Human Rights of Women

The Israeli Ministry of Health recently awarded a coveted prize to a woman pediatrician. But at the ceremony a male colleague was required to accept the award because the head of the ministry, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, ruled that women were not allowed on stage. Women's faces have been blacked out on Jerusalem billboards. In one neighborhood a sign directed men and women to use separate sidewalks. Women have been asked to sit in the back of buses in routes through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. History has taught us that requiring a group of people to sit at the back of the bus and restricting their visibility and freedom of movement is not a matter of culture but of ethics.

Fortunately, Israel is a secular government. Religious parties wield influence, but religious law is not the law of the land. Women drive, vote and serve in the military. Two women lead major political parties and a woman is president of the Supreme Court. Still, the backlash against women by the ultra-Orthodox cannot be left unchecked. Restrictions imposed on women are not quaint traditions that deserve respect and accommodation; they are moral concerns and they are not only "women's issues."

In the rest of the Middle East matters are worse. In Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that women were recently given the right to vote (though not until 2015), they still do not have the right to drive, require male chaperones to travel and are restricted to separate areas in public places such as restaurants.

This past year, Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan replaced the Ministry of Women and Family with a Ministry of Family and Social Policies, signaling an intention to diminish attention to matters of particular concern to women. In Turkey, about 42 percent of women older than 15 have experienced physical or sexual violence during their lives. In 2009 Turkey became the first state held in violation of its obligations to protect women from domestic violence by the European Court of Human Rights.

In Egypt, although women demonstrated alongside men to overthrow Hosni Mubarak, the revolution has not resulted in greater freedoms for women. The opposite has happened. Women who have demonstrated have been insulted, harassed and told that their demand for rights went against Islam. The Egyptian military has subjected scores of women to a "virginity test." A very public beating and stripping of a traditionally garbed woman has recently elicited outrage. Yet some have excused the military's actions, claiming that women should not be protesting in public in the first place.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has remarked that the systematic degradation of women dishonors the revolution: "Sometimes they (women) play the role of canary in the coal mine. They know when communities are fraying and when citizens fear for their safety." When women are beaten, it is not cultural; it is criminal.

An assault on women's rights is an assault on human rights. These concerns are not limited to the Middle East. Honor killings, beatings, forced marriages, sex trafficking and poor access to health care torment women around the globe. The erosion of those rights, whether in the form of physical repression, economic discrimination or the curtailment of reproductive freedom, is not a matter of faith or culture; it is a matter of ethics and justice. The faith I know remembers the first chapter of Genesis, which says that God created man and women in the divine image.

Look carefully at how women are being treated, abroad and at home; consider their economic and physical well being, their educational and political opportunities. This is the barometer of a nation's health. If you do not like what the barometer reads, then change the atmosphere.