Aspectos abióticos

The gendered public representation of women is played out in their care-giving

responsibilities and the roles they play—as daughters and wives but most importantly as mothers, which takes precedent in women’s lives. Alamedine points, in her remarks, to one perception of this role: “Because a woman is born and grows up giving. She gives before she thinks to take. There is always this devotion you are giving, you have to give.”

Joseph (2000) suggests the existence of a “hidden hegemonic civic myth” –the myth of extended kinship. She argues that kinship has contributed to disenfranchising women through a complex and paradoxical “care/control” paradigm that is sustained by the state and religious sects. To Joseph, extended kinship rather than the sectarian pluralist system of governance is central to gender inequality in Lebanon. She suggests that kinship can only be challenged when the “care/control” paradigm is weakened. Yet, disengaging the care/control paradigm and suspending the hidden hegemonic civic myth require widely shared awareness among all segments of society and that is currently missing. According

to Said, “Our society convinces the woman that she only is responsible for it and that the man does not share this responsibility by saying that the house is her ornamented

kingdom. So the woman becomes exhausted from fulfilling her domestic duties and working outside the home.”

From my fieldnotes and the stories I heard from my respondents and the general public, I have inferred that Joseph’s ‘hidden hegemonic civic myth’ is a story or a general

understanding that women’s main role in the society is found in the family, to which all her other roles are complementary and thus nonessential. Should a woman choose an unconventional path, i.e. not to marry, or if married not to have children; or if she decides to pursue divorce from an unhappy marriage, then she steps outside the conventions and forsakes the protection of the family. The woman who stays within the circumference of the family circle, which is designed to simultaneously restrict her and protect her, can enjoy (to the extent that circumstances permit) the benefits and protection of this

design.²⁶ However, should the woman step outside this circle and these boundaries, she is made to pay the price. Overall, citadin families allowed more leeway to women to

structure how they wanted to provide care than did families from the Dahhiya or the village. Relations varied per different couples, limiting the ability to generalize in this

26 Historically, this protection was decisively broken for many women during war times Joseph, Suad.

2004. "Conceiving Family Relationships in Post-War Lebanon." Journal of Comparative Family Studies 35:271-293.. Even as recently as the 2006, Usta, Farver and Zein Usta, Jinan, Jo Ann M. Farver, and Lama Zein. 2008. "Women, war, and violence: surviving the experience." Journal of Women’s Health 17:793-804. show that During armed conflict, domestic violence is also likely to increase. Of the 310 participants in their study: 27% reported at least one incident of domestic abuse during the conflict, and 13% reported at least one incident after the conflict perpetrated by their husbands or other family members.

study due to the small sample of my data. However, especially in regards to their non-motherly-related care responsibilities, the city was easier on the women.

In their natal families, women have fewer responsibilities and restrictions than in their marital families. In fact, most laws give women greater freedom as “daughters” rather than as mothers or wives (Shehadeh 1998). However, daughters are still expected to be obedient and chaste. The parameters of obedience and chastity limit the daughters’

movement and freedom in many ways. Beydoun admits that, as a young “average looking” woman her stepfather enforced a 5 pm curfew on when she needed to be home.

Likewise, Chamesdine, who is a thirty-year old lawyer, explains:

My father finds it unacceptable for me to be flirting on the phone with a man for instance or for a man to come visit me at home. If someone shows up suddenly, it is also unacceptable for me to sit alone with him in a room. He does not accept these practices; he might invite this man and me to sit with them in the family room. We are still relatively conservative.

Brothers are expected to watch out for their sister’s safety and wellbeing (Joseph 1994).

Said tells a story of when her brother saw her sitting on bus next to a boy and being playful at the age of 13. She was on her way with the scouts to a field trip. He

immediately assumed a love story going on between the two of them, so he threatened her by saying: “come with me to the house.” But she told him, “no I am going with on a fieldtrip with the scouts.” He said “no, you are coming home with me.” She said “I am not going home with you and you have no business telling me what to do. Besides, baba

(daddy) is the only one who tells me if I should come home.” After a long argument he threatened to hit her, to which she replied “I would hit you back in front of all the

people.” He then said: “Okay I am going to tell baba.” This is a small sequence reflecting the everyday control that brothers exercise over their sisters.

In exchange for being subject to this kind of protection enacted by the male members of the family, daughters have the responsibility to render everyday in-kind services to them and to other family members. Said’s mother expected all her girls to do tasks for their brothers “When my mother would tell my older sister Samo to iron my brother’s shirt because it was not ironed properly, she would do it. If she asked me, I would gaze at her and say: If he doesn’t like the way it is ironed, then let him iron it himself!”

The gendered service ethos is also about caring for other members of the family.

