other dictator, Adìb al-Shìshaklì, awarded women
full suffrage in 1953.
After independence, women turned to leftist
movements to advocate for their reforms, but they
too were limited by religious opposition. In con-
trast to the segregated movements of nationalist
liberals, communist women like Amìna ≠ârif al-
Jarrà™attended meetings and public demonstra-
tions unveiled in the 1940s and 1950s. Maqbùla
Shalaq, a leader of the Communist Party’s women’s
wing, promoted women’s right to work against the
maternalist agendas of other parties and the domi-
nant Women’s Union (Thompson 2000, 241). But
even as many female students joined the commu-
nists, the party backpedaled on its commitment to
women’s equality. In response to directives of the
Soviet Comintern and to rival recruitment by
Islamic populists, party leaders openly opposed
reform of women’s personal status laws in 1939,
claiming that it would inflame sectarian divisions
and weaken working-class solidarity (Thompson
2000, 161). The Muslim Brotherhood advanced
a counter-revolutionary platform that rejected
Ottoman-era restrictions on religious law and
favored the status quo in women’s confinement to
the domestic sphere. The extent of women’s sup-
port for the Brotherhood remains unclear. While
some Islamist women campaigned against women
like Thurayà£àfiz, most urban women discarded
their veils after independence in 1946.
The emergent Ba≠th Party reasserted a commit-
ment to integrating women fully into public and
national life (Razzaz 1975, Jamàl al-Dìn and al-
Khùri 1976). Promoting an Arab socialism, the
party became an important political force in the
1950s. Some women, mostly university students,
also joined the party. The Ba≠thists took power in a
1963 coup and have ruled Syria since. The party
has explicitly promoted general social reforms,
especially in education, that aimed to raise women’s
status. It worked not just through the Women’s
Union, which was incorporated into the party
apparatus in 1968 as the General Federation of
Women, but also through its peasant, workers, and
youth organizations. These were corporatist enti-
ties designed as much to control constituent groups
as to mobilize them. Nonetheless, by 1990 the regime
had begun enforcing equal pay laws, had raised
women’s literacy significantly, and had appointed a
female minister. Thirteen women had served as
members of parliament (Shaaban 1988, 51, 56).
Women’s use of contraception rose, and the fertility
rate fell from 7.4 to 3.6 births per woman between
1980 and 2000. But in other areas women’s
syria 663progress was stalled. In 2000, women represented
little more than a quarter of the labor force and
their literacy rate had reached only 60 percent
(World Bank GenderStats).
Lack of social progress coincided with a lack of
legal and political reform. While the 1964 Syrian
constitution mirrored much of the party’s founding
constitution, it omitted the party’s earlier language
that had explicitly guaranteed women’s equality
with men. The 1964 document referred only to
educational, health, labor, and legal rights that
belong to “all citizens” (Abu Jaber 1966, 127, 170,
176–7). Only a few women, mainly party members,
advanced to higher positions in government and
the professions. And while all women enjoyed the
right to vote under the Ba≠th, elections had been
rendered empty exercises. Scholars and observers
blame the failure to improve women’s economic
status on the fact that the Syrian economy, stagnant
since 1980, could not absorb women into the
workforce. It also reflected state preferences for
male employment that date to the French era: upon
coming to power in 1970, President £àfiΩal-Asad
awarded family bonuses only to male employees
(Perthes 1995, 24–9).
The economic and political exclusion of women
also reflects continued pressure from religious
opposition. By the late 1970s an Islamic Front
emerged in the provinces to contest Asad’s hold on
power. The Front’s 1980 manifesto adopted the
language of gender equality that Syrians had been
using since Faysal’s day, but explicitly limited that
equality within bounds set by Islamic law on
women’s duty toward her home, husband, and chil-
dren (Abd-Allah 1983, 247–8). The Front also
explicitly advocated women’s veiling as a political
symbol of dissent (Abd-Allah 1983, 189). After
brutally defeating the Front in 1982, the Ba≠th trod
lightly on women’s issues. The General Federation
of Women shrank from advocating women’s rights
in conservative villages so as not to antagonize reli-
gious men (Hinnebusch 1990, 234, 250, 272). And
the regime promoted a patriarchal cult of £àfiΩ
al-Asad that demanded women’s sacrifice to their
father-leader and their nation (Wedeen 1999,
49–65). In the 1990s, many Syrian women took up
the veil again, as a visible sign of opposition to the
Ba≠th regime that had long proclaimed women’s lib-
eration as its goal. The taboo on personal status
reform since the Ottoman era reflects the ongoing
tension between revolutionaries and conservatives
who seek to retain the status quo of male privilege
and male guardianship over women.