Women’s role has been equally important to that of men, and meaningful in different ways. Their participation in the early days brought critical legitimacy and attention to opposition movements, and their ongoing activism has shone a spotlight not only on women’s rights, but also on issues of minority rights and religious freedom. In Libya, women sparked the first big protests against the regime when they demonstrated outside of Abu Salim prison in Benghazi. In Yemen, women have taken to the streets in unprecedented fashion, helping to broaden and sustain the opposition movement. In Egypt, they have protested and blogged alongside men, but also fought back against humiliations such as ‘virginity tests’ by the military and other targeted abuses by security forces.

2. Have the revolts of the Arab Spring improved the position of women’s rights in the region?

If the uprisings across the region yield more democratic, just, and transparent governments, women’s rights will certainly benefit. Dictatorships are not good for anyone’s rights. However, women cannot take for granted that their activism will translate into political influence or legal gains in the emerging systems. Indeed, newly empowered Islamist groups are calling for changes in women’s legal status that could roll back existing rights.

In Egypt, women have been excluded from important decision-making bodies, and fewer than ten women won seats in Egypt’s new parliament – less than 2 percent of the 498 seats. Shocking incidents such attacks on an International Women’s Day march, sexual assaults against female activists and journalists, and the brutal beating of a women in Tahrir Square have become markers for how deeply contested women’s public role in society continues to be. Women seem to be faring better in Tunisia, where they have long benefited from the most expansive legal rights in the region. Al Nahda, the leading Islamist party which swept the parliamentary elections with 41 percent of the vote, has said that it will not seek to change the country’s personal-status laws but instead will focus on practical economic issues. Thanks to electoral rules requiring favorable placement of women on party lists, women gained 23 percent of the seats in parliament, a higher share than in the U.S. Congress. In Libya, the situation for women is unclear, as liberals and conservative Islamists vie for influence. One of the first announcements from Libya’s National Transitional Council was that any laws that contradict Sharia would be annulled and going forward, polygamy would be legal. Libyan women expressed disappointment and wondered why, with all of Libya’s pressing issues, reinstating polygamy should be on the front burner. How they will fare in upcoming elections in June is unclear.

3. How can the women of the Arab Spring turn this activism into long-term/sustainable gain?

With the success of Islamists at the polls, women’s rights activists must find ways to deal effectively with the demands of these influential political groups. Some activists, men and women, are turning to Islamic texts and history to bolster the case for women’s rights, a potentially powerful tactic. How Sharia is reconciled with women’s rights, and more broadly human rights, will be an important determinant of how democracy and law evolve in these countries. Structural supports like quotas are another tactic to support women’s participation in the formal public sphere. Committed leadership at the top and recruiting men to the women’s rights agenda are also important for long term gains. Finally, reliable security and the rule of law is a crucial part of ensuring that women are able to participate in political and economic spheres in a meaningful way.

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Now that I’ve had a bit more time to peruse the full translation, I will note a few additional concerns:

- Voter Registration (Part 4, Article 5): voters must register to vote and get a voter card. This posed some difficulties in Tunisia and will likely pose logistical challenges in Libya, too.

- Procedures for Libyans abroad to vote (Part 5) have not been defined, although expats are allowed to vote. How/where their votes will be allocated remains to be seen.

- Restrictions on campaigning (Part 9, Article 35) seem a bit onerous: there is to be no campaigning in “places of worship, public and/or private educational institutions, public roads, and public and/or governmental buildings.” As one Libyan reader complained via email to me: “This leaves us, I suppose, the Rexus and Corenthia hotels to hold a campaign rally. A room that holds 200 people goes for about $3,500 for few hours. Even these may not be available since I believe they’re partly owned by the Government!”

Reactions from other readers echo my concerns about curbing women’s rights and excluding Libyans who have lived and worked abroad. Some worry that the law will favor those with money and organizational skills (although that is hard to legislate against anywhere—check out the U.S. presidential election). One reader from Libya, who has lived and worked in the West, complains about a “Salafi mindset within the NTC leadership responsible for appointing the drafting committee” and fears that they are “working behind the scenes to impose a sharia-based constitution, curb women’s rights and individual freedom, and exclude foreign-educated liberals whom they see as potential rivals.” Comments posted on Libya’s electoral commission’s Facebook page reiterate many of these themes: many people have posted requests that those holding dual nationalities not be excluded; men and women have asked that there be a larger quota for women; one person on the Facebook page bemoaned that too many experienced people will be excluded: “Simply any person with leadership or who has practical or political, social, or managerial experience either lived abroad and has another citizenship because of the long time that he lived there, or participated in a conference or in some committee, but wasn’t necessarily a member of a revolutionary committee… Most of these people participated in the revolution either with their money, their work, or their lives… how we can wrong them like this when we also lose so much by not benefitting from their experience?”

