Source: ScrippsNews
You must hand it to her. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the first in her position to place women's rights front and center. Even though two women preceded her in that job, one Democrat and one Republican, neither of those women placed much emphasis on women's rights.

Last week Clinton stuck up for Egyptian women and stuck it to the men who are crowding them out of positions of power in the new Egyptian government. She told those attending a European forum in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, that Washington expects all "democratic actors" in Egypt to uphold universal human rights. She said that includes women's rights, and allowing free religious practice.

Tough words, those, to a new government dominated by the Islamic Brotherhood and other religious parties. As I wrote in a column on a similar topic last month, when religiously dominated parties come into power, women's rights go out the door.

I feared bad things would happen to women as the so-called Arab Spring unfurled. I fear the same as our troops pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even with democratic elections, countries where strict religious practices prevail and religious leaders are free to become political leaders, don't have enough educated voters to hold truly free elections and will eventually if not right away take back personal and political freedoms they enjoyed before the mullahs took over.

Look at Iran. The Shah was a corrupt ruler, but he gave women immense freedom by the standard of most Islamic countries. Saddam Hussein, as we all know, was a murderer and a thief. But he ran a secular, military dictatorship and while he ran the country, women flourished. There was a quota for the percentage of seats in Parliament that had to be filled by women.

Look at women now in Iran. The mullahs essentially run the country and women are back in their long, black, fully covered outfits. They are prisoners of their men. Even though Iran is a much more sophisticated, well-educated country than, say, Afghanistan, Iranian women have been pushed back into subjugation. Why? Because the vast majority of political power is in the hands of the mullahs.

Just watch what happens when and if our installed democracy in Iraq falls apart. It's already starting to happen in Afghanistan and we haven't even left. The Taliban is quietly taking back control, blowing up schools for girls and forcing women back into the burkha.

Now back to Egypt. Women were on the front lines of the revolution in Tahrir Square since it began. Millions of women voted in Egypt's first democratic election since its revolution. Mara Revkin works for the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and she is the editor of EgyptSource, a blog following Egypt's transition to democracy.

She writes, "Despite anecdotal reports of massive female turnout in Cairo and the other eight governorates that cast ballots in this first of three rounds of voting, women may very well be the biggest losers of an election that has been hailed as the freest and fairest in Egypt's recent history. Although 376 female candidates (ran) for parliament, not a single woman has won a seat so far in the 508-seat People's Assembly. And there is good reason to believe that women will fare just as poorly in subsequent rounds of voting. The second and third stages of elections, slated for December and January, will include Egypt's most rural and conservative districts where gender biases are more deeply ingrained than the urban centers of Cairo, Alexandria, and Port Said that voted (last month.)"

Even with Clinton's advocacy for Egyptian women, the situation does not bode well for women's empowerment. This was easily foreseen. What can we do to make sure the Middle East does not become dominated by countries governed by strict Islamic governments? At this point, not much.