How to Disgust Women from Science Careers

Through my twitter feed I came across this video:

It’s a campaign of the European Comission to encourage women to work in science/research fields, where they are underrepresented. So apparently to convince women to use their brains for science, the trick is to show them that the finality of research/development could be as well beautification, make up and fashion. After all who are we for being interested in scientific careers for sake of, say, heal cancer, solving mysteries of the Universe or find alternatives to nuclear energy? No, all we want is privilege to develop new lipsticks!

This video is not only very offensive because it suggests women are interested only in their own standardized feminity, it fails also in adressing the real issues of underrepresentation of women in research and science, such as:

1. Many female students, few female researcher: the issue is not to bring women interested in science, on a student level they are even majoritary in some fields and have average better marks, the problem here is that women tend to not pursue a scientific career although science interests them. The reasons of this gap between female students and female researcher can be structural (see points 2 and 3) as well as cultural, in a world where women making what is perceived as a “man’s job” is not yet fully accepted.
2. Unstable careers: science grants are generally given for 1-2years projects. For example, if a woman quits for a maternity leave, she does can’t be sure the contract will be reconducted at end of the year or if by the time she comes back to work if there is still any work. The other important effect of this is that people who undertake a scientific career have often to move from one country to another before to find a stable position; if the female scientist has a partner or husband, it is generally not accepted socially that she moves and the man generally doesn’t move with his wife. Moreover, if the man is also a scientist (a subtancial part of scientists have a scientist partner), women generally sacrifice their career to follow men.
3. Realm of phallocracy: even when having a position, female scientists are lesser paid, obtain fewer top positions and less talk time in conferences. This disparity is due to the fact that in science/research world, many informal decision criteria count, top of them being that generally decisions are taken by committies of men with few or no women among them.

At the end, what worries me is not really women in science, because they will inevitably build their path and obtain equality, but that in 2012, European Commission misunderstands  the issues they should be qualified for!

Aishwarya Rai post-pregnency weight gain scandal: a sign of social pressure on women

A woman gets pregnant, gives birth to a baby, breastfeeds him/her, enjoys her motherhood. And oh, in the process she gains weight – and her name is Aishwarya Rai, the famous indian actress and beauty queen. 7 months after her delivery of a baby girl, people are scandalized that Aishwarya hasn’t lost yet her pregnency overweight. A video of her in a her first public event since motherhood went viral (watched more than half a million times); she is slammed in India for not being back in shape. For example, here are some critics posted by viewers of the video:

She is a Bollywood actress and it is her duty to look good and fit.

She needs to learn from people like Victoria Beckham who are back to size zero weeks after their delivery.

I don’t know for you, but if I had to choose between the gentle, smiling face of Aishwarya and the severe, never-smiling one of Victoria…

Aishwarya doesn’t need me to ask for indulgence for her post-pregnency shape; she certainly has already many friends who spoke for her. What interests me is that, generally, standards for celebs end up, sooner or later, to be standards for societies and ‘normal women’. It is not by chance that big cosmetic and fashion brands pay celebs to wear their products: they are social influencers. And this is how African women end up straightening their hair, European women spend their lives dieting or feeling guilty for not dieting, Indian women bleaching their skin or Chinese women un-slanting their eyes, etc. Beauty ideals are different in each part of the world, the only constant thing is that these ideals exclude majority of women. Female celebs are avatars of the perfection of body, and in that sense, Aishwarya is no different than other celebs; after all she is the egeria of a cosmetic brand selling skin-bleaching products – we hope this weight-gain controversy will help her to reconsider the importance of not contributing in imposing to a population ideals to be fulfilled only with dangerous behaviors and chemical products. The unfulfillable ideals of brands and celebs act like a social pressure in our societies; a way to submit women and keep them confined in their own mental barriers. Worst part of this being we, women, are not only subjected to pressure, we are also taught to pressure and ostracize women who don’t follow the rules of the majority. In consequence, to reject this pressure is seen as a form of subversivity.