On a more positive note, the Economist Intelligence Unit predicts that Libya’s economy in 2012 will be the fastest growing of any, with GDP growth exceeding 20 percent this year as the country rebuilds. To sustain robust growth, the country needs to be able to attract and retain the large pool of foreign-educated Libyans who make up some of its most capable human capital. Let’s hope that whatever new government comes to power leads the country in a pragmatic direction.

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1) mHealth and mGovernance

Applying mobile phone technology to global health challenges has huge potential to improve health outcomes. In previous blogs I’ve given a few examples of how mHealth is making a difference: in remote areas of Afghanistan, health workers are getting training through SMS; in South Africa, Project Masiluleke sends text messages with important information about HIV; in South Asia pregnant women are receiving important maternal health information also via text messages. Here are few more instances: FrontlineSMS, a free online text messaging system that sends texts between groups of people and online mapping systems like Google Earth, allows health workers in Cambodia to report cases of malaria in real time. This has permitted the government to track outbreaks and allocate resources more effectively. Previously, it took up to a month for cases to be registered. On the horizon are handheld analyzers that would allow community health workers to diagnose the strain of malaria a patient has using just a drop of blood. A reliable and speedy diagnosis would save hundreds of thousands of lives by accelerating the timetable for effective treatment. MHealth is still in its infancy, but the potential is there for some transformative improvements to health care delivery in rural areas.

MGovernance is also an area to watch. Mobile phones are becoming a tool for governments to communicate information, build connections with citizens, and receive feedback, particularly in countries with little infrastructure. Mobile phones are already being used in crisis management, in health campaigns and to facilitate cash transfers to the poor. Their spread is allowing governments to reach citizens who were previously outside of service areas. More than this, mobile phones offer a potential counterweight to corruption and an aid in resource management. They also allow citizens to put pressure back on governments to follow through on development projects. In Tanzania, for example, citizens are using their phones to report broken water pumps and push the government to make repairs.

2) Agricultural Productivity

As competition for resources becomes more intense in the coming decades, dramatically increasing how efficiently we use available resources – in particularly, energy, food and water – will be a critical part of the solution to closing the gap between supply and demand. For example, as much as a third of food grown in Africa rots before it reaches consumers due to poor infrastructure. Moreover, less than 5 percent of agriculture in Africa is irrigated, and much of that irrigation is large-scale, with an efficiency rating of under 50 percent, versus small-scale irrigation with an efficiency of more like 80–85 percent. Introducing simple, affordable technologies in small-scale agriculture has tremendous benefits in terms of productivity, empowering women, and increasing food security. Another area of unfulfilled potential is genetically modified organisms. USAID administrator Rajiv Shah has advocated for greater innovation and leadership in exploring how genetically modified foods can be used to feed the world’s growing population. In the horn of Africa, poor governance and climate conditions have combined to create chronic food shortages and famines. Genetically modified crops such as drought resistant or drought tolerant crops can play a crucial role in combating food insecurity in water poor areas. As drought spreads to West Africa, innovations in this field will be another important trend to watch in 2012.

3) Establishing Identity

Registering minorities and women allows them better access to legal channels to claim their rights, whether that is to report a crime, dispute ownership of land or other property, or gain access to social services and education. Gaining state recognition is certainly the first step for the 12 million stateless people in the world, but it is also the first step to citizenship for billions of people in developing countries that have no official identity. India is leading the way with its Aadhaar program. This voluntary and free program aims to digitally register India’s 1.2 billion citizens. The system is expected to undermine corruption by allowing citizens to collect benefits, open a bank account, or buy a mobile phone anywhere in the country, rather than relying on local bureaucracy. Additionally, it will make workers mobile, allowing them to migrate to where jobs are located and keep their money in a bank account. Although the program is costly, and could allow the state to erode civil liberties, it has the potential to be a transformative step in poverty reduction. Other countries with millions of unregistered citizens, who in some places are disproportionately women, should watch closely.

