Algeria: Patriarchal May Soon Be a Thing of the Past

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/world/africa/26algeria.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women


By MICHAEL SLACKMAN


New York Times


May 26, 2007


ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.


Women make up 70 percent of Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.


In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.


Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.


“If such a trend continues,” said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd, a magazine of social criticism and analysis, “we will see a new phenomenon where our public administration will also be controlled by women.”


The change seems to have sneaked up on Algerians, who for years have focused more on the struggle between a governing party trying to stay in power and Islamists trying to take that power. Those who study the region say they are taken aback by the data but suggest that an explanation may lie in the educational system and the labor market.


University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.


But for women, he added, university studies get them out of the house and allow them to position themselves better in society. “The dividend may be social rather than in terms of career,” he said.


This generation of Algerian women has navigated a path between the secular state and the pull of extremist Islam, the two poles of the national crisis of recent years.


The women are more religious than previous generations, and more modern, sociologists here said. Women cover their heads and drape their bodies with traditional Islamic coverings. They pray. They go to the mosque — and they work, often alongside men, once considered taboo.


Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.


“They never criticize me, especially when they see I am wearing the hijab,” said Denni Fatiha, 44, the first woman to drive a large city bus through the narrow, winding roads of Algiers.


The impact has been far-reaching and profound.


In some neighborhoods, for example, birthrates appear to have fallen and class sizes in elementary schools have dropped by nearly half. It appears that women are delaying marriage to complete their studies, though delayed marriage is also a function of high unemployment. In the past, women typically married at 17 or 18 but now marry on average at 29, sociologists said.


And when they marry, it is often to men who are far less educated, creating an awkward social reality for many women.


Khalida Rahman is a lawyer. She is 33 and has been married to a night watchman for five months. Her husband was a friend of her brothers who showed up one day and proposed. She immediately said yes, she recalled.


She describes her life now this way: “Whenever I leave him it is just as if I am a man. But when I get home I become a woman.”


Fatima Oussedik, a sociologist, said, “We in the ’60s, we were progressive, but we did not achieve what is being achieved by this generation today.” Ms. Oussedik, who works for the Research Center for Applied Economics and Development in Algiers, does not wear the hijab and prefers to speak in French.


Researchers here say the change is not driven by demographics; women make up only a bit more than half of the population. They said it is driven by desire and opportunity.


Algeria’s young men reject school and try to earn money as traders in the informal sector, selling goods on the street, or they focus their efforts on leaving the country or just hanging out. There is a whole class of young men referred to as hittistes — the word is a combination of French and Arabic for people who hold up walls.


Increasingly, the people here have lost faith in their government, which draws its legitimacy from a revolution now more than five decades old, many political and social analysts said. In recent parliamentary elections, turnout was low and there were 970,000 protest votes — cast by people who intentionally destroyed their ballots — nearly as many as the 1.3 million votes cast in support of the governing party.


There are regular protests, and riots, all over the country, with people complaining about corruption, lack of services and economic disparities. There are violent attacks, too: bombings aimed at the police, officials and foreigners. A triple suicide bombing on April 11 against the prime minister’s office and the police left more than 30 people dead.


In that context, women may have emerged as Algeria’s most potent force for social change, with their presence in the bureaucracy and on the street having a potentially moderating and modernizing influence on society, sociologists said.


“Women, and the women’s movement, could be leading us to modernity,” said Abdel Nasser Djabi, a professor of sociology at the University of Algiers.


Not everyone is happy with those dynamics. Some political and social analysts say the recent resurgence in radical Islamist activity, including bombings, is driven partly by a desire to slow the social change the country is experiencing, especially regarding women’s role in society.


Others complain that the growing participation of women in society is a direct violation of the faith.“I am against this,” said Esmail Ben Ibrahim, an imam at a neighborhood mosque near the center of the city. “It is all wrong from a religious point of view. Society has embarked on the wrong path.”


The quest for identity is a constant undercurrent in much of the Middle East. But it is arguably the most complicated question in Algeria, a nation whose borders were drawn by France and whose people speak Berber, Arabic and French.


