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BILL MOYERS:
How were they affected by the tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians today? That lingering and malignant conflict. How do you think their situation was affected?
AZZA KARAM:
Well, I think, this is something the movie did not necessarily tackle head on but there were implicit indications, if you will, when you watch the movie. Clearly the way that the economy is structured is such that it is really the survival of the fittest. You have to be well established, have a good amount of money in order to be able to make it in an economic context that is otherwise very tough for your average, not to mention, poor Palestinian person.
That was one of the underlying dynamics, very much, throughout the movie. On the other hand, you also noted that you didn't really see much interaction between these women and Israeli people, citizens. With the exception, I think, of the women who were carrying the camera and doing the movie.
BILL MOYERS:
It's hard to have had an exchange with Jewish women before.
AZZA KARAM:
Exactly. And, yet, this is an Arab village in Israel.
BILL MOYERS:
Yeah.
AZZA KARAM:
A Palestinian village in Israel. So that they mentioned what was not covered indicated what was going on to some extent as well. So I think those are the kinds of things that the movie showed. What the movie would not have shown, and I think it might be difficult for an average person to realize, but clearly these were not poor women who were really, really poor. These were women who were left with something.
BILL MOYERS:
They were not destitute.
AZZA KARAM:
Absolutely not. But they were also, I would say, from the middle class, if you will, of that society. One of them had a car. They had jewelry. These were not down and out totally kind of women. They weren't rich, I'm not saying that's what they were. But they were still of the middle class, lower middle probably, side of society. So we don't know how those who are genuinely--this film doesn't need to show it, because it can't show everything. I mean this was a very specific story. But because, in answer to your question, I would say that there's a huge dynamic of poverty that exists in and amongst the Palestinian areas, and within the Palestinians themselves. Which is very negatively affected by the Palestinian Israeli conflict. And that's where politics and economics worsen.
BILL MOYERS:
Worse than that, right?
AZZA KARAM:
Significantly worse than that.
BILL MOYERS:
Great inequality between the typical Palestinian and the typical Israelis?
AZZA KARAM:
I would say so, yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean if you look at where Israel falls on the human development index and where the non-existent Palestinian people on the human development index fall, there's a huge difference there.
BILL MOYERS:
Let me come back to the work you're doing at the UN--this very important Arab report that you put together.
AZZA KARAM:
Yes.
BILL MOYERS:
What are you trying to do here?
AZZA KARAM:
A number of things at the same time, Bill. I think one of the first things that we're trying to do is in the spirit of what the United Nations Development Program generally does with its Global Human Development Report, which is provide information, comparative information, analysis, statistics-- generate debate.
Get people to be informed, governments and individuals, to be informed about what is going on in the state of development around the world. In that spirit, the Arab Human Development Report wants to inform what is going on, comparatively, amongst the Arab countries as far as the state of human development is concerned. Not only does the report try to give those kinds of important statistics, data, information, background, it also tries to analyze and provide by Arabs for Arabs, where they believe they're at. What they think the challenges are. How they analyze those challenges. What they would propose as the way forward. Not just for themselves as Arab researchers, intellectuals, former policy makers, but really for their governments, for the international community. It's the Arab voice coming out very authoritatively and saying, "Here's where we are, and here's what we need."
BILL MOYERS:
So you got the first report when? That was in--
AZZA KARAM:
2002.
BILL MOYERS:
Oh, so it's been 3 1/2 years.
AZZA KARAM:
Yes.
BILL MOYERS:
Would you say a needle of progress has remained static? Has it pushed slightly back, or has it edged slightly ahead, for women in particular, in the scope of your study?
AZZA KARAM:
I would say that there are different criteria. That, if you look at it from the perspective of women's empowerment when it was identified as one of the three critical deficits by the first Arab Human Development Report, it put the whole women agenda very firmly on the table for key decision makers. People in government, for people outside of government. It gave Arab civil society a tool with which they could mobilize themselves.
But with which, suddenly, women's empowerment became legitimate as an issue. It's no longer something that you often refer to just to pay lip service to. It became a reality that had to be looked at in the same way that freedom and governance and knowledge had to be looked at.
So it gave it, I would say, a certain amount of legitimacy and credibility. It's not that the women's empowerment issues did not have those kinds of legitimacy and credibility. But I think we're talking about a context where governments, generally, would not necessarily have seen women's empowerment as, you know, on the same level as other critical development concerns.
BILL MOYERS:
Do you think they do now?
AZZA KARAM:
And I think they do now.
