The fight for women's rights in the Middle East

Imagine if our jobs were determined by our ability to manage at home. If the loss of a piece of sports kit, failure to remember a playdate or to adequately clean our house resulted in our bosses telling us to go home and sort it out. The outrage is almost funny, no? Yet Egyptian campaigner Dalia Ziada says that this is actually being considered in the new world order of the post-revolutionary Egypt. Her comments caused a ripple of laughter at the opening session of the Women in the World summit organised by Tina Brown in New York last night but Ziada said, with something like understatement: "It's sort of funny but it's terrible too." Indeed. It may be marvellous that female campaigners and politicians are being given a voice in Egypt after years without one but the sorts of laws being considered also show the lack of understanding between the experience of western women and those fighting for their rights in the Middle East. Women from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran as well as Egypt all said one thing could help not only narrow that gap but also their own ability to act: the internet. A "space for unveiling the minds of Muslim women", the web is a place where "No one cares if I'm a man or a woman," says Ziada. "They only care for my mind." The web can also give us a greater understanding of a world in which Saudi women aren't allowed to drive and Iraqi women use the colour and style of their headcovering to state their political allegiance. It may also help clear up the sort of misunderstandings that lead to another astonishing statistic provided by Melinda Gates of the uber-rich foundation ($33bn endowment). When asked how much money the US provides in foreign aid, Americans in a poll two years ago said 25%. The truth is less than 1%, a lower percentage than most of Europe particularly the UK and Norway, she said. Announcing $1.5n to be spent on maternal and neonatal health in the developing world, Gates said. "When you go to the developing world … you say to yourself, I could have been born in this circumstance. There's no reason I was born in the United States and not one of these other places in the world." The atmosphere of the Hudson theatre is celebratory today as hundreds of women hear from Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Cherie Blair but if the economy and the internet are the two-pronged assault weapon to improve the lot of women in the Middle East, we have some way to go.