Friday, November 24, 2006

Women Love Gender Apartheid

Shariffa Carlo unleashes the Muslim woman. Hear her whimper!

This excerpt beautifully showcases the blindness of some Muslim women and the low value that is accorded to work by Arabs:

During the Gulf War, a Western reporter interviewed a Saudi woman. The reporter, trying to make her feel inferior, asked her, "Doesn't it bother you that you are not able to go and get a job as a waitress, if you wanted to?" This woman, may Allah bless her, answered, "Are you joking? I am a woman with maids and servants, why would I want to lower myself to such a task."

Never mind the fact that the maids are likely Muslim as well! But since they're from the third world, they don't matter.

Note the interesting choice of words:

Think about it, the job of waitress is a glorified servant. No woman actually aspires to it, most are forced to do it because there is nothing better for them. And, many of these waitresses are nothing more than cheap entertainment for men. When questioned about not being able to drive, Saudi women point out that having a driver is a luxury that most Westerners aspire to, why is it a humiliation only for Muslim women? In the same vein, the Western woman hopes for the ability to be a stay-at-home mother. It is a status symbol, yet they try to make us feel inferior for making that choice the most common and preferred one.

[Emphasis mine.]

A waitress is not forced to do her job if she doesn't have a better option in the short-run. By that logic anyone who aspires for a higher-paying job is being forced to perform his/her current labor.

A woman can be a waitress because she is earning money for college or maybe just because she likes her work. She can gain some valuable experience and later on search for a different job in an almost infinite labor market in the West.

However, those options simply do not exist for women in Saudi Arabia. In all my time there, I saw cabbies, bus drivers, gas station attendants, peons, sale clerks, grocery store managers, waiters, chefs, visa officers, cops, and the religious police. Guess how many of them were women?

Zero.

How can Arab women make a choice between work and motherhood in a culture that offers them no jobs and that, in addition, has a retrograde and noxious view of labour?

Thanks to Wonder Woman for the link.

2 comments:

Yzerfontein said...

Thanks for sharing that. My late grandmother emigrated to South Africa from Lebanon, and worked as the first South African female bus conductor. The fact is that you cant start at the top of the heap.

Isaac Schrödinger said...

"Thanks for sharing that."

You're welcome.

"The fact is that you cant start at the top of the heap."

Precisely.