The Child Rights Law for the year 2022 sets back women’s
rights in Jordan to a new low, erasing decades of mothers’ involvement in their
children’s education, a role that is supposedly both traditional and
non-threatening to the country’s conservative factions.
اضافة اعلان
With the Senate’s recent endorsement of the law (to
go into effect once published in the Official Gazette), Jordanian women will
soon find themselves in a difficult spot as they acclimate to a new rule that,
strangely enough, throws a wrench into their ability to fulfill their
“stereotypical role” as mothers to underage children.
To describe this piece of legislation that is
supposed to be about social justice as absurd is an understatement. The
children’s act has somehow metamorphosed from an ambitious law that aims to
safeguard the best interests of minors into yet another weapon to disparage
women.
It is heart breaking to see that women are presented
with obstacles at every turn, even when they subscribe to society’s most
conventional of roles.
Just this year (in March), Parliament passed an
amended version of the Political Parties Law that gives women a 20 percent
stake in political parties. However, the very same Parliament has now voted for
an edict that strips mothers of their ability to contact their children’s
schools to check up on their progress, or to offer any opinions in regard to
their relationship with teachers and peers.
To put it differently, Jordan’s legal frameworks
vis-à-vis women are now officially bipolar. On the one hand, women will soon be
able to take up leadership roles in political parties and bask in the full
glory of democracy, but their voices will be legally unwelcome in matters
concerning their children’s education.
For reasons that include barefaced misogyny and an
unswerving attempt to belittle women, Article 17 of the child law gives the
right of democratic participation in school-related decisions to fathers and
legal male guardians, and not to both parents.
Traditionally, mothers are the ones who look after
everything related to little children, from cooking their food to helping them
with their homework. Carrying the massive responsibilities of motherhood, often
on their own while their husbands watch TV to unwind from a long day at work,
comes with a hint of authority, apparently an existential threat to the
patriarchs among us.
Naturally, mothers are in constant contact with
their children, and therefore with their immediate environments, including
school. The Child Rights Law strips women of this sliver of power and transfers
it to the parent with little to no clue about his children’s day-to-day life.
Not only will this disturb the natural order of
things, it will also give schools, both public and private, the legal excuse to
tell women they have no business asking about their children’s progress in the
classroom. The eligible person allowed to do so is the top male figure in the
family.
This blatant patriarchal rule was passed right under
the noses of 17 women in the Jordanian Parliament, who were directly involved
in the Lower House and Senate committees studying the bill.
Entrusted with “fixing” the bill, a joint Lower
House panel of 22 MPs, including 12 women, from the “legal” and “women and
family affairs” committees penned a series of amendments, before bringing the
draft law for a vote under the Dome, where it passed with minimal modification.
Last Tuesday, the Senate passed the Child Rights Law
with no changes whatsoever. Before bringing it to the floor for a vote, it was
reviewed by a joint panel of 18 senators, including five women, from the “legal”
and “women’s” committees.
Notably, the total number of females in the Lower
House is 16 out of 130 lawmakers, while women in the Upper House take up six
seats out of 65 (down from seven).
Ironically, the final version of the Child Rights Law, which has been accused of servicing “foreign agendas” by a conservative-leaning misinformation and disinformation campaign, has dealt a far more damaging blow to the nuclear family than any conspiratorial agenda.
As per the Constitution, laws in Jordan are referred
to Parliament by the Cabinet, whose version of Article 17 of the child rights
bill is considerably much tamer. It stipulates that educational institutions
have a commitment to empower children, their “parents” and caretakers by
facilitating their participation in decisions pertaining to school procedures
and children’s education.
Regrettably, the Lower House’s joint committee bowed
to pressure from the Iftaa’ Council to substitute the word “parents” with “legal guardian” (or “wali” in Arabic). Generally speaking, the title is
automatically bestowed upon fathers, and in case of their absence, the crown
goes to another man in the family, like the grandfather or the eldest adult
son, but never to women.
Educational reformists should think long and hard
about the damaging effects of such wording. It threatens to tie a mother’s
hands for the length of 12 to 14 years of her child’s formative and adolescent
stages, including kindergarten and high school. This could aggravate the tyrannical
dispositions of educational establishments, all the while encouraging them to
recycle demeaning views about women.
A child who at an early age realizes that his or her
mother is not allowed to interfere in his/her school life will never grow up to
respect women. Little girls and young women who dream to one day become mothers
will now have to adjust their day-dreaming to include a tinge of humiliation,
as they are denied access to their own children’s learning environments.
Women right’s activists have reacted to these
amendments, saying that this is yet another attempt by the conservatives and
right-wing Islamists to minimize women’s power within the nuclear family, and
that Article 17 sends out the subliminal message that women are unfit to bring
up their own children.
Last week, a group of women protested outside of
Parliament after launching a campaign under the slogan “Joint custody” to
reclaim the mother’s right to oversee her offspring’s student life.
Ironically, the final version of the Child Rights
Law, which has been accused of servicing “foreign agendas” by a
conservative-leaning misinformation and disinformation campaign, has dealt a
far more damaging blow to the nuclear family than any conspiratorial agenda.
It is one of those rare instances where a
conservative agenda looks eerily similar to an ultra-progressive one; it is
almost a paradox. Only hardline liberals with extreme progressive ideologies
would ever condone the dismantling of decades of traditional motherhood. While
their motives may include freeing women from the grip of conformist gender
roles, the conservatives’ goal appears to be more about robbing women of their
agency.
This is a sad day for women and a sadder day for
mothers. We should mourn the death of decency and the demise of justice in a
society that treats women with distrust and contempt under a mask of piety.
Ruba Saqr has reported on
the environment, worked in the public sector as a communications officer, and
served as managing editor of a business magazine, spokesperson for a
humanitarian INGO, and as head of a PR agency.
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