states in the Middle East—such as Nadine Labaki’s Lebanon, where women
can wear as much or as little clothing as they please—have not come close
to adopting, despite sustained pressure.
The idea of progress on women’s rights is usually less about superficial
markers like what a woman wears than about her ability to choose what
to wear, and to control and make choices about other aspects of her life.
In Saudi Arabia, until recently women and girls had to have a male
guardian’s permission to travel, get married, or pursue higher education.
New laws were introduced in August to loosen a guardianship system
that treated women like minors. The same Saudi leadership that in 2018
lifted the ban on women driving had imprisoned some of the most prom-
inent female activists who first called for that right. Many of the women
remain incarcerated, and their families say they’ve been subjected to
beatings, torture, sexual harassment, and solitary confinement. Their
alleged crimes include contacting international organizations in the
course of their activism. The message of their detention is clear: In Saudi
Arabia women’s rights will be dispensed at the leadership’s behest, not
won or earned from the ground up. Women have no control or choice
over the matter. Don’t ask or push, and be grateful for any additional
rights that are granted.
So how do women most effectively pursue gender equality? The experi-
ences of several African and Arab states highlight some ways that women
are revolutionizing their societies.
In 2012 Joyce Banda
became the first
female president of Malawi, even though she is not from a political family
and Malawi, one of Africa’s poorest nations, does not have a female par-
liamentary quota. Wedged between Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique,
Malawi is home to almost 18 million people. Repeated attempts to intro-
duce a quota for women in parliament, most recently in December 2017,
have failed. Yet Banda succeeded, despite the lack of institutional infra-
structure to pull her up or family connections and money to pave her way.
Banda’s father was a member of Malawi’s police brass band. She
remembers how when she was eight, a family friend whom she called
Uncle John told her father that he saw great potential in young Joyce. “It
stuck. He planted a seed,” she says, “and I was lucky because my father
kept reminding me what Uncle John said, so I always knew I was going
to do something.”
Banda was Malawi’s minister of gender, child welfare, and community
services and minister of foreign affairs before being elected vice president
in 2009. She became president after the sudden death of her male prede-
cessor and served from 2012 to 2014.
Africa has had several female presidents, “and, well, America is still
trying,” Banda says. “There must be something we are doing right.” She
credits Africa’s progress to the memory of its precolonial history of female
leaders, of matrilineal power systems sidelined by the patriarchal Western
colonizers, and to a conciliatory approach to feminism.
“So-called Western feminism can’t work here,” she says, characteriz-
ing it as confrontational. “We are not going to achieve gender equality
by using models that we borrow from elsewhere. Here in Africa, women
SHAPING THE FUTURE 61