Syrian Women Reflect on Rare Political Victory | Womens eNews

Syrian Women Reflect on Rare Political Victory Womens eNews

DAMASCUS, Syria (WOMENSENEWS)--A year ago, this country was on the brink of
passing a revision of the personal status law that some feared would be the most devastating blow to women's rights in Syrian modern history.
"The only rights a woman (would have had) under this law is to food and shelter from her husband," Rodaina Haidar, a member of Syria Women's Observatory, a women's rights watchdog group based in Damascus, said in an interview in 2009, shortly after the bill stalled. "Like an animal, she needs her husband's permission to leave the house. If she wants to work, he can divorce her. He must even give her permission to visit her family under the proposed law."

But in an unusual show of organizational strength, women's rights groups here managed to turn it back.
A 99-page draft version of the law--marked urgent--began popping up in the e-mails of nongovernmental advocacy groups and women's rights activists all over Damascus.
Some of the opposition gathered strength online. A petition on Facebook, which is officially banned in Syria, garnered over 3,000 signatures. News of the opposition made it into dozens of newspapers, Web sites and radio stations throughout the Arab world.
By mid-July of 2009, the Ministry of Information announced that the law would be handed over to the Ministry of Justice, which put the revision on the shelf. No further efforts to revise the laws have been made since then.