The thorny road to women's activism

Only on Friday, during a rare reshuffle of furniture in the house, enthused by the presence of two visiting sisters-in-law, we decided to move a bulky, heavy sofa set from the first to the ground floor. As the men were missing – as they always are, when brawns are required – and there was a virtual famine of the physically stronger gender in the slum near my house, two young and buxom girls volunteered to help. With the housemaids pitching in, all of us managed to successfully transfer the sofas, through a narrow doorframe and staircase. At the end of it we exclaimed: “This is woman power.”

Imagine the exhilaration of the three African/Arab women who have jointly won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. In any conflict women are the worst victims of violence; they can be physically assaulted and brutalised and in violent struggles or disputes, their bodies often become the battlegrounds on which men settle scores in the most brutal, violent ways.

The citation makes a very important point when it says the women were being honoured “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work”.

The Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female president, has been recognised for bringing peace to Liberia and strengthening the social and economic development of women. Leymah Gbowee, also from Liberia, is feted for mobilising and organising women across ethnic and religious divides to end the long war in Liberia and ensure women's participation in elections.

But the inclusion of Tawakkul Karman, a member of Yemen's Islamist party Islah, is surprising. Of course, the West's recognition of the ‘Arab Spring', and the prominent role women played in it was on the cards, but more than a Yemeni woman the bets were on somebody from Egypt or Tunisia making it to the coveted Prize.

Tawakkul, surprising choice

Tawakkul, the Yemeni activist who was more stunned than anybody else at her at sharing the Nobel Peace, has been at the forefront of the protests against the oppressive Yemeni regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The mother of three, and recipient of numerous death threats, she has been living in a sprawling camp in Sanaa for the last 9 months, away from her children, whose safety she fears. A journalist, activist and now a politician she is both fiery and fearless and a bitter critic of Saleh. Ironically, the Yemen government, which has been hounding her, was among the first to congratulate her for the award!  

She has rightly dedicated her award to all the activists of the Arab Spring. Let's not forget that right from Tunisia and Egypt, and then Libya, Syria and Yemen, it has been extremely difficult for these Arab/African women to take to the streets. In Egypt, in particular, as Hosni Mubarak stuck to his chair, women protestors were targeted, harassed, molested and beaten. In March, Amnesty International brought to light the horrendous arrest by the Egyptian Army of several women from Cairo's Tahrir Square. They were taken to prison, stripped and forced to undergo virginity tests to ‘prove' they were not prostitutes. The equation of women's activism to prostitution by a male army tells you a lot about the mindset, particularly in the Islamic world, regarding female activism, protests or rebellion.

While this moment belongs to Tawakkul, and of course the other two African women who have jointly won the Nobel, it would be interesting to track how both the Islamic world and the Islamists, interpret this honour for Tawakkul. And, more important, when Saleh finally goes, what kind of role or position her own party, the Islah, gives her in the future governance of this tiny Arab nation.

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