Chamesdine explains that as a capable member of her family, her wise management was mainly responsible for saving it from a catastrophe when her mother fell ill:

Chamedine: My mother went through a very difficult depression and she suffered a lot. So the house was about to fall apart. Honestly, she reached a point, I don’t know, when she was totally unconscious and hallucinating and all. We only had one solution, either to be united as a family (aila) or disperse. Who was to assume the responsibility in these conditions? Of course, me, the girl, because the boys could not move in such conditions, they were lost. My father was supportive and my younger brother used to help me with house chores. I helped my mother and at the same time I took care of the boys.

Spousal duties include management of the household, fulfillment of the family’s social obligations and responsibility for marital happiness, the kind of thing sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1983) calls “emotional labor.” The story of Laure Moghaizel is a great example of how she saw no contradiction between herself as a champion of women’s rights and as a woman who could devote special efforts to invest in her marriage. Laure was traditional in her perception of her role as a wife and mother. As a wife, Laure prepared her husband’s coffee in the morning. And although they practiced law together, she often returned home first from their law office in order to greet him with flowers. She insisted that their house was exceptional because Joseph was her constant “guest of honor” according to Amal Dibo. Her son, Fadi, felt that “Oh she was a wife as [good]

probably as others and very better than other wives…”

Spousal responsibilities normally center on house chores toward which respondents varied in their attitudes. For some, the level of their husbands’ participation in fulfilling domestic roles was satisfying. Nassar, Said and Nassrallah were pleased to have their husbands’ help; for instance Nassar says, “He used to help me also. Sometimes he would see me very overwhelmed, he would take things into his own hands. I owe it to my husband.” The husband’s accommodation of their competing commitments released these women from feeling guilty should they not fulfill their spousal duties completely. Said explains that “As I respond to my political duties, I have no time to cook. I come home and find food, my husband cooks.”

Others did not have high expectations of their husbands but did not necessarily resent their inability to help. Majed for instance, excused her husband’s helplessness in house chores: “…although my husband supported and helped me, he would help wash dishes or lift heavy items. But with the babies? It is not possible for him to prepare a bottle, he just does not know. You know, it is not his job. He would get confused because he was not used to this, so I did not blame him.” Shiite Professor Fadia Hoteit felt that the division of labor was reasonable and that her domestic responsibilities were rewarded in her

marriage. “My husband provided me with security. No matter what happens, I know that my husband will take the majority of the responsibility on his shoulders. Therefore, I am comfortable with this idea. I gained from it. Okay, I clean and cook and serve, but in return, I also get benefits. I do not want to achieve equality with my husband at the price of losing this protection.”

Alternatively, others felt the squeeze of the inequality impinge on their relationships. But they did not necessarily feel the need to break away from their marriage. For instance, when Lamia Rustum Shehadeh and her husband were studying at Harvard in the United States, she did not embody women’s liberation on the personal level. She assumed the full responsibility for her house and marriage, “I did not have this idea of freedom, it wasn’t there. My husband did not touch a thing, I used to cook, teach and study.”

Alamedine would quarrel with her husband over shopping, often telling him that “on your way back from work, you can pass and buy some items, it is not a big problem, but why do I have to always do the shopping?” Rabab as-Sadr admits that although her husband is very supportive, as a distinguished public figure herself, “I would not change a thing at

home. Sometimes, I forfeit my rights, I sacrificed so this family (aila) continues being happy, successful and peaceful, and my children are blessed, thank God.” Finally, Fayad ended her marriage with divorce, because she felt that she could no longer continue promoting a public image of a happy couple: “I don’t like to have two faces. Inside the house there was nothing left between us except tension, and we were not good actors, so we could not put on a show for people. It was psychologically better for both of us. Now it is much better, we are good friends, in fact I had dinner with him the other day.

Sometimes my young son complains and says that we are not a family (aila). I tell him that we are indeed one, and that we love each other and we choose the best for each other.

I support my husband and if I am in need, he too supports me.” Of course, these testimonies come from too small a set to allow for generalization over all Lebanese relationships. Yet they do articulate the range of relationships among many women who identify with many feminist goals.

Generally speaking, the cases that I present do not indicate that belonging to a specific religion or living in a specific area guarantees automatic acquisition of women’s rights in any of the areas defined by Laure Moghaizel: political rights, legal competency,

economic and social rights, punitive laws, and the Personal Status law. There is a general consensus that women are expected to fulfill their domestic duty to the fullest and they are adamant about it. In order to manage private and public responsibilities, many activists rely on the support of other female kin members who permit them enough of a release from their domestic duties to engage in public service. This support did not only come from the “mother” as typically expected; other female kin members were

mentioned, such as the grandmother, aunts, mother-in-law, etc. Additionally, the majority of my respondents had foreign maids either on full time or part time basis.

