What kind of mothers subject their daughters to drudgery, deny them education and threaten them with early marriage and other human rights abuses? The answer, one family's story suggests, are women who've gone through just that themselves.

AMMAN, Jordan (WOMENSENEWS)--Fawzeya, a 70-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian woman living in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, raised her two daughters--now 53 and 47--with an iron hand.

The old Pakistani maulawi laid two currency bills on the table between us, one for 50 rupees, the other for 100 rupees. "Now tell me," Rahat Gul asked, "which is the more valuable?" I thought it was a trap – which it was, in a way – but he lost patience with me and seized the 100 rupee note. "Now come with me." And he stood up and led me down a narrow corridor into a small bedroom. There was a camp bed, a military radio and, at the far end, a giant British-made safe. He fiddled with the combination and hauled on the iron door. Then he placed the 100 rupee bill inside and locked the vault. "You see?" he said. "This is like a woman. She must be protected and looked after, because she is more precious than us."

Reader, this is no joke. This whole piece of entirely spontaneous theatre occurred several years ago in what was then called the North West Frontier Province. But I actually possess a videotape of the entire proceedings, in which you see me following the divine to his safe and hear him comparing the worth of the currency bill to the worth of a woman. I was supposed to be impressed by the high status which he accorded women. What struck me, of course, was that this high status appeared to accord women an exclusively economic value – she was a bank account – and that this might lie behind the whole misogynistic system which led us to the curse of "honour" crime.

Rights activists call for scrapping a law allowing early marriage for girls

There is no honour in ‘honour killing’

Majd Shafiq, 27 November 2009

Subjects: 16 Days: activism against gender violence

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