Yousra Imran He still remembers the “culture shock” of arriving at Qatar. The British-Egyptian girl was just 14 when her family moved to the small Gulf emirate and, although she had grown up in a practicing Muslim household in her native London, nothing prepared her for the next 15 years of the life of her Being a woman was her sentence. “Suddenly everything that wasn’t a problem when we lived in the UK was a big inconvenience for my father,” he says. Although he no longer lives in Qatar, he continues to drink antidepressants to calm anxiety and panic attacks that started there. Now, from his British home, he thinks of all his Qatari friends that they will be relegated to the shadows while foreign women enjoy the best version of their country in the imminent world.
“Mi father became quite strict because he was influenced by the men he mixed with there in Qatar”, recalls Imran for this newspaper. “He was always controlling how I dressed: everything had to be long, very loose, and he told me how I had to wear the headscarf”, she says. His father, upon arriving in Qatar, was protected by the male guardianship system which gave him complete authority to control Yousra’s life. She herself, upon returning to the United Kingdom, told it in the autobiographical novel ‘Hijab and red lipstick’.
Like the rest of the women residing in Qatar, foreigners and Qataris, Yousra she needed the permission of her male guardian, in this case, his father, for absolutely everything. Without him, she could not marry, study, Travel abroadgain access to many government positions, or receive certain forms of reproductive health care. Until January 2020, he was also unable to drive. If she had had children, Yousra would not have been her tutor. It would be her husband and, in the event that he died and there was no other male in the family available to be her husband, the state would have power over them. Guardians can be parents, siblings, uncles or spouses once married.
male guardianship system
“Male guardianship reinforces the can and the control that men have about women’s lives and choices and can foster or fuel women’s violenceleaving women few viable options to escape abuse from their families and husbands,” she says. Rothna Begum in the report ‘“Everything I have to do is tied to a man”: Women and male guardianship rules in Qatar’ by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The male guardianship system is not a set of clear rules and articulated. HRW defines it as “a labyrinth of laws, policies and practices that require women to obtain the permission of a male guardian for certain activities”, if not all.
Therefore, Yousra’s life changed completely when she landed in Qatar. “Every aspect of my life, every one of my life decisions as a woman required the written permission of my male guardian,” she explains from the English countryside. There was not way to get out of the system. Along with her Qatari and Arab friends, she suffered the same surveillance. “Her parents and her siblings took advantage of this guardianship system to abuse women of his family, for restrict your movements to control all aspects of their lives, how they dress, who they talk to,” he says.
Sometimes I wonder if the things I witnessed and heard in Qatar were all a dream, but it was interesting that everything recalled in this documentary matches things I’ve witnessed and heard of myself during my time living there https://t.co/oAi4UOZqrM
– Yousra Samir Imran (@UNDERYOURABAYA) November 4, 2022
Women in Qatar are left to fend for themselves. The strict government control it does not allow society to organize itself in any way. “If you are a woman and, for example, you are feminist or speak openly about Qatari politics and oppose the system, you will be arrested, forcibly disappeared and imprisoned”, points out the writer. Besides, the absence of a law on domestic violence leaves them completely helpless. Those who dare to flee abuse may be returned to abusive families, detained or sent to mental hospitals.
Reforms in the neighboring country
When Saudi Arabia reformed its own male guardianship system, some women in Qatar tried to protest and demand that their authorities do the same. But, in just 24 hours, anonymous social media accounts that organized to ask for it were shut down. International NGOs such as HRW demand that the international community that puts the focus on Qatar and amplifies the voices of those few who have been able to run away and live to tell the tale.
#Qatar’s constitution says women are equal before the law, yet its male guardianship rules treat women as legal minors. Lack of transparency means women don’t often know what the rules are. See new @hrw report https://t.co/Ux7hi5PKnQ #WomensRightsQatar Thread ???? pic.twitter.com/0CCg0XN4Sn
— Rothna Begum (@Rothna_Begum) March 29, 2021
Surprisingly Qatar is in the 42nd place in the world ranking of gender inequality by the United Nations Development Program. This is due, in part, to the high educational levels of women in the country and their presence in ministries and diplomatic delegations. “However, in Qatar there is a lack of understanding of true female empowerment and female agency, as when a woman is unable to make a life decision independently, this not true female empowerment and shows that no rights for women”Imnar points out.
“Hypocrisy”
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Over the next few weeks, thousands of women will land in Qatar. The country will open the doors so that theynavigate with some ease while the local ones will continue to be subject to discriminatory practices. The Qataris in exile and humanitarian organizations want the World Cup to be a turning point for women’s rights, but the authorities have not even ruled. They have only puffed up their chests by boasting of the presence of female referees -foreigners- who will officiate matches in a major men’s tournament for the first time.
Yousra does not hesitate to call it “hypocrisy”. “Suddenly, every single thing they ban, every reason they arrest people, will be made exceptions for fans and foreigners, but they do not make the same exceptions for the local people”, he criticizes for EL PERIÓDICO. “But as soon as the World Cup is over, believe me, everything will go back to the way it was before”, he concludes. Little remains of that adolescent Yousra that the Qatari laws tried to annihilate. Now, from a safer place, she is one of the many women who have survived the country and are fighting to change it.