Today's Podcast Recommendation

American Public Media: Speaking of Faith

Muslim Women and Other Misunderstandings (December 7, 2006)

Regardless of what your thoughts and perceptions of Islam, Islam and women, or just women in general, I think this is a great discussion. Krista Tippett interviews Leila Ahmed about her experiences and thoughts about women and Islam. I enjoyed the entire podcast, but there was one part that really caught my ear because I’ve spent time in the past several years considering this aspect of women’s issues.

If you want to cut right to the most germane part of the discussion, it’s here:

(31:06) Definition of "Harem"

Meaning "women's quarters" in Arabic, a harem is the section of the house where women are only allowed to enter and men are not allowed  to enter.

Ahmed explains that the Western notion of “harem” has been eroticized by men who learned of the harem but were not allowed to enter. Not knowing what takes place inside the harem, they left it to their imaginations to fill in the gaps and thus we have a completely sexualized construct of what is fundamentally, the pre-nuclear structure of the family: groups of women living together and supporting one another in housekeeping and child-rearing. The reason I think of this as a women’s issue is that the creation of the modern nuclear family, each living in our own separate dwelling, has essentially served only to make life much more stressful for women as they are left to handle the duties of the household and children essentially on their own. Further, in addition to the shift toward homekeeping and child-rearing in a much more insular fashion, today’s women are often expected, and in many cases, required to have a career outside the home in order to keep up with financial and social pressures. When I think about the weight of all of that on today’s American woman, I wonder if we’ve really taken our nation’s culture of independence a step too far. And while I believe that this is one aspect of suburban life that offers a benefit that city living often does not, I still think that we’ve weakened and even broken some of the strongest bonds among women. Even living in a neighborhood where other women are nearby, there’s something divisive about the walls we erect that makes it much more difficult to reach out and ask for help when we need it. And I think this, in turn, continues to put pressure on women who are already struggling to do it all and do it well. I’m not a mother, and I may never become one. But I feel that we as a society, have removed some of the best support systems our mothers have and we’ve left them with a hollow shell of the kind of nurturing assistance the earlier societies held for women.