BILL MOYERS:
This is a leap, but do you think there's been an impact on women, particularly in some way, from 9/11 and the conflict with terror around the world? Have Arab women been affected by that in some unique way?
AZZA KARAM:
Yes. Negatively, but also positively. Negatively in the sense that, suddenly, Arab women--that old stereotype of the poor oppressed Arab women who have to be helped, who have to be liberated, who have to be looked after--that old stereotype, which we had, I think, collectively, hoped we weren't going to go back to, reemerged very strongly.
I mean I'm doing something that my mother's generation stopped doing in her time, which is to again talk about how Arab women are, yes, they face difficulties. Yes, life is very tough sometimes. But if they want assistance, they want it on their own terms, thank you very much.
And we had stopped saying that many years ago. And now I am saying it, and my generation is saying it. And I think that that is, in a way, going a bit backwards. But, at the same time, remember I said there was a positive impact. Sometimes when you have too much attention on you, it's not always negative. You can turn that into a positive. And I think there are many realities of Arab women's lives that it's a good thing that there's a focus on them now. Because maybe some of those realities, as long as they're nuanced, can start to come out. And they deserve to come out and get attention.
BILL MOYERS:
Well here are eight Arab widows trying to start a pickle factory. Are more Arab women moving into the workforce throughout the Arab world?
AZZA KARAM:
Yes, they have been already, pretty much, in the workforce. I think the lowest percentage of women in the workforce in the Arab world is about 20 percent. So that's the minimum number of women in the workforce. Which is to say that the general trend is for a significant number of women in the labor force across the Arab world.
BILL MOYERS:
Why is that important to the Arab world that women move from their traditional positions into the workforce?
AZZA KARAM:
It's important to the world, in general, simply because you manage to get a labor force that mirrors the population. And that, therefore, brings into the labor and economic dynamic the skill sets of everybody that's in that population. Men and women. For the Arab world it's, perhaps, particularly important because we're talking about a number of economies that are very much, really, the developing world realm.
They are developing economies that cannot afford the luxury of not having women work. And that's just a hard economic reality. At the same time, you do have a need for a varied skilled set in markets that are changing very quickly, that are becoming very much part of a global economic enterprise, if you will. And so, therefore, you really do need to draw on all the skills you have in your national boundary, and in your regional context.
BILL MOYERS:
It's often commented on that Arab economies have been stagnant for a long time, except for oil, and that sort of thing. But they've been stagnant. Do you think that growing out of that stagnation requires more and more women taking on economic roles?
AZZA KARAM:
I think, yeah, I think it's a good question, Bill. I think it's important to keep in mind that, effectively, the Arab economies are very diverse. Like you mentioned, the oil-based economies tend to have a very different way of acting, and impacting on the population than non oil-based economies.
But I think, as a whole, I wouldn't say that the Arab economies are stagnant. I would say that they differ and vary in level. But some of them are moving remarkably quickly and fast ahead. But, yes, in order to improve at a regional level then you certainly do need, as I said, every single skill set you have. You cannot do without using your women as part of your active labor force.
BILL MOYERS:
So you need women running pickle factories, among other things.
AZZA KARAM:
You need women running, in some instances government institutions, not just pickle factories. But, absolutely, you need them at all levels.
BILL MOYERS:
No, I meant that just small businesses are often the catalyst for the growth--
AZZA KARAM:
Very much.
BILL MOYERS:
--the networking of growth that brings on economic development.
AZZA KARAM:
That's quite true. That is very, very true. And you do need them running the small business enterprises. You need them engaged as an active labor force.
BILL MOYERS:
Let's return briefly. Let's return to tribalism for a moment. What is it about tribalism in these traditional societies that favors paternalism?
AZZA KARAM:
Tribal societies tend to be revolving around not just--a leader plays a very critical role in the tribe. And the way to change that leader tends to be very tough. It's not a matter of a democratic process, so to speak, as we know them today.
It's much more of a competitive, harsh context that makes one leader move to accommodate another leader. Tribes work on the basis of what you own. And you can't put the things that you own all on a par. There are different grades and hierarchies of what you own.
Cattle might be more important than land. Of course not, but I mean there are different categories, and hierarchies of ownership. Traditionally, tribes tend to operate on the basis that a woman is part of what you own. Unless we're talking about matrilineal tribes, which we do not have in the Arab world. But, usually, women tend to be seen on a par with the other commodities that you own. This is a traditional perspective, I'm not saying this is what's happening now.
BILL MOYERS:
No, no, no. It's like slavery in this country, when slaves were owned.
AZZA KARAM:
Something along those lines.
