MENA: FAMILY, FAMILY LAW AND
SEXUALITY


By: Sakeena, Uzma, Humayrah and Vanesser

The term MENA is an acronym referring to the middle East and North Africa region. MENA covers an extensive region, extending from Morocco to Iran, Including all Middle Eastern countries.

Countries in MENA

• Algeria
• Egypt
• Iran
• Iraq
• Israel
• Morocco
• Saudi Arabia
• UAE

What is the Arab Spring?

• Revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both violent and nonviolent), riots and civil wars in the Arab world
• Began on December 18 2010
• While the wave of initial revolutions and protests had ended by mid-2012, some refer to the ongoing large scale conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa as a continuation of the Arab Spring

Causes of the Arab Spring

• Numerous factors have led to protests, which include issues such as dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights, violations,political corruption,economic decline, unemployment, and extreme poverty

What is family law?
Family law is an area of the law that deals with family matters and domestic relations,

including;

• marriage, civil union and domestic partnership.
• adoption
• child abuse and abduction
• divorce, child custody, visitation and child support

What is a Family?
In the context of human society, a family is a group of people affiliated by recognized birth, marriage or co-residence and or shared consumption.

FAMILY

• In most societies, the family is the principal institution for the socialization of children
• "Family" is used metaphorically to create more inclusive categories such as community, nation hood, global village humanism.
• All the descendants of a common ancestor

CONTND..

• Family is also an important economic unit studied in family economics
• members of the immediate family may include, singularly, or plurally, a spouse, parent, brother, sister, son and/or daughter.

Sexuality:
Sexuality may be experienced and expressed in a variety of ways, including through thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles and relationships.

Structural Functionalists on social change

• when economic development of MENA hit an economic stagnation, alot of families suffered.
• return of expatriate workers faced unemployment and poverty
• when society returns to equilibrium, tension is low and adaptation is high.

Conflict change theory

• is a Marxist-based social theory which argues that individuals and groups (social classes)
• wealthy vs. the poor

CONTD..

• the more powerful groups use their power in order to exploit groups with less power.
• Rule over them

Applying conflict theory

• Conflict theory suggests that men, as the dominant gender, subordinate women in order to maintain power and privilege in society
• Describe gender from the view of the conflict perpective

CONTD..

• men, like any other group with a power or wealth advantage in Conflict Theory, fought to maintain their control over resources (in this case, political and economic power)

Explanation of causes of the social change.

To make reforms of social institutions happen as well as to ensure their sustainability, women must obtain empowerment and become their own agents in handling their lives. In many societies and for various reasons men often take the decisions that concern the lives of women and the family.

Example;
FAMILY LAW REFORMS IN THE ARAB WORLD:

TUNISIA and MOROCCO

FACTORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE:

Endogenous; socio-economic development such as wealth, homogeneous population, increased literacy, modernizing women.
(pre-existing gender roles.)

Exogenous factors;
diffusion, contagion, international linkages, foreign intervention.(corruption, war)

reasons for social change

• family laws in MENA countries are mainly or solely based on the Sharia Law.
• A woman’s position as a dependent of her male guardian is used to justify her second-class citizenship.
• legal age of women to marry was 15 years and that of the couterpart was 18 years

reasons for social change

• women could only participate in any social activity with permission from a male guardian (eg acquire a passport)
• Muslim Family law is based on Patrilinealism

The first wave of reforms in Tunisia in the 1950s and the 2004 reforms in Morocco
transformed the legal construction of gender roles within the family

Social change in Tunisia

• Abolishment of polygamy(1956)
• 1993 women had the right to hold citizenship status

social change in Morocco (Mudawwana)

• In 2004 reforms, women were protected during divorce procedures and custody rights
• children could aquire nationality through matrilineage
• central element in modernization of religious institutions

Sexuality in MENA

Homosexuality is a crime in many of the Middle Eastern states and is punishable by death in Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iran

While homosexuality is contentious in many countries, in the Middle East it is the excuse for the arbitrary detention, arrest, torture, and deaths of hundreds of people. Whether because of politics, religion, or common cultural practices, homosexuals within the Middle East continue to fight for their lives and their right to love.

Roles and Rights of the Woman: Then and Now

Future Challenges and Impacts .

EDUCATION:
We all know a woman is the counterpart of the man and she is half of the society and she is the cultivator within the home.
“The mother is the school; if you prepare her, then you have prepared a generation of good.”

The future rights for women seems bleak in North Africa, particularly Egypt.

Before the Arab Spring in early 2011, Egypt had one of the better education rights for women in the Middle East. Half of all university students in Egypt were women and Egyptian women were as educated as Egyptian men.

FERTILITY:

The family is the basic unit of society in the MENA region and children play an important role in that social unit. Children are a source of joy, fulfillment, and old-age security for parents, and most young couples want to start a family soon after their marriage. Nevertheless, married couples do not always welcome the news of a pregnancy, especially after they already have their first child. The expense of raising another child, an infant’s demand for time and attention, the advanced age of the mother, health problems for the mother and fetus, and too many children of the same sex are among the reasons couples cite for wanting to delay or avoid the birth of another child.