Egypt stands to gain by in multiple ways by investing in its agricultural sector. First and foremost, given that agricultural laborers represent such a large portion of the working population, an increase in their real wages would stimulate economic growth. With 22 percent of the population living under the poverty line, equitable economic growth remains one of Egypt’s most pressing priorities. Secondly, Egypt continues to face food security issues. The portion of the population that is food-insecure relies on government fuel and food subsidies that are a persistent drag on the Egyptian economy. Interestingly, while poverty has, in fact, decreased in recent years, Egypt is unique in that rates of child malnutrition have actually risen at the same time. While the cause of this rise in child malnutrition requires further research, it reveals the extent to which Egypt is dogged by insufficient social services, especially in rural areas, which are both the poorest and the most reliant on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Beyond food security, Egyptian agriculture is failing to allocate its resources in efficient ways to be competitive in the global market. Farmers still focus on crops with low returns, or ones which consume large quantities of water, or both. Farmers also face poor access to credit, are reliant on out-of-date technology, and dependent on farm workers with low skills. There are some more modern farms emerging, ones that are focused on selling higher margin products like flowers, fruits and vegetables, with some for export. But in general, most farms are less than one-acre plots along the Nile that struggle to be competitive. Only rice, cotton, and sugar are regulated, which perhaps is a good thing since regulation seems to double-down on inefficiency. Take cotton, for example. Production of cotton is up 37 percent from last year because in December 2010, the government indicated that prices would be high. Growers responded by planting more acres of cotton. But in fact, cotton prices have tumbled, and now are 40–50 percent lower than expected. Growers are stock piling their harvests and waiting for prices to rise or for the government to intervene. Yet the government cannot, at this time, purchase the cotton without bank financing, which has been hard to attain. Moreover, Egypt is a member of the World Trade Organization, and is thus limited in the responses it can take to relieve growers.

To promote economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve food security, Egypt’s new government should make improving the agricultural sector a high priority.

The incident highlights the military’s brutal crackdown on protesters, when many in the country have wondered if the ongoing sit-ins at Tahrir and the cabinet building were more obstructionist than revolutionary. Nonetheless, the military’s response has rightly drawn criticism from around the world. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday, “This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people.” Today, Fayza Aboul Naga, Egypt’s minister of planning and international cooperation and a hold-over from the Mubarak era, slammed Secretary Clinton’s remarks, saying that Egyptian women did not need foreigners to demand their rights and that they are capable of defending themselves.

As I wrote here, women have struggled to find entry to decision making bodies in the new political climate, despite their significant and crucial participation in the transition. The outpouring of rage sparked by the devastating beating of the still anonymous young woman has prompted the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to apologize for the mistreatment of women protesters, and affirm their right to political participation.

However, their apology comes as little comfort to the victims. Azza Hillel Suleiman tried to come to the aid of the beaten women as can be seen later in the same footage. She approaches the beaten women, covers her body, and stands up to yell at the soldiers. Seconds later, they descend upon her, beating her savagely. Ms. Suleiman is still hospitalized. This video is graphic and disturbing.

Graphic videos of the beating, captured on phones and uploaded to YouTube and Facebook, have quickly proliferated. They show a limp woman being dragged by her arms along the street. Her abaya is ripped open, exposing her naked torso and blue bra. Security forces surround her, many wielding batons. As the beating progresses, the guards hit her and one even stomps on her. Photos of the man bringing his heavy boot down on her bare stomach made the front page of newspapers around the world.

In response, thousands of women — and men — marched Tuesday in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Observers say it was the largest demonstration of women in Egypt in decades. Not since 1919, when women mobilized under the leadership of feminist Hoda Sha’rawi in anti-colonial demonstrations against the British have so many Egyptian women taken to the streets. (After representing Egyptian women at the International Women Suffrage Alliance in Rome in 1923, Sha’rawi returned to Cairo and very publicly removed her veil.)

Women have played an important role in Egypt’s modern revolution but have struggled to translate their activism into a political role in the new, emerging system. They have been excluded from important decision-making bodies, and the military leadership declined to continue a Mubarak-era quota for women that ensured them at least 64 seats in parliament. Based on early election results, it appears that few women will win a place in the new government.

