Arab women conference calls for creating an effective pressure group

The first Arab women conference was held yesterday at the House of the Lawyer in Beirut under the banner ‘legislations and laws related to women affairs: comparisons and paradoxes’. The event was jointly organized in collaboration with the Beirut Bar Association )BBA,( which was chaired by its president lawyer, Antonio Hashem, and the women committee at the Arab Lawyers Union ALU and in the presence of a large group of public figures. On the occasion, Hashem stressed that women in the region still suffer from the big gap between their actual potentials and the rights bestowed to them by prevalent legal and social systems. “Accomplishments by Arab women so far do not reflect their important actual role, and they are threatened by the growing religious extremism in the region,” said Hashem. He also noted the insufficient role played by women’s committees within trade unions, while calling for the creation organisations of Arab women lawyers under the umbrella of the ALU. For his part, ALU secretary general, Abdel Latif Bu Ashreen, considered that the era of domination by patriarchal mindsets has come to an end, and lauded the remarkable progress in the role of women in the past decade as a result of mounting democracy and human rights movements in which women advocacy groups have actively taken part. However, Bu Ashreen added, that the present general political scene in the region indicates that growing interest in women affairs was largely motivated by the need for external marketing, while concluding that Arab political parties and leaderships still do not respect or trust the performance of women. For her part, the head of the women committee, Asma Hemadeh Dagher hoped that participants will agree a unified platform in order to start pressuring regional parliaments and governments towards reforming discriminatory legislations against women. (Al Mustaqbal, May 31, 2016)