I selected Lebanon to carry out my research for three reasons. First, the liberal democracy that guarantees freedom of association in Lebanon has been a fertile environment for the flourishing of civil society. Second, Lebanon can be used as a model to learn about Arab women’s political participation across their religious affiliation and ethnic memberships, because sixteen ethnosectarian groups are represented in Lebanon. Third, Lebanese women’s activism has been historically significant in leading the struggle of Arab women for equal citizenship rights. This historical significance contextualizes the approach that
Lebanese women apply today in framing their movement.
In the Middle East, Lebanon provides a unique research context because of its semi-democratic culture, its broad ethnosectarian composition, and its post-colonial history.
Lebanon’s form of political representation is unique in the Middle East. Huntington’s Third Wave of Democratization recognizes Lebanon as the “only Arab country to sustain
a form of democracy, albeit of the consociational variety, for a significant period of time…” (1991: 308). What Huntington means by “consociational” is that Lebanese democracy is so constituted that representation is allocated according to a quota system that is determined by the ethnosectarian population of the country; and legal and political rights (in such areas as family law) are also modified according to courts set up to reflect ethnosectarian ideological and legal traditions (Salibi 1988). All sixteen ethnic and religious groups in Lebanon are represented in all legislative, judicial and executive branches of local and national governments.
Lebanon’s ethnosectarian percentages and distributions are not representative of other countries in the Middle East—as Christians are represented at higher rates in Lebanon (39% of the population) than in other Arab countries. However, the various religious groups who live in Lebanon are representative of most groups who live in the Middle East (except Jews, who were represented in Lebanon and its parliament until the civil war). The capital Beirut is multicultural; the South falls under the control of the Islamists Shiite Hezbollah; the Mountains are divided between the Druze and the Maronite
Catholics; the Beqaa Valley is mostly populated by Shiite and Sunni Muslims; and in the
North, Orthodox Christians live along side Sunni Muslim communities.
Figure 1: Map of Lebanon
Source:
http://www.state.gov/cms_images/map_lebanon.j pg
Source:
http://bbsnews.net/bbsn_photos/topics/Maps-and-Charts/israel_lebanon_map.jpg
The greater sectarian consensus has led to the development of a multi-level, interlocking set of obstacles against women’s rights. According to Joseph (2000), sectarianism in Lebanon has had a contested and nonlinear history. Along with that history, political conflicts—which have infringed on Lebanon’s political sovereignty and weakened its political and legal institutions—constitute additional obstacles against the advancement of women’s rights in Lebanon.
Five eras in the tumultuous history of Lebanon have left a strong imprint on Lebanese society: Glorious Phoenicia, semi-autonomous Ottoman occupation, French Mandate, the Civil War, and the Second Republic. The Lebanese ancient ancestors, the Phoenicians, built the first city-state of Byblos around 5000 BCE and sailed the Mediterranean Sea
trading and establishing colonies in Tunisia and Spain. This Phoenician heritage lives in the memory of many Lebanese as a reminder of Lebanon’s unique leadership and innovative characteristics.
The ethnosectarian structure that exists at present in Lebanon is a result of trajectories that go back to Ottoman times. During the Ottoman era, Lebanese regions were ruled by muqata’ji families of emirs and sheikhs, who competed among themselves for power and
clout, initiating clan feuds that further aggravated their conflicts. Lebanese today still hold grudges towards the Ottomans for the legacy of the emirate governing system that brought forth today’s ethnic and religious conflicts. The Ottomans introduced the Millet system to Lebanon, which was allegedly an improvement over the Arab’s Dhimma system because it allowed the Christians and the Jews and all the non-Sunni communities a certain autonomous legal and administrative status (including legislative and judicial jurisdiction over family law, and providing travel documents, good behavior affidavit to conduct business, etc.).
The French Mandate in Lebanon (1920-1943) preserved the Millet system and furthered the balance of power between Christians and Muslims by officially declaring the equal status of 17 ethnosectarian groups as confessions under the infamous law known as LR 60 in 1936 (Joseph 2000). This law recognized eleven Christian sects including:
Maronites, Antioch Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Armenian Gregorian Orthodox,
Armenian Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholics, Assyrian Chaldeans, Nestorian, Roman Catholics, and Protestants; five Muslim sects: Sunnis, Shiite Alawites, Shiite
Jaafari, Ismaelites, and Druze; and Jews (with its three synagogues in Aleppo, Damascus and Beirut). Only recently, in 1996, did the Coptic Orthodox denomination replace the disappearing Jewish Lebanese community.
The French Mandate reinforced the confessional system by giving the confessions jurisdiction over the various aspects of family law. Each one of these denominations established its own confessional court with its own specific laws to exercise their exclusive jurisdiction over the following matters: Engagement and dowry; marriage (lawfulness, rights and obligations, annulment, separation, dissolution); requirements for legal and illegal filiations and adoption; parental authority over, and guardianship of, children and other minors; managing divorce, separation, annulment as well as associated alimony; and imposing and estimating child support. The French also introduced a
significant number of laws, which currently govern many administrative aspects of the Lebanese society. These laws were equally restrictive of women’s rights. According to my respondents for instance, the French Mandate forbade Lebanese women from opening personal bank accounts after they had been allowed to do so under the Ottoman rules, on the premise that French women did not have such rights.
