law (North Africa, Egypt), Ottoman law (Jordan,
Syria, Palestine), and English law (Kuwait, Yemen,
Gulf states). All Arab court systems recognize a
hierarchy of courts and some have specialized juris-
dictions. Only Iran, and more recently Egypt, have
specialized courts for family matters. Otherwise,
personal status matters are handled by Sharì≠a
courts (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, United
Arab Emirates) or by courts with general jurisdic-
tion (Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, Kuwait, Morocco,
Saudi Arabia), sometimes also called Sharì≠a courts.
While Arab constitutions generally provide for
citizens’ right to bring legal action, actual access to
the legal system is hampered by several factors,
some affecting women and men differently. Those
who work in Arab legal systems often cite corrup-
tion, slowness, and lack of enforcement of legal rul-
ings as the main issues affecting access to and
respect for the legal system. Widespread illiteracy
in rural areas and among the urban poor make
these groups dependent on the advice of legal spe-
cialists, thus creating yet another obstacle and
increasing the costs. While court fees are often
regulated, constituting a percentage of the value of
the civil case, lawyers’ fees tend to be high; in addi-
tion there are many hidden fees.
Court proceedings tend to be drawn out. In the
last decades, Egyptian women suing for divorce
spent between three and seven years on the differ-
ent aspects of their cases (Brown 1997, 200, Fahmi
1987, 15, 61–70, 73, Hill 1979, 43). Reliable sta-
tistics on length of proceedings are, however, hard
to come by. The same holds true for a gender-rele-
vant analysis of cases brought to and decided by
courts; court registers are difficult to access, often
requiring extended fieldwork. However, the Jor-
danian office of the qà∂ìal-qu∂àt(supreme judge)
has published its 2000 breakdown of personal sta-
tus law cases (www.sjd.gov.jo/html/fahresn.htm);
the Moroccan ministry of justice runs a website
advising citizens about personal status law and
legal procedure (www.justice.gov.ma/justfamille/
mariage.htm); and a Tunisian site has a compre-
hensive FAQ section on family, criminal, and civil
law to facilitate access to the legal system (www.
jurisitetunisie.com). But judicial statistics, even
where published, appear not to be very accurate
(for Egyptian crime statistics, Bernard-Maugiron
and Dupret 2002, li).
Access to courts, courts’ efficiency, and imple-
mentation of rulings are among the most under-
researched topics in respect to contemporary legal
systems. Attempts to reform Arab legal systems,
particularly with an eye to improving women’s
access to the courts, often therefore suffer from368 law: access to the legal system
lack of information, as recent studies funded by the
United Nations Development Programme on judi-
cial reform in the Arab states have pointed out (see
http://www.pogar.org).Legal literacy and the legal
profession
Whereas most citizens in the Arab states hold
notions of what is right in moral terms, knowledge
about national legal codes is as rudimentary among
lay people as elsewhere in the world. In some coun-
tries, local leaders, such as village headmen or tribal
leaders, have some legal knowledge, but they often
attempt to persuade parties to avoid legal proceed-
ings; in addition their services are targeted solely
at men.
Numerous donor-funded projects support legal
literacy campaigns in the Arab states. The impact of
these programs is hard to evaluate; when focusing
on the production of written material, impact
would be highest among urban, educated middle-
class women.
All Arab legal systems allow, some even mandate,
legal representation by professionals at all stages.
Where it is not mandatory, the bureaucratic nature
of court proceedings is often only manageable with
a lawyer, even at the primary stage (Mir-Hosseini
1993, 112 for Morocco; compare Würth 2000, 117
for Yemen and Brown 1997, 190 ff. for Egypt).
Legal services differ in quality; top lawyers are as
expensive as elsewhere, hampering access to high-
quality legal representation for everybody but the
well-off middle and upper classes.
In all Arab states, legal professionals are edu-
cated in universities. Judges usually receive between
one and three years’ postgraduate judicial training.
Curricula differ widely in respect to the amount and
depth of Islamic law teaching and specialization.
While women make up a large proportion of law
students, they are usually not well represented in
the legal profession; there are, however, no reliable
statistics. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
and the United Arab Emirates do not permit
women in the judiciary. Even in countries where
women enter the judiciary, they are a tiny minority.
The police is likewise an overwhelmingly male
domain; only very few Arab states employ women
officers and most of them work as warders in
women’s prisons.Cultural contexts and
constraints
While factors like corruption and inefficiency
affect men and women alike, women’s access to the
legal system is in addition hindered by other fac-