How do citizens of Arab countries perceive women’s rights and their role in society?

In 2020, the Arab world is still suffering under the weight of many legacy concepts that the revolutions of the Arab Spring and all the political, social and security earthquakes that have rocked the region over the past ten years have not been able to. to change or even provide a great openness towards them.

Although uneven progress is being made with regard to some rights and roles of women in society, such as the right to education, to work and to political office, petrification remains a weapon raised against other rights such as heritage, travel and decision-making within families. .

In the results published by the Arab Barometer Project for the year 2018-2019, the differences in the perception of rights were evident, for example, while the majority of those who participated in the study support women’s right to divorce. , they themselves see that husbands are the ones who should have the final decision in family matters.

What is remarkable is that women themselves are not opposed to this trend, where a percentage of up to half and sometimes even exceeding it is perceived in some countries as the final decision of the husband lies in the abandonment of the right to independence of decision-making.

Women’s travel alone remains one of the most prominent indicators of restrictions on women’s freedom in the Arab world. At a time when Lebanon is experiencing the greatest openness to the idea, with 76% of votes in favor, Palestine comes at the bottom of the list with 21%, while Morocco comes second, Algeria is third, Kuwait fourth. , Egypt fifth and Sudan sixth and Jordan seventh.

As for the thorny issue of equality in inheritance, the percentage of acceptance of the question is very low in the countries of the study, including Tunisia, which approved equality in 2018. Lebanon has was the only one to have achieved a relatively high acceptance rate of 65%, while the country whose citizens feel the least receptive to equality in inheritance is Palestine with a percentage of 8%.

Women working outside the home recorded high approval rates, in the majority of countries ranging from 70% to 90%.

Over the past decade, tangible progress has been made with regard to women’s right to education, although a small percentage still believe that higher education is of greater importance to men than for women.