Just come to think of it: Aishwarya Rai is rich, she certainly has dozens of servants to help her with her baby, she could easily have a trainer, someone to cook fit meals, etc. If she didn’t lose weight already (if she is ever to lose it, in the first place), it is maybe not because she can’t, but maybe because at this stage of her life she doesn’t make of it a priority. Meaning that maybe, she is mentally sane enough to give her body the opportunity to be like Mother Nature designed it to be after a delivery, since beginning of times.

I wish to every single woman reading this article to enjoy their womanhood, motherhood, sisterhood – whaterverhood – as much as they can, without caring for people’s criticism on their looks.

Reaction to Mona El Tahawy’s essay on Arab women

In the article published in Foreign Policy by the Egyptian-American columnist Mona El Tahawy, she argues that in the Arab World/Middle East takes place a war on women. According to her, Arab men are ‘hating’ Arab women. This explaining sexual harrasment, genital mutilation, virginity tests, child marriage, etc.

Alas, Mona El Tahawy commits 3 big mistakes:

1) to mix facts with personnal opinions/impressions: the article starts with a fictional scene from a novel by great Egyptian writer, gives a few facts and then concludes with biased personnal impressions. How is established the connection between objective events and an inner subjective feeling called hate? Why ignoring aside all known works that emphasizes the importance of economical instability, social background, political chaos?

2) to consider Arab men, alltogether as a non-official supranational monolithic group, that cooperate instinctively, driven only by their hate towards Arab women. To consider these men’s sole purpose is to make of women’s lives a nightmare. The origin of this will to crush women, apparently, consists in a mix of culture and religion. Thus forgetting that the “Arab World” is a mixed bag of twenty-two countries, each of them with different cultural background, History, society. There is more difference between the legal/social status of a women in Tunisia and in Saudi Arabia than between a woman in Tunisia and Italy. There is a bigger cultural overlap between Morocco and Mali than between Morocco and Bahraïn. And maybe there is more difference between the lifestyle of cities and countrysides of one same country than between two urban areas of two different countries?  So what Arab World, what Arab men and women are we talking about? Mona El Tahawy mixes in a few paragraphs what happens to women in Egypt, Yemen, Saudi altogether and more or less assumes that in every Arab country women suffers from the sum of all these added abuses. The fact is, there is no “Arab feminists” or “Arab societies”, there is Egyptian/Moroccan/Saudi/etc feminists and societies, each country having its issues with women’s rights and its own battles to lead.

3) to forget to compare and consider the long History of feminism of other parts of the World. Mona El Tahawy looks to the women issues in the Arab World as if it was an isolated case in the world, as if what happens there is unique in its kind and could be understood only with cultural/religious backwardness of the region. While looking at women’s conditions in other parts of the world would have enlighted Mona (and us) about the fact that in particular political change and military conflicts can drive a drastic change for better or worse in women’s conditions. Is the dramatic condition of women in Afghanistan or Iran a result of cultural backwardness or is it at least partly due to political and geopolitical conditions, given the fact that less than 50years ago women in these countries were living freely? Why did the European feminism win its biggest battles between WWI and WWII and shortly after? Is there not any useful conclusions to make from the drift between women’s rights in Western and Eastern Europe? Mona speaks extensively about sexual harrasment in Egypt, why does she not compare with a country like South Africa where 40% of women are forced into their first sexual intercourse instead of comparing it less revelantly with the rest of Arab world?

Mona El Tahawy is an influential columnist; in consequence, her article launched a vast debate on women’s conditions in the Arab World on blogs and social medias. The fact she reaches wrong conclusions disconnected from reality is counterbalanced by the number of smart reactions and answers by women from Egypt, Kuwait or anywhere else that enlight us about field based experiences. If it had this effect, then at least it was worth it. Still, I hope in the future she takes care of not speaking on behalf of “Arab women”, especially when she apparently has never put a foot in most of the countries she mentions and thus never interacted with women from there.

The DSK-like machism trilogy: the Hooker, the Witch and the Good Wife

Two months now that the sex assault case involving the ex-Chief of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Khan is ongoing, augmented since last week with a new affair where a young french journalist, Tristane Banon, accuses him as well of trying to rape her. It took Nafissatou Diallo to put charges on DSK for Tristane Banon, who claims since 2003 to be a victim of DSK, to get over her fear to not be believed.