After a bitter experience with French occupation and a seven-year revolutionary war that brought independence in 1962 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the leaders here chose to adopt Islam and Arab identity as the force to unify the country. Arabic replaced French as the language of education, and the French secular curriculum was replaced with a curriculum heavy on religion.


At the same time, girls were encouraged to go to school


Now, more than four decades later, Algeria’s youth — 70 percent of the population is under 30, researchers said — have grown up with Arabic and an orientation toward Middle Eastern issues. Arabic-language television networks like Al Jazeera have become the popular reference point, more so than French television, observers here said.


In the 1990s radical Islamist ideas gained popular support, and terrorism was widely accepted as a means to win power. More than 100,000 people died in years of civil conflict. Today most people say the experience has forced them to reject the most radical ideas.


So although Algerians are more religious now than they were during the bloody 1990s, they are more likely to embrace modernity — a partial explanation for the emergence of women as a societal force, some analysts said.


That is not the case in more rural mountainous areas, where women continue to live by the code of tradition. But for the time being, most people say that for now the community’s collective consciousness is simply too raw from the years of civil war for Islamist terrorists or radical Islamic ideas to gain popular support.


There is a sense that the new room given to women may at least partly be a reflection of that general feeling. The population has largely rejected the most radical interpretation of Islam and has begun to return to the more North African, almost mystical, interpretation of the faith, sociologists and religious leaders said.


Whatever the underlying reason, women in the streets of the city are brimming with enthusiasm.“I don’t think any of this contradicts Islam,” said Wahiba Nabti, 36, as she walked through the center of the city one day recently. “On the contrary, Islam gives freedom to work. Anyway, it is between you and God.”


Ms. Nabti wore a black scarf covering her head and a long black gown that hid the shape of her body. “I hope one day I can drive a crane, so I can really be financially independent,” she said.
“You cannot always rely on a man.”

Women Benefit From Microcredit Lending as Do Small Lenders: Big Payback

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/economy/microcredit.html


Microcredit lending: Small loans; big payback


CBS News (Nov. 10, 2006)


While not a strict requirement, the reality is that most of the loan programs are targeted to women. The Microcredit Summit Campaign says it's found that women are more likely to repay their loans in full and are more likely to use the money to improve their families' lives. They are, in the words of the Grameen Bank, "the best poverty fighters."


...A 2005 progress report noted that more than 66 million poor families had been helped as of the end of 2004, representing more than 330 million people. The summit campaign believes the 100-million goal will be reached by the end of 2006 or 2007.


Microcredit lending is now carried out by more than 3,200 organizations in dozens of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The longest-running microlending enterprise — that of Grameen Bank — has loaned $6 billion US to 6.6 million borrowers in more than 71,000 Bangladeshi villages since 1976 (96 per cent of the clients are women).


... What is microcredit?

The Microcredit Summit of 1997 defined microcredit as any program that extends small loans to very poor people for self-employment projects that generate income. Definitions of what constitutes a "small loan" may vary from one country to the next, but many of the loans are as small as the equivalent of $30. Most loans are under $200.

A typical loan might see a woman borrow $50 to buy chickens. The chickens would produce eggs and, eventually, more chickens — all of which she could sell in the marketplace. Every week, she and other local loan recipients will gather to make loan payments — tiny weekly installments that makes repayment much easier for the borrower. The clients also share success stories. Peer support is an integral part of the microfinance system. The loan will be fully repaid in six to 12 months and the money will then be re-lent to someone else in the community.

The loans are usually fronted by non-profit groups that are typically owned by the borrowers themselves. One becomes an owner simply by borrowing. The loans granted by microfinance institutions (MFIs) usually carry an annual interest rate of 15 to 35 per cent (although some loans are interest-free). That may seem high to Western borrowers, but it reflects the high costs they face in running their programs and meeting every week with their clients in the clients' home villages. For most of the borrowers, the only alternative to a microloan is the local moneylender and interest rates that can quadruple the cost of a loan in just one year.

