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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
The roles and status of women have been the subject of a great
deal of discussion and legal action in Libya, as they have in many
countries of the Middle East. Some observers suggested that the
regime made efforts on behalf of female emancipation because it
viewed women as an essential source of labor in an economy
chronically starved for workers. They also postulated that the
government was interested in expanding its political base, hoping
to curry favor by championing female rights. Since independence,
Libyan leaders have been committed to improving the condition of
women but within the framework of Arabic and Islamic values. For
this reason, the pace of change has been slow.
Nonetheless, by the 1980s relations within the family and
between the sexes, along with all other aspects of Libyan life, had
begun to show notable change. As the mass media popularized new
ideas, new perceptions and practices appeared. Foreign settlers and
foreign workers frequently embodied ideas and values distinctively
different from those traditional in the country. In particular, the
perceptions of Libyans in everyday contact with Europeans were
affected.
The continued and accelerating process of urbanization has
broken old kinship ties and association with ancestral rural
communities. At the same time, opportunities for upward social
movement have increased, and petroleum wealth and the development
plans of the revolutionary government have made many new kinds of
employment available--for the first time including jobs for women.
Especially among the educated young, a growing sense of
individualism has appeared. Many of these educated and increasingly
independent young people prefer to set up their own households at
marriage rather than live with their parents, and they view
polygyny with scorn. In addition, social security, free medical
care, education, and other appurtenances of the welfare state have
lessened the dependence of the aged on their children in village
communities and have almost eliminated it in the cities
(see Health and Welfare
, this ch.).
In the 1970s, female emancipation was in large measure a matter
of age. One observer generalized that city women under the age of
thirty-five had discarded the traditional veil and were quite
likely to wear Western-style clothing. Those between the ages of
thirty-five and forty-five were increasingly ready to consider such
a change, but women over the age of forty-five appeared reluctant
to give up the protection their veils and customary dress afforded.
A decade later, veiling was uncommon among urban women, as it had
always been in rural areas. Women were also increasingly seen
driving, shopping, or traveling without husbands or male
companions.
Since the early 1960s, Libyan women have had the right to vote
and to participate in political life. They could also own and
dispose of property independently of their husbands, but all of
these rights were exercised by only a few women before the 1969
revolution. Since then, the government has encouraged women to
participate in elections and national political institutions, but
in 1987 only one woman had advanced as far as the national cabinet,
as an assistant secretary for information and culture.
Women were also able to form their own associations, the first
of which dated to 1955 in Benghazi. In 1970 several feminist
organizations merged into the Women's General Union, which in 1977
became the Jamahiriya Women's Federation. Under Clause 5 of the
Constitutional Proclamation of December 11, 1969, women had already
been given equal status under the law with men. Subsequently, the
women's movement has been active in such fields as adult education
and hygiene. The movement has achieved only limited influence,
however, and its most active members have felt frustrated by their
inability to gain either direct or indirect political influence.
Women had also made great gains in employment outside the home,
the result of improved access to education and of increased
acceptance of female paid employment. Once again, the government
was the primary motivating force behind this phenomenon. For
example, the 1976-80 development plan called for employment of a
larger number of women "in those spheres which are suitable for
female labor," but the Libyan identification of what work was
suitable for women continued to be limited by tradition. According
to the 1973 census, the participation rate for women (the percent
of all women engaged in economic activity) was about 3 percent as
compared with 37 percent for men. The participation was somewhat
higher than the 2.7 percent registered in 1964, but it was
considerably lower than that in other Maghrib countries and in most
of the Middle Eastern Arab states.
In the 1980s, in spite of the gain registered by women during
the prior decade, females constituted only 7 percent of the
national labor force, according to one informed researcher. This
represented a 2-percent increase over a 20-year period. Another
source, however, considered these figures far too low. Reasoning
from 1973 census figures and making allowances for full- and part-
time, seasonal, paid, and unpaid employment, these researchers
argued convincingly that women formed more than 20 percent of the
total economically active Libyan population. For rural areas their
figure was 46 percent, far higher than official census numbers for
workers who in most cases were not only unpaid but not even
considered as employed.
Among nonagricultural women, those who were educated and
skilled were overwhelmingly employed as teachers. The next highest
category of educated and skilled women was nurses and those found
in the health-care field. Others areas that were open to women
included administrative and clerical work in banks, department
stores, and government offices, and domestic services. Women were
found in ever larger numbers as nurses and midwives, but even so,
Libyan health care facilities suffered from a chronic shortage of
staff.
By contrast, in clerical and secretarial jobs, the problem was
not a shortage of labor but a deep-seated cultural bias against the
intermingling of men and women in the workplace. During the 1970s,
the attraction of employment as domestics tended to decline, as
educated and ambitious women turned to more lucrative occupations.
To fill the gap, Libyan households sought to hire foreigners,
particularly Egyptians and Tunisians.
Light industry, especially cottage-style, was yet another
outlet for female labor, a direct result of Libya's labor shortage.
Despite these employment outlets and gains, female participation in
the work force of the 1980s remained small, and many so-called
"female jobs" were filled by foreign women. Also, in spite of
significant increases in female enrollments in the educational
system, including university level, few women were found, even as
technicians, in such traditionally male fields as medicine,
engineering, and law.
Nonurban women constituted a quite significant if largely
invisible proportion of the rural work force, as mentioned.
According to the 1973 census, there were only l4,000 economically
active women out of a total of 200,000 rural females older than age
10. In all likelihood, however, many women engaged in agricultural
or domestic tasks worked as unpaid members of family groups and
hence were not regarded as gainfully employed, accounting at least
in part for the low census count. Estimates of actual female rural
employment in the mid-1970s, paid and unpaid, ranged upward of
86,000, as compared with 96,000 men in the rural work force. In
addition to agriculture, both rural and nomadic women engaged in
the weaving of rugs and carpets, another sizable category of unpaid
and unreported labor.
Beginning in 1970, the revolutionary government passed a series
of laws regulating female employment. Equal pay for equal work and
qualifications became a fundamental precept. Other statutes
strictly regulated the hours and conditions of work. Working
mothers enjoyed a range of benefits designed to encourage them to
continue working even after marriage and childbirth, including cash
bonuses for the first child and free day-care centers. A woman
could retire at age fifty-five, and she was entitled to a pension
(see Health and Welfare
, this ch.). Recently, the regime has sought
to introduce women into the armed forces
(see Women in the Armed Forces
, ch. 5). In the early 1980s the so-called Nuns of the
Revolution were created as a special police force attached to
revolutionary committees. Then in 1984 a law mandating female
conscription that required all students in secondary schools and
above to participate in military training was passed. In addition,
young women were encouraged to attend female military academies,
the first of which was established in 1979. These proposals
originated with Qadhafi, who hoped that they would help create a
new image and role for the Libyan woman. Nonetheless, the concept
of female training in the martial arts encountered such widespread
opposition that meaningful compliance seemed unlikely.
The status of women was thus an issue that was very much alive.
There could be no doubt that the status of women had undergone a
remarkable transformation since the 1969 revolution, but cultural
norms were proving to be a powerful brake on the efforts of the
Qadhafi regime to force the pace of that transformation. And
despite the exertions and rhetoric of the government, men continued
to play the leading roles in family and society. As one observer
pointed out, political and social institutions were each pulling
women in opposite directions. In the late 1980s, the outcome of
that contest was by no means a foregone conclusion.
Data as of 1987
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