Besides these criminal charges, the french public scene is full of stories involving DSK and women: he is depicted by most of the people that were in contact with him as a “predator” with exuberant sexual behaviour, that knows no real limit and does not really understand women’s refusal. Those who were not raped by DSK anyway talk about his manner of heavily insisting, to the point that some of them say explicitely they were so afraid to be left alone in a room with him they made everything to avoid him. An internal note in the IMF kindly advises female staff to avoid as much as possible to stay alone with him in an office.

If only trials can tell us truth about these affairs, it is already possible to draw a first quick conclusion: in the worst case, DSK relation to women is criminal, in the best case it is “just” pathologic. In both cases, DSK relation to women perfectly symbolizes the darkest side of machism: reducing women to primitive archetypes, and objectifying them in the men-women relations. For DSK and the likes, women can only be of three types:

1. The Hooker: Nafissatou Diallo… and any woman, by default
   For DSK, the world is like a giant brothel: he just has to “pick up” the hooker he wants and “pay” for that… Women are believed disposable by default, and the interaction with them is essentially sexual. No real moral consideration limits him in his “choice”: they can be his friends’ wives, his assistants, the staff of palaces he visits, relatives of his ex-wife, etc. The personnality of the woman never really enters into account: although he had hundreds of sex affairs with women around him, he does not seem to have any long term extra-conjugal affair, involving if not feelings, something that would look like a person-to-person intimacy: women are consumers’ good, uninteresting once the sexual encounter took place. As a “client”, he uses his personnal, intellectual, political and economical power to convince them to accept his sexual proposals. As a proeminent personnality, he knows how to use the psychological impact he makes on women inferior to him on the “social ladder”. As sexual employees, they “cannot” really refuse to provide him the service he is requesting. Getting them to have sex with him only needs him to find the good “payement” mode, and sometimes the suitable pressure mode.Nafissatou Diallo, the cleaning lady of the Sofitel, is just one of the many he wanted when he saw her. Without any “seduction ritual”, it went directly into a sexual interaction, whether it was forced or not. She was there, she was to be available. And after all, in order to prove his unguiltiness, isn’t his strategy simply to try to convince the jury that “anyway, this woman is a hooker”? (Letting aside the fact that even professional prostitutes can be raped…).
2. The Witch: Tristane Banon
   Given the high social position of DSK, his wealth, his intellectual capacities, and even his physical force, very few seem to “resist” to him. The sexual encounter generally quickly takes place, and once it is finished, he can go back to his business. Thus, very few women have the strenghth to say no to DSK, and if they do so, even fewer are strong enough to repeat “No” again and again as he repeatedly insists. Tristane Banon is one of these few. Maybe is it because she is journalist and writer and thus she is literate enough to not be vulnerable the intellectual domination he can use on less educated women; maybe is it because her mother is herself a politician (in the same party than DSK) that made her harder to scare with the fact he’s a politician; maybe it is because her godmother is DSK ex-wife, enabling her to see in him a simple man to whom she can say “no” rather than the powerful figure. Anyway, the refusal of a woman seems to be difficult to understand for him. Since the moment Tristane Banon put charges on him, his entourage deploy their strange strategy to discredit her: they spread the word that she is mad, unstable, she is a liar, she invents things. In one word: a woman who says no to DSK is simply a woman out of her mind. As a free minded woman, Tristane Banon bothers DSK because she was not impressible enough, not only for her to sleep with him, but also for her to keep silent about it. She refuses to be one of these nice ‘hookers’, who do what they have to do and let him go back to his business. For DSK, Tristane Banon and women like her strong enough to firmly say no to him are “witches”, the women who do not submit to the natural  order of Nature, where women give and men take. Defying this “natural establishment” is viewed as an heretic act, a crime of subversivity. The same way that during the Middle-Age the inquisitors that were convicting women of being witches were accusing them of proceeding to satanic celebrations where ‘immoral’ sex acts were performed, DSK entourage try to spread the word about a nymphomaniac, sexually disturbed Tristane Banon. (Letting aside the fact that even a mentally unstable woman can be raped)
3. The Good Wife: Anne Sinclair
   As much as a man can objectify women and disinterest from them once he had sex with, the presence of a ‘good wife’ is of primordial importance to a man like DSK: it represents the only little point of mental and emotionnal stability in his relations with women. But here again we are in a symbolically commercial transaction: the relation does not build on trust and respect, since the cheating is implicitely “part of the game”, but on mutual benefit. For DSK, Anne Sinclair is rich, she’s part of his political career, she’s an ally, she is for him a family, meaning a stable and reliable entity of his fluctuent life. On the other side, Anne Sinclair benefits from this situation in sense that she lives her political ambitions through him, as well as by taking the continuous role of the cheated wife, she is the “good one”; she “invests” in DSK to achieve what she knows she can’t make directly herself due to the sexism of the society (the same way Hillary Clinton “invested” in Bill Clinton). She knows about his relations with other women, but not only she makes as if she didn’t know to not lose all she built with him and the social prestige that goes with it, but also she takes secretely pleasure in being “The One”, the woman that remains here, while all others, regardless of how young, beautiful, smart they can be, are only temporary. A woman who dominates all other women through her husband.