Today, the availability of affordable domestic servants, who earn a monthly income ranging from $150 to $500, has led to a proliferation of foreign domestic workers in Lebanon. According to the Labor Ministry, about 250,000 migrant workers reside in Lebanon (Tabar 2008). For a country of four million, the ratio of Lebanese to foreign maids would be about 16 to 1. This rate is definitely lower in the village, where female family members perform most of the house chores, whereas the rate is much higher among well-to-do citadin families, who often have two or more maids.

The impact of domestic service is tremendous; people now bluntly ask whether a woman has help at home, and whether this person is from the Philippines or Sri Lanka. Maids come from various South Asian and African countries, although having an educated Philippina as a maid is an indication of a higher social status. Alamedine describes how the maid became an indication of status. People “place” other people by asking questions that demonstrate the order of factors making up status in the following way: Are you related to so and so, which region are you from, where do you live, and then, do you have help at home. They ask these questions to learn your social status and class. She says that they ask these questions “to draw an image of me and figure out how they are going to classify me.”

This domestic service phenomenon has freed women of middle and upper class families from having to perform their domestic chores, especially those entailed by the demands of their husbands and their natal families. Women now solicit the help of their maids to do shopping, cleaning and cooking. Inside the home, domestic help has changed the cultural norms and expectation of middle and upper class young women. Young girls are no longer expected to assume any domestic responsibilities, not even to serve themselves.

The example below is a clear example of how an activist, Lina Alamedine, deals with this issue with her own daughter at home:

Stephan: Do you feel that the society allows or compel girl to be like mint leaves [delicate/pampered/spoiled (8/)]?

Alamedine: No no. They are all delicate because we spoil them in raising them.

My daughter gets her glass of water brought to her bedside. She would yell to bring it to her. Once, I yelled at her and asked her to politely say: please wash my garment. I told her that it was her responsibility to wash it and that she should not order us to do it. She asked “how do I wash?” This was the big question “how and where and what do you mean by washing.” And what is a washing bowl? What a language! You know? We created this, we did this.

Motherly duties come as the absolute first priority to all Lebanese women, consuming much of the time of those with children, and are exercised without question. Mothers take pride in sacrificing absolutely anything for the sake of their children. The majority of the activists and female politicians I interviewed found it outrageous to even question their motherly duties, which are socially imposed, but most also self-assigned. Maronite

Caroline Slaibi, who studied families and couples for her Master thesis, observes:

Our upbringing in Lebanon emphasizes the role of the mother as the guardian of the family. She believes that if she does not guard the family and pay attention to it, it would fall apart. Therefore, it got in her head that the family is her

responsibility. So when a woman demands her rights to divorce for instance, the society labels her as “unchaste woman” because she left her family and paid attention to herself. She herself partly feels that, in contrast to the West. She feels responsible for maintaining family bonds.

Asserting Slaibi’s theory, Fakhry believes that the woman bares the responsibility for building a family: “It is my personal belief that the woman must, must, must succeed in building a healthy family. If she reaches a stage where she cannot balance, then having a family is more important than working. This is my personal belief.”

Some feel that this sacrifice is temporary until the children grow up. In fact, my

interviewees did not feel deprived for sacrificing their career temporarily. “The woman,”

as Sadr puts it, “is a human being like the man. She has responsibilities in life. So during certain periods in her life, she cannot play a big role because her priorities are her little children. As long as the children are little, they come first. When they are older, they take their own path; then she goes back on her own path.” Without being apologetic, Hoteit admits that she, among others, accepts a temporary interruption in her dreams for the sake of the children:

We are used to this ideology, and my personal belief is this. I even know that my

daughter is excelling and studious and has a scholarship. But, in my mind, if she bears children it is okay for her to stop for a bit. It will be okay for the sake of the children. I don’t feel that you must balance the two. If you weigh this and weigh that, I feel that the children are always the winner, because you are not losing your career, you are just losing two, three or five years. Okay, so what?

To free themselves from the self-imposed duty of sacrificing their time to their maternal responsibilities, women are choosing to have smaller families. Overall, all but one activist had 4 or fewer children, with 9 of those from the city having two children or one child. Among activists from the village, also 9 had two children or one child, and only one from al-Dahhiya had two children.

Table 5: Number of Activists’ Children by Community Origin

Urban Rural Dahhiya

0 3 2 0

1 2 0 0

2 4 7 1

3 3 1 2

4 3 0 1

6 0 1 0

While the sample given by my subjects is small and non-random to form a base for generalizations, the trend is clear that women activists have smaller families than the previous generation; rarely did I see families larger than 4, and none of them had 9 or 10 children as their parents did. The UN National Human Development Report estimated

Lebanon’s total Fertility Rates (births per woman) between 1950 and 1955 at 5.74;

reaching between 1960 and 1965 its highest rate of 6.36 but declining to 4.92 in 1970 and

reaching between 1960 and 1965 its highest rate of 6.36 but declining to 4.92 in 1970 and