This morning as I was battling on the exercise bike, I watched a brilliant programme on the French channel Arte about the feminst group ‘Ni Putes, Ni Soumises’ (not whores, nor submissives). Obviously as it was all in French I hardly understood any of it, but what did strike me was how elegant French feminists are. They wear lip gloss, nice clothes and have expensive hair cuts. In fact, they look just like most French women.

Maybe the days when feminists had obligatory hairy armpits and wore hideous sandals are over? Perhaps now that we (I use the term loosely) have made such great strides we can go back to looking like most women actually want to look, which is feminine and, well, beautiful?

In the book Persepolis that I blogged about a few weeks ago there is a brilliant cartoon where the author shows how ridiculous rules about how you look keep women from thinking about what is really important. So if you are worried abut being arrested because your scarf is not on the right way, or your abaya is too clingy, or your lip gloss too obvious, then you are unlikely to have the time to worry about your right to vote, or talk to a male or complain about the regime that is oppressing you.

So now that feminists can go back to high heels, waxed legs and mascara, will it give them less or more time to feminise? Is that even a word? Who knows, but at least I have time to think about it.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2011

It is astonishing to think that in the year 2009 a woman can receive 40 lashes from a whip-wielding police officer for any offence. It is even more astounding when you realise her “crime” was to wear a pair of trousers.

This is what may happen to the Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein who was arrested on July 3rd for wearing trousers, along with 13 other women in a cafe. Instead of submitting to a lesser amount of lashes straight away as some of the others did, she opted to stand trial for her crime. In addition she resigned from her job at the UN which would have afforded her immunity so she could challenge the ruling.

“This is not a case about me wearing pants.This is a case about annulling the article that addresses women’s dress code, under the title of indecent acts. This is my battle. This article is against the constitution and even against Islamic law itself,” she said.

I agree that a lot abuses of human rights are carried out under the auspices of religious law which is not, I imagine, how it was intended. Nowhere in the Koran does it say that women cannot wear trousers. It just says they should dress modestly. Some have interpreted this to mean they should be covered from head to foot.

I am living in a thankfully far more modern Islamic state than the Sudan, but even here the penalty under Sharia law for sex outside marriage is death by stoning. Death by stoning? Surely such a barbaric and base method of punishment has no place in any society, especially one that prides itself on tolerance and kindness, as Islamic society does?

Also today send a prayer, spare a thought, whatever it is you believe in, for Aung San Suu-Kyi, another female victim of a nonsense “crime” who welcomed an (uninvited) stranger into her house and now faces five years in prison. Her sentecing is today. How she manages to remain one of the most elegant, serene and beautiful women in the world is a miracle.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009

A couple of nights ago I sat next to a young man at a drinks party who had escaped from Iran aged 14 in the back of a van. This was in 1987. So while I was going to dinner parties at university and making vital decisions like what to wear, he was risking his life for a better future.

“Iran is nothing to me now,” he told me. “I am an American.” Interestingly he also told me that if he ever wanted to go back, he would have to adopt Iranian nationality. Iranians are not allowed to visit unless they are nationals. The reason for this? “So they can throw you in jail with impunity,” he said.

As I write a young student from the University of California is languishing in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Her alleged crime? A totally fabricated minor traffic offence. Her real crime? Investigating women’s rights in Iran for her university thesis. She is also a member of the Iranian women’s rights group Change for Equality (www.forequality.info/english/). Esha called her family the day after her arrest on October 15th but no one has heard anything since then.

Esha Momeni is Iranian/American. Her family, who live in Iran, were told that if there was no publicity surrounding her arrest she would be freed. This has not happened, so her desperate family have told the press about it. They must remember the case of the Canadian journalist raped and murdered there a few years ago and countless others who have never been seen again.

Evin is not a place you would want to end up. I have just finished reading an excellent book about it called Prisoner of Tehran which tells the story of a young student who escapes the firing squad by marrying her interrogator. But not before she is tortured to within an inch of her life. And all because she wanted to learn something at school and not just listen to rants about how marvellous Khomeni was.

If you do nothing else today then please spare a thought for Esha and sign this petition (www.PetitionOnline.com/EshaM/) or join Amnesty International and find out how you can help Esha and others like her.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

This morning a woman was shot on her way to work in Kabul by a fundamentalist who sped past her on a motorbike. Her crime? It could have been as mundane as being female and having a job. As it turned out she was a western aid worker whom they accused of spreading Christianity.

Yesterday I read on the BBC website the tragic case of a young girl (who looked uncannily like Olivia and was around the same age as her) who has been desperately saving up money to buy medical books and who’s most fervent desire is to continue studying so she can qualify as a doctor and “help my people”.

But her brothers and her father keep telling her girls don’t go to school; only boys do. I fear she will soon be forced to give up her studies. I feel like going there and adopting her.

Her story reminded me of a conversation I had with an Iranian film-maker at the Middle East International Film Festival which was held here last week. We talked about political prisoners and women’s rights.

“The worst goalers are the husbands, brothers and fathers,” he told me. “The opression from the state is nothing compared with them. There are thousands and thousands of women in prison in their own homes.”

This was not a man who could be described as liberal. When I suggested that maybe stoning people to death for adultery was a little old-fashioned and that we too used to do things like that in medieval times but have now moved on he said that while our law is secular, theirs is religious.

Oh, so that’s all right then…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008

I have just finished a book called Burned Alive by a woman called Souad. She was a teenager when her brother-in-law poured petrol over her head and set fire to her. Her crime was serious in “honour” killing terms among Palestinians; she was pregnant. But every year hundreds of women are murdered for just looking at a man, or sometimes doing nothing wrong at all.

In Saudi Arabia a couple of weeks ago a girl was stabbed to death by her father who caught her looking at a Christian website. I assume he is still walking free.

The beginning of Souad’s book is one of the most compelling I have ever read. She describes how she walks, quickly and with her eyes on the ground, so as not to risk anyone accusing her of illicit behaviour, such as eye contact with a man, which would lead to her being branded a charmuta (a whore) and certain death.

When she is in hospital a few months after the burning, rescued by a woman working for an organisation called SURGIR, she sees nurses talking openly to doctors. “I won’t be seeing them tomorrow,” she thinks to herself. On the West Bank, where she comes from, they would be killed for less.

It seems incredible that these medieval atrocities still go on. But they do. Souad is only a few years older than me. In Afghanistan today a woman dies in childbirth every 30 minutes and 80% are forced into marriage.

Souad describes the plight of women as worse than animals. She tells how her mother used to suffocate new-born girls. Now she feels revulsion at this, but at one stage she felt they were better off dead.

I think many things when I look at my lovely, free, happy, noisy, clever little girls. But after reading Burned Alive my most pressing thought was that I am happy they will never suffer the kind of opression many women all over the world suffer. And that they will never allow themselves to be treated worse than an animal. And that their life expectancy is more than 44 years (average for a woman in Afghanistan) and that life for them is a series of adventures and happy events, not just fear, terror, hunger, enforced ignorance and horror.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008