BILL MOYERS:
You're saying there is this tradition in these ancient--
AZZA KARAM:
Tribes.
BILL MOYERS:
--tribes, that women are owned like cattle are owned, or land is owned.
AZZA KARAM:
Yes. In tribes. Yes, there's a leader, there are followers. It's very hierarchical. A tribe is, per definition, a very hierarchical entity. And, as such, the male easily is the leader. The leader has to be a man in patrilineal tribes. Under him there is a strict hierarchy of things, people and things. And women tend to be part of the things that you owned, that the man owns in the tribe. And that sense of ownership is where you have a very strong patriarchal component, if you will.
BILL MOYERS:
And that goes back to the story of Adam and Eve--of Jacob and his brothers--
AZZA KARAM:
There you go.
BILL MOYERS:
The patriarchs of the church. Right, so--
AZZA KARAM:
So it's not just--
BILL MOYERS:
The tribalism reinforces that.
AZZA KARAM:
Absolutely. It reinforces that.
BILL MOYERS:
So it would be hard for a woman who was seen as a thing, has any kind of voice. Any kind of right. Any kind of claim.
AZZA KARAM:
Yes, generally, but remember we're saying that these are tribally based societies. And the tribalism, and the way of thinking, tends to impact, still, very strongly, on these societies. I'm not saying that Arab societies today are still tribes. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I am saying that the tribal mode of existence still has an influence and an impact on that part of the world. Very, very strongly.
BILL MOYERS:
It takes a long time to overcome that doesn't it?
AZZA KARAM:
Yes, it does. Yes, absolutely. But it's not impossible to overcome. And, at the same time, if you see where Arab women are today, vis-à-vis where they were, say from 750, or 1,000 years ago, there has clearly been an enormous leap forward. I mean if you think of the fact that one of the stories that we're always told, and that I like to share with my students whenever I'm teaching, but when the message of the Koran first came--girls, baby girls, as soon as they were born, they were discovered to be girls, they were usually killed.
This is the climate of the tribes in that part of the world, at the time when the Koran came. And one of the things that was very clear in the Koran was that this is absolutely forbidden. You do not do that. God does not like that.
BILL MOYERS:
Culture was stronger than religion.
AZZA KARAM:
Well, that's true, but hold on a second. What happened, if you look at what happened from there to now, some aspects of culture most certainly stayed very strong. But that doesn't mean that they're immovable, or that you can't change them, or that you can't improve them over time. Today, if you tell anybody in the Arab world you have to bury your daughter because she's a daughter, I don't think you're going to get a very good listening person on the other end. But that's a huge shift. That's a huge mental, emotional, social, cultural shift. And it's happened.
BILL MOYERS:
To prize the life of a female as much as you prize the life of a male.
AZZA KARAM:
Absolutely. I mean I'm just thinking about this from--perhaps it's a very personal perspective. But if I know that my great, great, great, great grandparents used to bury their female offspring, or female daughter as a baby, and today, it definitely doesn't happen--the way I see it, and the way I feel about it, compared to what used to happen so many thousand of years ago. I think, hey, that's a huge shift forward, yeah.
BILL MOYERS:
The pickle factory failed. But, in the great scheme of things, is it possible that pickle factories, and their equivalents, could become important to the Palestinian people as they try to develop their own state?
AZZA KARAM:
Absolutely, in so far as small businesses, small enterprises, small and medium enterprises are an important part of a developing economy. It is incredibly critical for pickle factories, and all other kinds of factories, and those kinds of initiatives that come from creating a factory, and a pickle factory in this case. Those kinds of initiatives, that kind of momentum--absolutely critical for the development overall.
BILL MOYERS:
What's it going to take for them to succeed that the eight widows didn't have?
AZZA KARAM:
Perhaps not a situation of conflict broadly that they happened to live in. Much more egalitarian in terms of trade amongst the Palestinians and Israelis. The same kind of abilities that would have been available to a similar group of women who would have been Israeli perhaps, or Jewish Israeli citizens. A stronger capacity for training than they had received as yet. A stronger line of credit.
BILL MOYERS:
Marketing.
AZZA KARAM:
Marketing.
BILL MOYERS:
But essentially what you're saying is an end to an old conflict.
AZZA KARAM:
An end to the conflict would make an enormous amount of difference, yes. Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS:
Azza Karam, thank you very much for joining us on "Wide Angle".
AZZA KARAM:
You're welcome.
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Azza Karam, Senior Policy Research Advisor for the United Nations Development Program and Coordinator for the U.N. Arab Human Development Report
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