The DSK-like machism trilogy (the Hooker, the Witch and the Good Wife), embodied as well by him as by all his entourage that participate to sustain this system (in particular his wife Anne Sinclair), it’s maybe the biggest harm DSK made to women in general: offering one of the sickest models of men-women relations of a socially successful men. If the media coverage of the Sofitel case would allow at least to deconstruct this sexist model in men’s and women’s minds, it would be indeniably a huge step forward in the feminine cause.

The constructive feminism of Manal Al Sharif and the destructive feminism of Femen topless activists

The story of Manal Al Sharif, a 32 years old Saudi woman  jailed 10 days for defying the driving ban in her country, is a perfect illustration of the extreme repression endured by Saudi women. Her act – being filmed while driving and uploading the video to promote the Women2Drive campaign – was courageous and thus inspired other women in the Kingdom to follow her example. She expressed in the video the wish that she would be only the beginning of the revolt of women like “the first drop is the beginning of the rain”.

She enhanced a movement that had repercussion far beyond Saudi Arabia: many feminist associations, many NGOs, many papers talked about the event and certainly contributed in the global awareness on the terrific situation of women rights in the Gulf. Meanwhile, Femen, a feminist association in Ukraine organized a solidarity protest protest in Kiev around the Saudi Embassy where several of the protestors showed up topless.

So what is the outcome of the Manal Al-Sharif case?

1. Manal Al Sharif encouraged women (and men!) in her country to stand for their rights. Several dozen of people follow now her example to break the unfair rules. She showed that Saudi  women are courageous enough to take themselves the initiative. What is interesting is that she cares more aboout driving than about, for example, wearing or not the veil: she wants to achieve men/women equality through equal rights to act (drive, express, vote, work, etc), not just through her appearance. Thus her contribution to women cause is positive.
2. Femen activists  exhibited their own bodies and contributed in nothing neither for Manal Al Sharif, neither for Saudi women, neither for Ukranian women. They finished doing exactly what sexists do: use women’s body as an object. What message did Femen send to the world? “We, women, we can’t do anything, we can’t draw attention unless we exhibit our breasts”. Thus, their contribution to women cause is negative.

The feminism of Manal Al Sharif is constructive because it breaks the prejudice about “women consisting only in an empty body”, while the feminism of topless Femen activists is destructive because it does nothing else than enforcing this prejudice. Manal Al-Sharif uses provocation as a tool to change the law, Femen use provocation for the sole purpose of having the feeling to exist. The sad thing is that certainly Femen wants to act to improve women’s rights: but just type “Femen” in a search engine, all you will find is hundreds of entries about the “topless protests”.

At the end of the day, Femen may be very active, the world associates Femen to nothing else than to naked women, while Manal Al Sharif  became a model for women not because of how she looks, but because of how she acts. And that makes a huge difference.