Nevertheless, one intrepid woman, Bothaina Kamel, is breaking ground with her candidacy for president. The campaign of Kamel, a well-known television presenter, at first was shocking, and certainly quixotic, with polls indicating her support is less than 1%. But her persistence has gained her credibility. While she has little chance of winning, she is helping to normalize the idea of women in politics — an idea that is deeply contested in Egyptian society. Leaders of Salafi parties, which gained a surprising 20% of the vote in the first rounds of elections, have spoken out against women running for office.

The recent women’s protest may breathe life into a movement that desperately needs new energy. In the early weeks of the revolution, women activists tried to bring attention to women’s issues but never succeeded in getting the masses behind them.

A women’s march in Tahrir Square to mark International Women’s Day on March 8 ended badly. Only a few hundred women showed up, and they were soon harassed by a mob of angry men who shouted at them to go home and warned that their demands for rights were against Islam.

Around the same time, the Egyptian military rounded up scores of women demonstrators, and in a show of raw intimidation, subjected many of them to “virginity tests.” Military leaders at first denied the accusations, and later defended their abuse by claiming the women “were not like your daughter or mine.”

In a remarkable show of courage, one of the victims, Samira Ibrahim, is pursuing a criminal case against the military for her ordeal. The only one of the 17 victims willing to take her case to court, Ibrahim is challenging not only the heavy-handed tactics of the military but also the social stigma associated with her issue.

The woman attacked by the military in the recent protests has declined to come forward, so for now she is only known as “blue bra girl.” But her mistreatment seems to be a galvanizing force. Thousands of people joined the march through Cairo on Tuesday, many of them taking to the streets for the first time in outrage. Organizers of the march used the hashtag #BlueBra on Twitter to encourage people to join them.

Some of the protesters held giant posters of the blue bra/flag icon. Others carried photographs of the beating. Men formed a cordon around the women, chanting “The women of Egypt are the red line.” Still, many Egyptians were not supportive.

Bloggers and tweeters offered negative comments on the blue bra girl — criticizing her for being out in public protesting in the first place and accusing her of being provocative for not wearing more clothes under her abaya.

It remains to be seen whether these new humiliations for Egyptian women will lead to significant changes. But given the country’s deep-seated patriarchy, women in Egypt should not take their rights for granted.

Across the region, though, Arab women are grumbling that overthrowing dictators is proving easier than overturning the pervasive supremacy of men. Gamila Ismail, a prominent Egyptian activist and politician, summed it up when she quit Egypt’s parliamentary race in disgust after learning that she would be put third on the list in her district — not a winning position. “We women had a very important role before, during, and after the revolution, and it does not work for us today, to accept this,” she complained in a television interview. (She ran and narrowly lost as an independent candidate.) In Tunisia, disgruntled women activists have formed the October 24 Front to defend women’s rights in the aftermath of the Islamists’ electoral victory there. “We want a constitution that respects women’s rights and doesn’t roll back the advances we’ve made,” said one Tunisian protester.

Arab women are embattled on multiple fronts. First and foremost are the deep-seated patriarchal customs that constrain women. Patriarchy is certainly not unique to Arab lands, but it runs deep. It doesn’t help that for decades, the women’s rights agenda was closely associated with the now-discredited authoritarian regimes: Egypt’s Suzanne Mubarak ran a state-affiliated women’s NGO; Leila Ben Ali, Tunisia’s much-hated hairdresser-cum-first lady, was president of the Arab Women Organization, an intergovernmental body sponsored by the Arab League; and both Syria’s Asma al-Assad and Jordan’s Queen Rania have been active on women’s issues. The rise of politically empowered Islamist parties that contest existing laws for women on religious grounds also pose serious complications for women. Although women’s activism has clearly been important to the Arab revolts, there is no guarantee that women’s rights activists will be able to turn their engagement into longer-term economic, social, and political gains. In fact, in some countries, there is reason for concern that women will see their rights erode.

Libya is a case in point. At the ceremony marking Libya’s official liberation in October, one of the first announcements from Mustafa Abdel Jalil, leader of Libya’s National Transitional Council, was that any laws that contradicted sharia would be annulled. He specifically mentioned that, going forward, polygamy would be legal, drawing cheers and celebratory gunfire from the mostly male crowd. Libyan women expressed surprise and disappointment and wondered why, with all of Libya’s pressing issues, reinstating polygamy should be on the front burner. (NATO leaders wondered the same.) Although polygamy was technically legal under Qaddafi, it was discouraged and today is not practiced widely in Libya, but that could change. Female university students, who largely describe themselves as pious, vow to fight this regression.

