Women played a crucial role in overthrowing Gaddafi and yet the National Transitional Council has only one female in post
Chris Stephen and Irina Kalashnikova in Misrata, David Smith in Tripoli guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 September 2011 18.37 BST
Article history
A Libyan revolutionary woman. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP
They smuggled bullets in handbags, tended wounded fighters, cooked meals for frontline units, sold their jewellery to buy combat jeeps and sewed the flags that fly in liberated cities. But with the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi almost complete, many Libyan women are asking whether it's their revolution too.
This week Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the governing National Transitional Council, announced before cheering crowds in Tripoli's Martyrs' Square that "women will be ambassadors, women will be ministers".
To which the question from many women is – when?
The 43-member National Transition Council has one woman in post – the minister for women. Even this is a backward step: in May, with the war at its height, the NTC executive had two female members. There is no women's toilet at the NTC headquarters.
There seems little appetite among the NTC executive, drawn overwhelmingly from the socially conservative city of Benghazi, for this to change.
Yet the strain of war, in which men were needed at the front, saw taboos fall as women were needed for essential work. In hospitals, female nursing students who in the past were not allowed even on the wards worked alongside male colleagues to cope with the influx of casualties.
Women formed support groups for broken families in a country with no social services, and mass-produced battlefield meals for a rebel army that otherwise had no means of feeding itself. They also took to the streets, joining the daily protests and celebrations in city squares.
These volunteers hardly saw themselves fighting for feminism, but have morphed into political groups that seem destined to produce Libya's first generation of female activists.
At a recent gathering in Tripoli of the Coalition of February 17 – a reference to the date of the first uprising – around a third of the delegates were women. They gave speeches insisting that "we, as women, aspire to the same thing as our fellow men … women's role should not be limited to social or charity issues. It should be political as well."
The voices included a women's charity, Byte Mawada, which has run guns, helped refugees, set up field hospitals and collected money from Libyan women in Britain and France. Aisha Gadoor, 44, a psychologist who hid bullets in her handbag, said: "We bought arms from Gaddafi's security and army. An AK47 cost 4,000 dinars (£2,068), but we got a discount to 3,000 dinars. The ammo cost one dinar."
Gadoor, who has political ambitions, believes there is no turning back now. "Women's lives will be better because of the role we played. We will not allow ourselves to be sidelined. It's our revolution as well."
This optimism was echoed by Free Women of Misrata, which cooks meals for front line units. Manal, one of its members, said: "Gaddafi not only killed our people, he killed our dreams. We have more respect now. In the past men would not accept us. They thought we were weak creatures."
Manal, 29, declined to give her second name, fearing retribution against her brother trapped in Sirte. "In the past we were not expected to do such things. Now we want to demonstrate that we can do things men can do. We want to break old ideas about women."
Misrata's Shaheed Women, an organisation of the mothers, sisters and wives of dead soldiers, sold their gold jewellery in July to buy two military jeeps, complete with heavy weapons, for frontline units.
Shaheed Women organiser Naima Obeid said the coming together of women from previously isolated lives has been the female equivalent of the Facebook revolution that allowed Libya's men to co-ordinate their uprising: "Women come out of the houses, they meet each other, they talk to each other, they feel they are not alone."
At Misrata's art college female students have started a newspaper and political groups dedicated to encouraging women who get degrees to consider a career, rather than early marriage.
Women have a strong foundation, according to veteran activist Naeem Gheriany. "Women have made remarkable progress in recent years compared with men," he said. "Many men dropped out of school, whereas women stuck with it and went to university. We'll see the benefit over time."
But Hana al-Galal, education minister in an earlier NTC cabinet until she lost her job to a male colleague, warned: "We have very educated women, but for a long time they had a low profile, never wanted to be noticed.
"We are not as strong as we should be. We have to stop having this negativity inside us."
Libya remains a deeply traditional, male-dominated society that ranks 91st out of 102 countries for gender equality, according to a 2009 index published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Gaddafi's Green Book guaranteed some rights – a man was obliged to seek a first wife's permission before marrying a second – but delivered little to their day to day lives. The new constitution, whatever it says, is likely to be trumped by hardened cultural norms.
Those norms – at least outside Libya's more liberal capital, Tripoli – are enough to prevent a woman from going to the cinema or a cafe unaccompanied, swimming in a bikini or talking to a man other than a close relative.
Hannan Aderat, 25, a young Misratan painter who runs Basmat Al Horia (Free Fingerprints), which raises money for combat amputees, said: "My oldest brother, he is 31, when he saw me talking to a tuwar [revolutionary fighter] he started shouting at me.
"He is from the old age, still too close to old men and traditional thinking. We don't have freedom now – it's still a dream."
With Islamists vying for prominent roles in the new administration, many women see little chance of a cultural shift any time soon.
"The issue of [rights for] women in Libya is like ink and paper: it's not real," Aderat added. "It will take time for men to accept women judges, not for young men but for older people like my father. There will be change, but not for me. For my children maybe. Or maybe my grandchildren."
The months leading up to elections will provide clues as to what, if anything, has changed beneath the surface euphoria.
Asked if she could imagine a female president of Libya, Aya El-Badri, a 20-year-old oil engineering student, replied: "I don't think so. Men will be president. But have you ever heard of an American woman president?"
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