Arab Spring

Anti-government protestors have nicknamed the grey asphalt space in front of Sana'a University "Change Square." Demonstrators have been camping out there for several months, and among their ranks are a conspicuous number of women.

Women are well-represented, too, among protestors in the southern city of Taez, the second largest in Yemen. They are calling for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is in Saudi Arabia attempting to recover from injuries suffered in an assassination attempt this June, to step down.

"You see women even sleeping in the squares," says Amal Basha, the chairwoman of the human rights organization Sisters' Arab Forum for Human Rights (SAF). "I mean, for the first time, you can see women in their thousands, fully in black and they are shouting and screaming."

Basha herself eschews the Niqab, the traditional black veil in Yemen, wearing her hair open and dressing in jeans. She says women have particular reason to demonstrate in a country where levels of female illiteracy run as high as 80 percent.

Rates of mortality during childbirth and forced marriage are also appallingly high.

"Women in Yemen are the category that has suffered most from the system," Basha says.

Yet women may yet become the catalysts for change that could end the months-long political stalemate that has developed between Yemen's unpopular government and its divided opposition.

New leadership

The person who has become a rallying figure for the protest movement in the past months is Tawakul Karman, a 32-year-old mother of three.

Karman may wear a veil, but she is also a long-time activist for freedom of speech and human rights and the founder of the NGO Women Journalists Without Chains. For her there can be no reconciliation with President Saleh.

"We will put him and his regime on trial, because of the corruption, because they kill people," Karman proclaimed at a demonstration in Sanaa in June. "Of course Ali Abdullah Saleh will not go back to authority."

Women like Karman may be the exception in a conservative state like Yemen, but observers who follow the country aren't that surprised at the high female participation in the uprising.

"Before [women] became active in the protests, they were becoming more visible and more active in civil society," Dina El-Mamoun, a Yemen expert at Amnesty International, told Deutsche Welle. "And as such, the fact that they have now taken part in the protests is only sort of a natural extension to the fact that they are now more visible and more vocal."

Basha adds that women may be so prominent in the protest movements because the government didn't initially take them seriously.

"We have been bluffing the regime," Basha says. "We are women's organizations - they expect us to work for reproductive health, contraceptives… And it was really astonishing that women organizations had been working very hard on taboo issues that men cannot, because we are protected by society."

Long way to go

The female activist movement has been building for some time. 2006 saw the formation of the WATAN Coalition, a lobby group that promotes greater involvement of women in Yemeni politics.

Earlier this year, the group also published an open letter to the American people asking them to urge Washington to discontinue support for Saleh, long considered an ally in the US fight against terrorism.

But results take time. Thus far, only one female has been elected to Yemen's parliament. And it is unclear whether women's issues would enjoy any sort of priority, if Saleh were removed from power.

"What we have not seen is what the other political parties, for example, the opposition parties, what they are willing to do in relation to the women's situation," El-Mamoun says. "In addition to that, we don't know if there is going to be emerging political bodies and what their position will be in relation to women's rights."

In August, the Yemeni opposition elected a national transitional council, in which 11 of 143 members were women. It's a small example of progress and a sign of the bolstered status of women in Yemeni politics.

"Women operated in a male-dominated society that couldn't imagine them playing a political role," Yemeni sociologist Fouad As-Salahi told Deutsche Welle. "What's happening today, with women stepping forward in public to demonstrate and in the transitional council, is a positive development."

The United Nations drew up a roadmap for conflict resolution in July, but thus far Saleh has resisted such plans and has vowed to return to Yemen soon. That could either spark a civil war or unify the opposition and lead to a settlement.

What is clear is that protestors, male and female, at Change Square are not going anywhere else any time soon.

Author: Julia Hahn (jc)
Editor: Rob Mudge