Teaching women Is it important? [Archives:2005/849/Reportage]

By Eshraq Al-Bodigi
For Yemen Times
[email protected]
Depending on the technologies and modern language of this age, we have no permition to ask such a question like this and we know that it's a shame to ask.What I mean to say is that the world completely finished discussing this case years ago and now studies the possibility of life in space, but here in Yemen and a number of Arab countries we are still fighting to make the people understand how much teaching is very necessary for all. If we comeback to the west world civilizations, we will observe immediately the differences between the way of life in e.g. Yemen and those countries. The way of life here does not mean the customs, traditions, heritage, cultures, but it means the consciousness of every thing. Those countries have good economic situations, healthy lives, and have excellent technology developments and knowledge; however we haven't reach any of them yet. As a matter of fact, we are facing a strong issue which is teaching women who are the essential part of the society. Some studies say that Yemen and Chad are coming to be in last position of teaching women's rate.

Far away from the other countries and societies, Yemen had another situation that put the community under a great pressure. It was the Imama period which separated Yemeni people from the world and deprived them from learning. Coming back to the women's rights of teaching, we notice that there was no educational level for women in the past like nowadays and that by virtue of the democratic government that was building the schools, institutions and universities in every part of Yemen. Besides that, Yemeni women are still suffering from the deprivation of teaching; the reasons of this tragedy are so deep because of the educational consciousness of the society itself.

If we take the rural areas in Yemen as an example, we can find so many causes that obstruct the girls to take their rights of learning or continue their teaching which is considered as one of their rights in life. These reasons are: poverty, rural works, separation of treatment between the girls and the boys by their parents or the underestimation of the women's role, religious strictness which is contrary to the Islamic tenets, the location of some schools in the rural areas make the mission hard for the girls to reach their schools, and the toilets of some schools which are not in a good condition to use and that could be another reason for the parents of these girls to stop them to continue their studies. In this point, we have to remember that in the few last years some of nongovernmental organizations and associations adopted a campaign to build toilets for men and women but it focused on women's toilets.

All the previous reasons prevent a large number of women in rural areas to teach, some of these reasons are together with more causes have deep roles in this case especially in the cities where you can find: early marriage, and fear of some men towards the women superiority in different scopes of life.

By the way, the negativaties which become a result of this tragedy are so horrible and concrete; most of the citizens of the society are suffering these problems without knowing.

To be a civilized society, we have to be more realistic and wise to benefit from the constructive aspects of this issue. Teaching women is necessary for a social structure such like ours, the progress of teaching women in Yemen will be like a rope in the well. I mean, it will be so effective for us to develop ourselves towards the real economic civilization and a perfect social structure.

I do believe the saying “Women are half of the society”, but from my point of view I think, there can be no progress at all without women, it means that there is no real progress in any country if it omits the role of women.
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