and in terms of gender, males to females ratio is 100 to zero:

“The dominance of male actors is a trend in such shows, there’re high barriers for female voices in political talk shows.” She continues: “The concept of public sphere empowerment is highly connected to the female almost-absent appearance and involvement in talk shows.”

She then explained that there’s a big problem when one tries to identify what is “private” and what is “public:” “The whole idea of domestic violence being private matter makes it harder to be considered as an issue to be discussed by the public sphere.”

Roeder thinks that increasing the mediatization of life world opens new spaces to public participation, which leads to increased female voices. Blogging helps in circulating news and actions away from the government and official spheres, lowers the barriers in economical terms, and does not take into account who you are, which leads to more gender equality. Though the fact remains that the Arab blogsphere is still dominated by males, at certain ages, half the bloggers are women. She then used the example of Ghada Abdel Al, the Egyptian blogger whose blog “Wanna be a Bride” was published as a book and turned into a TV series starring Tunisian actress Hend Sabry.

[Read more...]

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The Somali Media Women’s Association

December 13, 2010 By

According to a recent study carried out by Transparency International, Somalia was deemed to be the most corrupt nation in the world. The economic and political instability of Somalia has made it the site of many human rights violations, particularly against women. Females are underrepresented in the workforce as well as education. In fact, slightly over 1/3 of the students at the primary school level are girls, and very little progress has been made in this regard.

I had the images of perpetual civil war, insurgent groups, and turmoil on my mind when I was on my way to meet Marian Zeila, a 25 year old Somalian woman that started an organization called Somali Media Women’s Association (SOMWA). In the face of such uncertainty, Zeila is part of a generation of Somalian women trying to promote gender equality and improve the position of women.

As a 21-year-old woman in Baidoa, Zeila established the organization in an effort to increase the presence of women in Somali media. Their work is not limited to the media: their goal is also to increase the role of women in decision-making roles, as well as capacity building. SOMWA is a part of demonstrating a need to prioritize gender equality within Somalia. They have held training workshops and have worked with local religious leaders to change cultural perspectives about women working, and being more visible in the media.

Now 25 and living in London, Zeila was able to have a conversation with me about her plans for herself, and her work with SOMWA. While political unrest has made things difficult for many women’s organizations in Somalia, Zeila continues her work from abroad. [Read more...]

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