(^412) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
on the male-female divider. Halim Barakat, Arab sociologist and nov
elist, while acknowledging the subordinate status of women, tells us
that "change toward the emancipation of women must [will] begin by
transforming the prevailing socioeconomic structures to eliminate all
forms of exploitation and domination."^28 (If that's what it takes, we're
talking about the millennium.) Nor would I rest too much hope on the
right to vote: for Arab politicians, especially the more conservative,
the women's vote is a useful electoral card. The vote, yes; power, no.
Arab Muslim men, it seems to me, have been largely unmoved by
these small innovations and pockets of resistance. For one thing, the
lessons are blurred by the readiness of many (most?) women to accept
and defend the old ways. For another, gender privileges will not be
taken; they must be surrendered. It is male opinion and behavior that
matter (the men run the show), and their quasi-unanimous sense of su
periority is litde affected by occasional feminist challenges. The men will
not be converted or intimidated by rniniskirts in Beirut, only scandalized
and confirmed in their sense of women's dire, demonic corporality.t
The economic implications of gender discrimination are most serious.
To deny women is to deprive a country of labor and talent, * but—even
worse—to undermine the drive to achievement of boys and men} One
- Cf. a mini-review ( TLS,1 Oct. 1993, p. 28) of a book by Arlene E. MacLeod, Work
ing Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo (New York: Columbia, 1993),
which argues that veiling is both symbolism and the resolution of a double dilemma:
it protests loss of identity and status and "signals women's acceptance and acquiescence
to a view of women as sexually suspect and naturally suited only to the home." So we
have resistance cum acquiescence—an "accommodating protest." If such double-think
and double-talk are true—and they may be—abandon all hope, ye women of Cairo.
t Nor will they be cowed by feminist political agitation in other, more liberal Mus
lim lands. On the effort to redefine Islam in this regard, see Barbara Crossette, "Mus
lim Women's Movement Is Gaining Strength," NT. Times, 12 May 1996, p. A-3. On
contrasts within Islam, see Ash Devare, "For Indonesian Families, Smaller Is Now
Better," Boston Globe, 23 June 1996, p. 69.
**Not everyone would agree. In a letter to The New Tork Times of 26 July 1995,
William J. Parente, who signs as professor of political science in the University of
Scranton, argues against the "liberation of women" in Arab countries because they
"would flood Arab labor markets and further depress wages." - The demographic consequences are also serious. The ability of women to earn
money in the workplace is critical to their status within the household and their say in
family planning. It is negatively correlated, for example, with reproduction. Cf. Das-
gupta, "Population Problem." It is no accident that a decision by a Muslim wife (often
a woman of non-Muslim origin) to go to work outside the home (or even to leave the
home without the husband's consent) is perceived as a threat to marital harmony and
to the dignity and honor of the husband, and is treated accordingly. Cf. Goodwin,
Price of Honor, passim; Barakat, Arab World, p. 101.