The thirty years in which the First Republic existed were marked by competition between the various ruling families and continuous interference by foreign powers especially France and Britain. The Civil War era started in 1975 after Palestinian refugee
population reached 300,000 and established its quasi government within the Lebanese
State (Salibi 1988).2 Tension grew between the Palestinians and the Christians, inviting the intervention of the Syrian army on behalf of the Christians. In 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon in response to Palestinians’ attacks within Israel; and took over Beirut in 1982.
As some Lebanese leaders allied themselves with the Israelis, the war proliferated into many fronts and included foreign powers such as France, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Many view the civil-war era as the darkest mark on Lebanon’s long history of coexistence and civility. The civil war claimed 100,000 lives, left another 100,000 disabled, and as importantly created an enormous diaspora: “Up to one-fifth of the pre-war resident population, or about 900,000 people, were displaced from their homes, of whom perhaps a quarter of a million emigrated permanently” (GlobalSecurity.org 2000).
Cities became segregated into religious pockets and families were separated. Trust and hope were lost and powerful militia groups like Amal and Hezbollah emerged as revolutionary clusters of the poor Shiite to once again threaten the security and stability of the country.
The post-civil war era, also known as the Second Republic, witnessed the return of confessional democracy, but with new partners, Amal and Hezbollah. The Taef Accord, which was engineered in the city of Taef in Saudi Arabia in 1989, reshuffled the power cards between Christians and Muslims giving equal representation to both religions at
2 Initially the Palestinian leadership, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was stationed in Amman, Jordan. However, in 1970 King Hussein of Jordan crushed the PLO’s increasing power in the Kingdom killing tens of thousands Palestinians, an event known in history as Black September. Upon this brotherly violence, the PLO moved its headquarter to Beirut. Upon the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the PLO leadership moved to Tunis, where it remained until the Oslo Accords in 1994 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as a semi-autonomous state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
every governing level.3 The Taef Accord specifically declares the President to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Parliament Speaker a Shiite.
All militia were integrated within the unified Lebanese army with the exception of Hezbollah, which continues to fight Israel beyond the latter’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 1997; such irregular attacks instigated the Israeli invasion again in 2006, when Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers.4 According to the Taef Accord, the Syrian army was to remain in Lebanon temporarily to shepherd the reinstitutionalization of the Lebanese state. Syria stayed beyond its welcomed years and was only ushered out of Lebanon in 2005 by the Cedar Revolution of March 14th 2005, as one million peaceful Lebanese demonstrators protested in the largest nonviolent demonstration in Lebanese history (MacFarquhar 2005).
Political instability has pushed women’s issues to the backburner and given priority to national causes. The political instability caused by war with Israel, the continuous
frictions by internal powers with external loyalties to Syria, Iran or the United states, and the decentralization of the consensual democratic system are closely intertwined with the power struggle between the confessions and the autonomy of the state. Frictions and decentralization have produced an imbalance of power between the confessions and the state. The central government is unable to assert its power without reaching consensus
3 The Text reads: “Until the Chamber of Deputies passes an election law free of sectarian restriction, the parliamentary seats shall be divided according to the following bases: a. Equally between Christians and Muslims. b. Proportionately between the denominations of each sect. c. Proportionately between the districts.
4According to a World Bank Economic and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), the war 2006 caused $2.4 billion in direct damage to the Lebanese infrastructure and up to $800 million in indirect losses.
http://www.rebuildlebanon.gov.lb/english/f/NewsArticle.asp?CNewsID=919.
among the confessions and their secular leaders. The official culture of Lebanon, taught in schools and propagated in the media, depicts Lebanon as “a nation composed of multiple natural communities organized on the basis of religious sects. In this view of the civic myth, the religious sects existed before the Lebanese state and were presumed to have sustained a continuity of sectarian communal culture and cohesion” (Joseph 2000:
108). Based on the centrality of the sectarian pluralism myth, “the state has delegated family law (Personal Status Laws), to religious courts rather than legislating a unified civil law” (Joseph 2000: 108).
As in many Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, women in Lebanon are subject to restrictive family legal codes, which institutionalize their subordination to religious establishments. Lebanese women’s socioeconomic status is also representative of
women’s conditions in the Arab world as a whole. The World Bank classifies Lebanon as an upper-middle income country. In 2003, its GNP per capita was $4,320, which is close to the $4,601 average income per capita in other Arab states.5 In 2000, Lebanese women constituted 29% of the labor force. Other Arab countries’ female participation in the labor force was 28%. Overall, female pupils make up 48% of all pupils in primary schools and 53% in secondary schools in Lebanon—compared to 46% and 47% in other Arab
countries (Genderstats).
5 GNP ranges for other Arab states are as follow: Kuwait, $17,970; Bahrain, $12,410; Saudi Arabia,
$9,170; Oman, $7,890; Libya, $4,400; Tunisia, $2,240; Jordan, $1,910; Egypt, $1,390; Morocco, $1,310;
Syria and West Bank, $1,120; Yemen, $510 and Sudan $460 (Genderstats).