France anti-burqa law comes into effect and unveils french hypocrisy

The anti-burqa law has been amongst the most debated measures voted by the French Parliament under the Sarkozy administration. Targeting less than 400 face-veiled women in France, the law acts more symbolically than anything else; it doesn’t solve any pragmatic problem. In my point of view, the ban of burqa in France has no real religious impact, since living in the western society is already conflicting with the islamic laws in many more revelant ways, strictly saying; if Muslims in Europe can live with paying taxes to governments sometimes at war against muslim-majority countries and contributing to a ribaa-based economy without getting where this is contradictory with Islam, it’s not the ban of burqa that should make them feel that they are stopped from fulfilling religious duties. Unlike some “moderated” personnalities say, face-veil exists in Islam (as proven by the biographies of the Prophet Muhammad (SWS) wives), but was is not clear is if it is mandatory or optional. Thus, the burqa ban in France do not put French Muslim women in a religious dilemna, it puts them at the centre of a symbolic battle, opposing a government that made of hypocrisy its trademark to the whole process of democracy.

The arguments used to justify the burqa ban are almost an insult, not only to veiled women or muslims, but to all French citizens, because they don’t speak the true motivation behind it. Not only it is technically limiting in terms of freedom of choice, but also it is a huge trickery: under the cover of fighting for women’s rights, it goes once again in limiting women’s concerns on what they wear – miniskirt or niqab? – instead of real and concrete measures to ensure their rights, let it be by helping single mothers, women forced into prostitution, labour market particularely unfriendly to women who didn’t renounce in having children or the increase of violence made to women (in France, on woman dies every 3 days after being beaten by her husband or boyfriend). It is simple to ban a burqa and stigmatize Muslim men to “submit” their wives, it is much more complicated to break the real chains than imprison French women, let them be muslim or not.

One of the “myths” exported by the government spokesmen and parliamentary groups presidents is that the anti-burqa law defends secularism (the so-called French laïcité), which is untrue given the fact that secularism is a strict separation between religion and institutions that never implied the ban of religious signs in the street, the streets being public but not institutional, and the citizens being representing only themselves and not any official or governmental function when out of duty. Moreover, the French government is commited in a few affairs out of the area defined by secularity: laws have lately been modified in order to allow Islamic finance in France (unlike muslim women, muslim money is always welcome; the ex French Minister of Economy Hervé de Charette is even president of the French Institute for Islamic Finance… secularim is far far away when there is benefit), Ministry of Education gives grants to private jewish schools and the agenda of holidays of all public services follow the christian calendar (traditions and History are absolutely not an excuse for that).

The French people should wonder what could have been their lives if the same amount of energy than what took to make an anti-burqa law accepted was spent on each project aiming in defending employment, housing or institutions for social insertion of mentally challenged people. If the same time spent to communicate and stress on the importance of the law was dedicated to each file concerning the huge lack of means in hospitals or the case of the thousands of homeless people that are refused a bed and a meal in overfull shelters. No, the French government did not vote a law to protect the people’s interest, although they pretend they did. This hyprocrisy about the true reasons behind the anti-burqa law is, technically speaking,  outside the rules of democracy: democracy is the governance of the people by the people itself, and an untruth on the state of the discussed topics equals to fool the people, hence to give choice between fake options, keeping them busy with choices relative to a virtual freedom, while actual freedom based on true facts and arguments stays out of scope. Indeed, instead of asking the right questions and anwering the right answers, the French people are arguing against each other about how awesome or awful is a life under a burqa or a niqab.

The right question here is then not if France has right or not to ban burqa but what are the real reasons that made it so important to the Sarkozy administration, when they always knew that it has no practical impact. Was it for opening a debate on Muslims in France to put them “under the spotlights” for electoral reasons? To provoke a reaction from their side to prove how ‘antidemocratic’ they are? To warn them of any attempt to become more visible on the public scene? To send a “muslim-unfriendly” clear message to discourage Muslim Africans to migrate to France? Or to veil the emptiness of mind of the rulers?