By Ghadeer Ghloum

KUWAIT: Battling for women’s empowerment is an issue that occupied humanity for ages and continues to do so. The continuous efforts to support women show that it is still being resisted and even rejected by people. Women in Kuwait are no different – they have also fought to gain empowerment and receive equal rights. While some say that empowering women and giving them equal rights is a necessary human right, others claims that it is against religion and societal norms. Asma Al-Habib, who lives in Kuwait, shared her thoughts regarding social phobia from women’s empowerment with Kuwait Times.

Habib attributes society’s treatment of women to several factors: the hierarchy and economic system in Kuwait and other GCC countries, some religious beliefs and people’s upbringing. Segregation reinforces social phobia Habib said that individuals’ upbringing and ideology is mostly a result of their home and workplace environments and spending time on media platforms, which present the female gender in a certain manner that limits their capabilities and opportunities in life. This teaches both genders that females’ roles are limited a certain extent.

Hence, men and women in society grow with a mindset which doesn’t value women empowerment. There are other factors that contribute to creating a social phobia against empowering women, such as the norms and traditions that push towards dividing men and women from each other since a very young age. At school, they receive their education and start their lives in an environment that does not prepare both genders to work together. This makes it difficult for them to accept seeing women given similar opportunities and rights as men because they are not used to seeing each other treated equally.

Separating men and women from each other not only happens at schools, but also at many people’s homes as boys grow up playing around the neighborhood or going to the Diwaniya with their father away from girls, whereas girls grow up indoors learning how to do chores with their mother, also away from boys. Habib said that empowering women threatens social hierarchies because, nowadays, any girl is capable of studying almost any major she prefers and can make her own living.

This fills in the financial gap that distinguishes different social classes, making differences in socioeconomic status not as prominent as they used to be. Religion and women Many people claim that women empowerment shouldn’t be supported due to religious reasons. However, Habib objected and told Kuwait Times that religion — Islam, for instance — cannot be claimed as an excuse to justify limiting women’s lives and not giving them their equal rights. Like many other religions, Islam has different sects and these sects have different categories and several religious figures with different views and opinions. Therefore, making a generalization that Islam or any other religion is an obstacle for women empowerment is not reasonable.