Women in Yemen comprise almost half of the country’s estimated 25 million people, where two thirds of the population live in rural areas. Yemeni women in general still operate in a very traditional role throughout the country, but this role in rural areas can especially subject them to a lack of services.
Women say life can be very hard in the country’s remote areas.
“There are no midwives in the villages. Most of the women are illiterate and those who enrolled in primary education drop out in the sixth or seventh grade,” said Um Ezzaldin, a 27-year-old who grew up in Mahweet governorate.
The country has statistic after statistic provided by both the government and international community that reveal startling low numbers of services like access to health care for women in rural areas. By UNICEF’s latest estimates, 91 percent of women do not receive proper prenatal and postnatal care.
With these figures in hand, many pin their hopes on the nation’s current dialogue conference to offer solutions for the plight of rural women. However, with lofty goals like restructuring the state and paving the way for national elections slated for February 2014, the conference’s representatives have their work cut out for them and the question remains whether much attention will be given to issue taking the back burner like elevating the status of the country’s rural female population.
“I hope that we would really do something for the women in rural areas,” said Samira Zuhra, a member of the NDC who represents one of the 40 independents seats allotted to female representatives at the conference.
The overall conference has a 30 percent representation from women which was stipulated by the event’s organizers. However, Zuhra says it will take women meeting on the side in “shorter” female sessions to present a united front regarding gender issues.
Lists for the NDC’s nine working groups were announced earlier this week. In these isolated sessions participants will hash out solutions for their assigned topics. Within the Independent Bodies and Social Issues group, topics including rights for women, children and the disabled will be discussed, said Warda Qasra, an independent female representative from Hodeida.
According to initial lists that are expected to change, 27 of the 80 representatives assigned to this group are women. But some are worried that these women, who are not all independent, may be more focused on representing their political parties rather than their gender.
“Women’s issues in general have not presented on the table yet,” said Qasra.
According to Qasra and other NDC participants very few representatives at the conference actually come from rural backgrounds. This gives females at the conference, the majority of whom are from urban centers, a huge responsibility to represent their rural counterparts, said Ahmed Al-Juhaifi, a man from a rural village in Ibb.
“Female participants at the conference have to lobby the government’s service institutions to do their jobs,” he said.
Zuhra says, “The best solution which will meet grievances of rural women is to have a state of law.”
This sentiment is shared by many others. They argue women all over the country will be helped provided the NDC ends with its original goal of establishing a future Yemeni state.
Yemen must first create for itself a sound mechanism for making decisions, Al-Juhaifi said. After that, women’s rights will fall into place.
Source: Yemen Times