Gender in Post-Unification Yemen [Archives:2000/24/Reportage]

Dr. Margot Badran , the current senior Fulbright lecturer delivered a lecture on Wednesday, 7June at the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. The event was attended by some politicians, university professors, journalists, student of the demolished Empirical Research and Women Studies Center. The lecture was titled ” Gender: Meanings, Uses and Discourse in Post-Unification Yemen”. Dr. Badran focussed on the three kinds of dicussion- academic, governmental and political- as realms in which the concept of gender attracts diffrent and often contradictory meanings.
In the seminar, she examined the idea of gender and the various shapes that this idea has taken in recent discussions in Yemen.
At the beginning of her discussion, she dedicated her paper to the memory of some of the girls who were killed inside the gates of Sana’a University.
She observed that “there has been an enormous misunderstanding of the concept of gender in Yemen. Some emanates from genuine unfamiliarity with the terms and its meaning. Gender connotes the cultural construction of man and women or masculinity and femininity as distinct from the biological category of male and female or sex. Most simply put, sex is a biological category while gender is a cultural category. Gender is a an analytical tool enabling us to probe deeply in everyday practices as women and men within the context of our religion, culture and history. Some have not only simply misunderstood gender but have pervert its meaning and uses. Some have politicize gender.”
In her paper she identified three discourses of gender in Yemen today, examine the organs of gender as a new concept in an analytical tool in the west and Arab societies, look at the challenges concerning the gender terminology in Arabic, and finally discussed the contradictory of gender fate in Yemen.
She said “Explicit gender discourses are a phenomenon of post unification Yemen. There are three discourses of gender currently discernible in Yemen, which I called the state discourse, the academic discourse, and the demmonizing discourse. The state discourse is the discourse of development and democracy. It is a normative and applied discourse grounded on the fundamental law of the land. The second discourse of gender is the academic discourse which is of intellectual, scientific in core and analysis. The third discourse is the demonizing discourse which is a discourse of deceit and fabrication fanned on popular press on the street. It is a manipulative discourse playing on notions of endanger culture , horror of identity. Although, three discourses, gender discourses can be detected in Yemen today, they are not impermeable. Indeed, these three of gender intersect and depend on each other in a multitude of ways.
spring.
She also highlighted the problem of the ERWSC which was an important institution for discussing the question of gender in Yemen. She said” In short the center was an example of a mutually beneficial concerns of national development and academic work.” She also observed gender as a new analytical category and gender in Arabic.
After that debates and discussions from the audience were presented.

By Mohamed Al-Qadhi,
Managing Editor, Yemen Times

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