Globally,
economic realities require under-privileged women to work.
Middle-class, educated women can afford the choice to work or
stay home and raise their kids, while affluent women — be they
Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu — have a plethora of
options.
Umm
Mohamad Ahmed, a 47-year-old woman selling chickens in Cairo’s
Dharb Al Ahmar slum faces slump sales: “Chicken sales have
been down due to bird flu.” Left with five children when her
husband died, Ahmed decided to re-open his poultry shop, but she
lacked capital. On her neighbor’s advice, she applied — with
trepidation — for a micro finance loan of 200 Egyptian pounds
($35 US). Wearing a black face-veil splattered with chicken
innards, Ahmed is part of the global economy.
It
is often socio-economic realities, not religion or culture,
which dictate similar work choices and patterns for women
globally. |
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Ahmed
represents a huge segment of Muslim women who are primary
breadwinners. With no choice about working, they hover at the
two-dollar-a-day, third-world poverty line. Though their
economic roles are often influenced by the global economy, their
specific strategies still retain their traditional religious or
cultural business ethics.
Around
the corner sits Hanan Hamed Osman, a 55-year-old divorcee who
started a kiosk business selling tea biscuits and chips. She
capitalized her kiosk with the sale of her jewelry nine years
ago. Later, in response to customer research, Osman diversified
her inventory to include sugar, oils, rice, pasta, and even
lufas, with three consecutive micro finance loans. Today, she
earns 110 Egyptian pounds a day ($20 US) while in the old days
she would only net 10-20 pounds ($3-5 US).
Islamic
values and the fear of God guide Osman’s business decisions,
keeping her happy with modest returns and minimal profits. When
asked about her dreams, poor as she is, her first response is
“to go for Umrah, a pilgrimage.” When pushed on business
growth, she says, “I dream of ten kiosks, but I am happy with
what I have.”
The
theme of “happy with what I have now” is also echoed by
Intisar Hamed, a 31-year old, unmarried woman — a candle
maker, whose loan enables her to stock raw materials and work
daily instead of every other day. Soon to be married in a
“love marriage of her choice,” Hamed lives modestly, with a
relentlessly crowing rooster, her relatives, and her religion.
Following her religious mandates, she chooses to buy top-grade
raw materials because she does not want to short-change her
customers.
Necessity
has turned these Muslim women into micro-financed entrepreneurs.
Like the masseuses who work in a hammam, or ladies spa,
in Allepo, Syria, the entrepreneurs would have preferred not to
work. But as widows and divorcees, they are responsible for
their children. In a beauty salon in Amman, Jordan, women
manicurists opt to work due to family hardships. Someone in the
family falls ill or dies, and they end up having to come to the
financial rescue.
Not
all women face this struggle on the margins. In Syria,
Palestine, and Jordan, more than half the college graduates are
women. The Syrian women patronizing the spa, and the Jordanian
clientele of the beauty salon fit a different model —
educated, middle-class, often university graduates who prefer to
be housewives after marriage.
Women
entrepreneurs in the Arab world do face male hostility—often
from the West. |
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On
the West Bank of Palestine, however, highly educated women
become sole breadwinners for a different reason. Many of them
have lost fathers, brothers, and husbands to jail or to the
Intifada, or their husbands cannot get jobs because of the new
restrictions on entry into Jerusalem.
And
then there are well-educated, privileged women who have choices
wherever they reside. “I took over the business to continue
the family name, not so much for money. It was not an easy thing
in Syria, especially because it (father’s business) was not
supposed to be a business for women,” says Shirin Derani, 35
and single. Nineteen at the time her father died, and the oldest
of four siblings, Derani took over her father's business of
packaging food for hotels. Since then, she has expanded and now
imports kitchens and table wares for restaurants and hotels.
The
challenge of entering a man’s world came with the job. Derani
speaks of her first experience in Italy while attending a
management course. The Italian manager said to her, “This is
not for a woman, go back to your country and send me your
brother,” who, Derani explains, was 11 at the time. So women
entrepreneurs in the Arab world do face male hostility — often
from the West.
Economic
roles and choices of women in the Arab world seemed very
similar to those in the US and followed familiar global
patterns. |
|
Derani
cites many challenges in business, including “Syria’s lack
of support for commerce, lack of access to capital and private
banks that required all funds to be raised from the family.”
She also has to deal with Syria’s incomplete integration in
the global economy; she cannot get import permits for many of
the goods she needs.
“People
in business call me a train because I don’t have any limits. I
must overcome all the obstacles to reach my goal,” says
Derani. Admitting that she had to put her long hair in a
ponytail so men would look at her and not her hair, Derani says,
“I had to gain respect for myself and the respect of the men I
worked with.”
Yet
Derani confesses: “I am successful in business but it has
affected my personal life. I don’t know how to relate to a
man. I’ve become one of the guys.” She has no common
language with her girlfriends who opted for traditional paths.
Derani
has high hopes and dreams: “I don’t want Syria to remain a
virgin market. I want to change policies and lift import
restrictions because even though the government wants to protect
local industry, local production is inadequate to meet the needs
of Syrians today.” She believes that her “success defies
western notions of Muslim women stereotypes,” and she has
written to Oprah Winfrey several times asking for the
opportunity to share her story.
In
Jordan — a more open society, Salwa Aldiqs, whose father is
Bedouin, has fewer obstacles than Derani. Aldiqs, 37 and married
with two children, started Kinda, a woman’s salon in
1998. Unlike Derani, she faced few challenges, besides mastering
the paperwork of a start-up company. In fact, her family has
been most supportive, particularly her Bedouin in-laws, who are
not well-educated. Pregnant with her child and birthing the
salon simultaneously, Aldiqs was so overwhelmed that her in-laws
offered to send one of their daughters to Amman to help her in
the business.
Aldiqs
says, “being a woman and running your own business is a
plus,” in a country where it is common for educated,
upper-class women to operate businesses. Aldiqs pays the working
women in her salon good wages by Jordanian standards,
recognizing the pressures they have at home with family,
finances, and taking care of sick relatives.
Remarkably,
the economic roles and choices of women in the Arab world seemed
very similar to those in the United States and followed familiar
global patterns. Working-class or poor women have tougher lives
and most must work. Where many men are in jail or face violent
death, women pick up the slack. Educated middle-class women can
choose to work or not. Everywhere, affluent women can do as they
please. They can “shoot for the moon” and be entrepreneurial
stars; stay at home and be women of leisure, full-time mothers;
or some combination. But while culture shapes the particular
local choices, the global economy relentlessly seeps in
everywhere — even into the chicken markets of Cairo's slums.
**
Shahnaz Taplin-Chinoy is a freelance writer based in the
United States She holds a master's degree in communications from
Stanford University. For the past 30 years, she has been
working as a communications specialist in the San Francisco Bay
Area and in India with non-profit organizations and foundations on
women's, children's, and environmental issues. She is now
channeling her experience to create a dialogue and bridge the
divide between Islam and the West.