In Egypt, a number of developments over the past year underscore women’s rights as a flashpoint in society. The inspirational images of gender solidarity in Tahrir Square in the early days of the revolution quickly gave way to ugly episodes of targeted harassment. A hastily planned demonstration on March 8, International Women’s Day, attracted a few hundred women but was marred by angry men shoving the protesters and yelling at them to go home, saying their demands for rights are against Islam. Around the same time, the Egyptian military rounded up scores of women demonstrators and, in a show of raw intimidation, subjected many of them to “virginity tests.” On the political level, women have been excluded from major decision-making bodies since the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, and it appears that few, if any, will win seats in the ongoing parliamentary elections. Their low success rate was not helped by the military’s decision to eliminate a Mubarak-era quota ensuring women 64 seats. This was a setback for women’s political participation, even though the quota enjoyed little credibility because it had been used to reward Mubarak loyalists.

The strong showing of Islamists parties in the first round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections has women’s groups worried. The ultraconservative Salafi groups, which took a surprising 20 percent of the vote, openly question a modern role for women in society. One Salafi leader refused to appear on a political talk show on television until the female host put on a headscarf. Another denounced the military government’s requirement to include women on electoral lists as “evil,” though Emad Abdel-Ghafour, head of al-Nour, the leading Salafi party, stated that the party does accept women candidates. Yet the Salafi women who did run demurred from showing their pictures on campaign materials, instead replacing their faces with pictures of flowers; moreover, the party deliberately clustered them at the bottom of its lists, making them unlikely to win seats. One Salafi sheikh recently issued an opinion that women should not wear high-heeled shoes in public. Along with Salafi statements of intent to ban alcohol and limit beach tourism, these swipes at women unnerve liberals.

Yet liberals have not been stalwarts of women’s rights in Egypt either. The 2000 decision to grant women the right to no-fault divorce (prior to this, they had to jump over the onerous legal hurdle of proving abuse or abandonment) was denounced not only by Islamist groups but by secular ones too — for undermining the family. Other changes to the personal-status laws in the past decade that have benefited women, particularly an expansion of custody rights, are coming under increasing attack. Critics discredit the reforms by derisively calling them “Suzanne’s Laws,” after Suzanne Mubarak. They claim the laws were intended to accommodate the wealthy friends of the former first lady, and they blame those statutes for a rise in the country’s divorce rate. Given the criticism of these laws from all sides of the political spectrum, it is likely that they will be amended by the new parliament, and not to women’s benefit.

Women seem to be faring better in Tunisia. Liberals and secularists have been deeply wary of the rise of al-Nahda, the country’s leading Islamist party, warning that it could mean a reversal of women’s rights. Since the 1950s, Tunisian women have enjoyed the most expansive legal rights in the region, including relatively progressive marriage and divorce laws and access to birth control and abortion. Since returning to Tunisia in the beginning of this year, Rached Ghannouchi, al-Nahda’s leader, has strived to convince Tunisians that his party will not seek to change the country’s personal-status laws. Some, however, have accused al-Nahda of obfuscating its real intentions behind moderate rhetoric — a charge that did not prevent the party from surging to victory with 41 percent of the vote in October’s election. Thanks to electoral rules requiring favorable placement of women on party lists, women gained 23 percent of the seats in parliament, a higher share than in the U.S. Congress. Most of the women are from al-Nahda and will likely reflect their party’s traditional views on women, but their participation in such large numbers at least normalizes an active political role for women. Moreover, Ghannouchi and other al-Nahda leaders so far have been purposefully focused on efforts to jump-start the economy, produce jobs, and reassure foreign investors. Al-Nahda has forged a coalition with liberal parties, and to maintain that coalition, it will have to continue to focus on the economy and human rights rather than getting bogged down in divisive culture wars.

Ghannouchi seems to understand that while rolling back gains for women can score points among Islamic conservatives, ultimately al-Nahda will win or lose on economic grounds, and women are important economic actors. With high rates of literacy and relatively low fertility, women constitute nearly a third of Tunisia’s workforce. Economic reality simply demands a pragmatic approach toward women. Let’s hope that Ghannouchi can get that message through to his Islamist brothers across the region. Otherwise, Arab women might soon be channeling their Iranian sisters, who have complained that Iran’s Islamic Revolution has brought them little but poverty and polygamy.