In a scene from the play “The Poets and the Assassin,” a female character questions the treatment of her sisters in Iran, saying: “Because of one single apple, I am cursed for eternity. The Muslim fundamentalists punish my female offspring by forcing them to cover their bodies, their hair, and skin. To them modern women might cause the fall of men by baring their hair and skin. In their eyes, my hair is the apple and my curvy body the snake.”
Judging by the news — be it from the United States, Saudi Arabia, India, Afghanistan or Iran — it seems many men are on a warpath against women. These men are powerful and in charge. Some are conservative politicians, including a presidential candidate. Others are religious fundamentalists who claim to speak for God. Though across the world women face different barriers, difficulties and dangers, poverty and sexual violence are a common experience.
Here in the U.S., despite efforts by President Barack Obama and the fact women make up nearly half the workforce, women still earn less money — 78 cents in wages for every dollar men make. In Maine, women make 78.9 cents for each dollar a man earns. In Louisiana, for instance, an African-American woman makes less than two-thirds what a white non-Hispanic man makes — 64 cents for every dollar.
Such pay gaps, among other factors, cause poverty, to the extent that in 2014, one in seven women in the U.S., more than 18 million women, lived in poverty.
In Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by men who practice Wahhabism, an extreme and ultraconservative version of Islam, women are still denied their basic rights. They face gender discrimination and hardship on a daily basis. Ironically, in late February, an all-woman crew of the national airline of Brunei, a Muslim country, landed their Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to drive.
In India, which was ranked the fourth most dangerous country for women after Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan in a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll, government data show rape cases have jumped almost 875 percent over the past 40 years. Still worse, according to a 2011 study and despite an official ban on the practice, 300,000-600,000 female fetuses are aborted every year in India because boys are preferred.
Last year in Afghanistan, the 27-year-old Farkhunda was beaten to death by a mob in Kabul. She had been falsely accused of burning the Quran, when in reality she had challenged a mullah’s practice of making money selling scraps of paper with religious verses, promising spells.
In Iran, even though women now account for 14 of the 290 members of Iran’s parliament, an increase gained in the February 2016 election, a hard-liner member of parliament received national backlash by publicly stating, “women, donkeys and monkeys have no place in parliament.” Though the Iranian regime does allow women to play sports, such as soccer and volleyball, they are banned from watching them with men as players. Women in Iran confront serious discrimination on marriage, divorce and child custody.
Whether in the U.S., where every few minutes a woman is sexually assaulted, or in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where women risk being maimed by the men related to them or getting killed by U.S. drones, being born a woman can be a liability.
But there are small victories to remember: the elimination of stoning of women for adultery in Iran; the national outrage in India caused by gang rapes targeting women, which has forced the Indian government to change some of its laws in regard to sexual violence; or the recent wave of activism on U.S. college campuses to end rape, to name a few.
The play “The Poets and the Assassin” is scheduled for a performance on Thursday at the University of Maine to shine a spotlight on the rights of women in Muslim societies. For my part, sitting in the dark theater to join UMaine students and community members for the production of my play, I’ll mutter prayers for women fighting battles that easily could be ours, and against ignorance, institutional sexism, transnational terrorism and outdated cultural, traditional, tribal and religious practices.
I am hoping for a day when being born a female is no longer a curse.
Reza Jalali coordinates the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of “Moon Watchers,” “Homesick Mosque and Other Stories” and “The Poets and the Assassin,” a play about women in Iran and Islam. A free performance of “The Poets and the Assassin” will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in Minskey Recital Hall on the University of Maine campus in Orono.