The struggle is still going on

March is the month of women, as on the 8th of this month, the world celebrates International Women’s Day and the Arab world celebrates Mother’s Day. Hence, there are many conferences and seminars that focus on women and their role in this month.
Recently, the May Chidiac Foundation held a conference in Beirut under the slogan “Women on the Front Lines” under the patronage of Mrs. Lama Salam, wife of Prime Minister Tammam Salam, in the presence of a group of figures and guests, most notably French media figure Claire Chadhal, former minister Ziad Baroud, former Egyptian minister and ambassador Moushira Khattab, Mrs. Fawzia Ben Fouda, second deputy speaker of the Tunisian parliament, and American media figure Jim Clancy, in addition to a group of women working in the banking and media sectors who are considered successful models in the labor markets and social issues.

In her opening speech, May Chidiac was a defender of women and reviewed the state of defeat that women have experienced throughout the ages and times, which unfortunately we are living again today in the twenty-first century. However, through the conference, she expressed her adherence to hope for salvation from the state in which we live.

As for the speech of Mrs. Lama Salam, it was distinctive and was interrupted several times with applause because even though she described the condition of women these days, and in light of the circumstances and wars that we are living, she provided the cure for the disease, which is upbringing. The sound upbringing that the family gives to its children from a young age is the only thing capable of ending the strange cases in our society, and this is true because the correct upbringing is capable of protecting our children from extremism, fanaticism, and ignorance and protecting them from the evil of terrorism and falling into it.

Minister Moushira Khattab spoke about the Egyptian experience and how Egyptian women were able to achieve many accomplishments on the political level. They were the main participants in the recent revolutionary movement, and Egyptian women exercised their democratic right in the elections. The percentage of women in the elections was very large, reaching twenty-four million female voters. She expressed by saying that the events we are experiencing today may be due to the marginalization of women’s role...

The tragedies that the Arab world is experiencing today may be that women are suffering the most, and the spring that we waited for the buds of freedom to blossom has produced pain and suffering, and all the gains that women have achieved in terms of their rights are threatened with loss in some places and have actually been lost in others, since Huda Shaarawi took to the streets in the face of the British occupation in 1919 in Egypt, calling for freedom for the leader Saad Zaghloul and women’s rights in terms of equality, education and voting, and women are in constant battles to obtain justice, in societies that are burdened by many male legacies.

If the citizen in our society is unable to obtain rights, justice, freedom, security and the most basic rights to a decent life, how will a woman achieve that in a country where talk of rights and justice has become a topic that many people are repelled by and flee away from because, in their view, they are outdated and repetitive concepts.

However, women will continue their struggle until they gain their full rights and break the barriers that stand in the way of achieving all their ambitions and dreams.