The status of women

Abstract

In the four Arab communities of this study the position of women varies considerably, both with regard to their influence in domestic and political affairs and in their social relationships with men. Islamic laws and traditions are frequently evoked to account for behaviour among Muslims, particularly behaviour between the sexes, and, since much scholarship on Arabs has until recently been drawn from literary sources, the weight given to the determining influence of Islamic culture has been considerable. Indeed, the uninformed impression in the West is still that all Arab women occupy a position of unmitigated servility: they are completely dominated by their men and kept out of sight most of the time, only to appear in public when they are completely veiled.