MFIs also don't just loan money. They also offer entrepreneurship and life-skills training, such as literacy and nutrition counselling.

...What are the lending criteria?

The typical recipient of a microloan is very poor. They struggle to survive every day, often living on less than the equivalent of $1 US a day.

Unlike other types of loans, microcredit loans never require collateral. Being desperately poor is all it takes to qualify. Formal contracts are usually not drawn up. The loans are based on the premise that credit is a human right and that everyone has skills that can be harnessed. Even beggars can get loans.

"Conventional banks look at what has already been acquired by a person," Yunus wrote. "Grameen looks at the potential that is waiting to be unleashed."

Micro-Loans Alleviate the Pressure to Emigrate

http://www.limitstogrowth.org/WEB-text/alleviating-pressure.html


Alleviating the Pressure to Emigrate: Microloans Help the Poor in their Home Countries


By Brenda Walker


Limits to Growth


While much of the liberal establishment regards immigration as an excellent example of its noble missionary work, the efficacy of immigration as rescue is limited. Like much about the issue, it boils down to basic numbers. Simply put, there are entirely too many poor people on earth to be rescued by immigration to the United States. Do-gooders should study better ways to help the poor where they live, since those billions cannot all come here.


One important answer already exists and has had the kinks worked out through years of trial and error in many small communities throughout the Third World. Microloans have been shown to be an effective way to improve the living standard of the poor where they live. This approach for aiding the world's poor is clearly superior to the rescue fantasy underlying liberal support for current immigration policy. Microlending is inexpensive and it works.


Microloans are very small loans made to women so that they can start their own businesses. It was started by an economics professor, Muhammed Yunus, who believed that the poor needed credit, not charity. Starting in 1976, Yunus created the Grameen Bank and secured donations to fund its lending programs. (Grameen is a Bangladeshi word that means rural.) Today the bank is self-supporting from the interest paid on its loans to the poor. Repayment rates are very high because Grameen has learned how to structure its program for maximum success.


Microloans are aimed at women, since across most cultures women consistently deal more responsibly with the loans than men. An individual woman might buy a sewing machine or a loom, or perhaps a simple handcart to start a delivery business. Although the money is loaned to individual women, every loan must be repaid in order for others in the local group to get any additional loans. In addition, there is a social contract to which every participant must agree. Among other things, members pledge to drink only safe water, limit the size of their families, educate their children, grow vegetables and refuse any participation in dowry customs (which are the source of much violence against women).


This is a prescription that should be welcomed by all political persuasions. Conservatives appreciate that microloans take little or no government involvement and become self-supporting in a very short time. Feminists like the “women's empowerment” in cultures where women have been subjugated by customs like purdah for centuries. In running their own small enterprises, the women gain more standing in the home and community.


For environmentalists, the emphasis on small, sustainable development is a welcome change from the large, often ecologically destructive engineering projects that the World Bank has promoted. In addition, the organizational structure promotes democratic involvement in the village. Women involved in microloans often vote in higher numbers and run for public office themselves. In countries like Bangladesh, this civic involvement is a far cry from the lives of their mothers, who may never have left their home compounds in their lifetimes.


It is also notable that the basic strategy carries over across cultural differences. A Grameen newsletter article announced the successful launch of a microloan program in Sonora Mexico in March 2000. Another branch has been started in Chiapas. The initial reports are very positive, showing that Mexicans do not need to relocate en masse to the U.S. in order to attain a better life. Now will someone tell Mexican President Fox that an open border is not necessary? Of course, Mr. Fox has a more complicated agenda than merely improving the lives of poor Mexicans, which is a minor sidebar to his globalist goals.


In his book, “Banker to the Poor,” microloan creator Yunus makes an astounding statement (pg. 221), “In Bangladesh, there is no reason why people should remain poor.” If the poster country for poverty is seen as a likely candidate for successful self-help, then any country can be.


The remarkable success of the Grameen Bank shows that appropriate self-help programs for the people of impoverished countries can effectively lessen Third World poverty. The poor do not need to be rescued by means of immigration to the United States in a paternalistic display of American elitism.