By Mehru Jaffer
Vienna (IPS) – Despite being at the forefront of sweeping changes taking place in the country, the lives of the majority of Yemeni women are restricted to early marriage, motherhood and serving husbands, according to a new study by Women Without Borders (WWB), a Vienna based public relations and advocacy platform for women’s voices around the world.
“Most of the women talked to, even those from a traditional background, do express a desire for more independence in many aspects of their lives,” Edit Schlaffer, founder-director of WWB told IPS.
The survey reveals that women are largely restricted to the private sphere and discouraged from participating in public life. With a grant from the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), a team of researchers from WWB designed a 134-item questionnaire in the Arabic language that was distributed amongst 600 students at Yemen’s Sana’a University on the eve of the February uprising earlier this year. Over half of the male respondents feel that allowing women to work undermines their religious practices. However, a majority of both men and women see changing gender roles as an opportunity to fare better in a fast globalising world. Before her first visit to Yemen in 2009, Schlaffer’s image of the country on the western border of the Arabian Peninsula was that of a hideout for terrorists and a society frozen in time.
“After my first trip to Yemen I was amazed at the work the women were doing,” recalls Schlaffer. “I was introduced to a women’s radio station in Sana’a. I met female journalists, aspiring politicians and great mothers.”
