By Thameen Kheetan
AMMAN - Long considered a taboo subject, the issue of gender equality is now being casually discussed on Amman streets, thanks to a new campaign bringing the subject to the forefront.
Under a street dialogue carried out by the Gender Equality Campaign (GEC) last Saturday, east Amman residents both young and old, men and women, expressed views ranging from full support to complete disagreement with placing men and women on an equal footing.
“You are coming to talk about gender equality with him?” a young girl asked, pointing at her boyfriend.
“I have no equality with him… he is the one to decide,” she added.
The young man said he agreed with gender equality, “but not in everything”, a common answer heard by organisers on the downtown tour.
Forty-year-old trader Walid said he forced his wife to leave her job to stay at home to take care of their children, as he was busy with his career.
“She felt sad,” he noted, adding that after his children grew up, he came to regret the decision.
“I was wrong to force her to leave work,” he admitted.
Such an open and frank debate was exactly what NGO workers Dina Liddawi and Lulwa Kilani were hoping for when they launched their campaign earlier this year to raise awareness on gender equality.
Sponsored by several organisations including the King Hussein Foundation, the Women’s Studies Centre at the University of Jordan and the Queen Zein Al SharafInstitute for Development, GEC aims to change attitudes towards both men and women.
“We want to reach a point where a girl can walk down the street without anyone bothering her, and where a guy is able to enter a mall without having to accompany a girl,” Kilani told The Jordan Times on Saturday.
Symbolising this goal, the GEC logo consists of a pink strip, representing women, beside a blue strip for men, both the same length.
The logo now adorns scores of cars, walls, market doors and T-shirts, with organisers hoping to place a large “equality” logo on each of Amman’s eight circles.
Saturday’s downtown tour was the fourth for GEC, which has already held dialogues in Wihdat, Shmeisani and Wasfi Tal Street. After completing its tour of the capital, the campaign is then slated for Tafileh before continuing on to the rest of the Kingdom.
The diverse regions have led to some surprising results, according to organisers.
“People were more accepting of gender equality in Wihdat than Shmeisani,” Dina noted, explaining that the campaign has been more successful in remote areas as residents are “more thirsty” for dialogue.
In order to extend the debate beyond the capital, Kilani and Liddawi are also meeting with young men from Irbid and Jerash who will launch similar campaigns in their cities.
“We don’t want to own the campaign; whoever wants to carry out the idea can,” Kilani said, adding that the campaign will have a booth at the upcoming International Arab Children’s Congress in Amman.
As part of its activities, GEC will also organise a mid-August debate between a women rights activist, expected to be former minister Asma Khader, and an MP. The debate will focus on recent amendments of the Jordan’s Personal Status Law.
Women’s rights activists in the Kingdom hope that 2001 amendments to the law would be approved by Parliament after being voted down twice in 2003 and 2004. Such amendments include the right of a woman to divorce without her husband’s consent.
Meanwhile, after a long day of dialogue, a downtown DVD seller was able to sum up the campaign in three words.
“A good job,” he said.
---Jordan Times
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