Press Review of the week
May 16th 2011
Saudi Arabia announced the opening of the wolrd’s largest university for women in Riyad1, albeit Ameneh Bahrami’s case reopens the controversy about women rights and empowerment in Middle-East and Gulf.
- King Abdullah is greeted by a woman official in the internal railway of the campus. (Credits ArabNews)
Rejected after his marriage proposal, in 2004 Majid Movahedi blinded by acid the women, Ameneh Bahrami. In accordance with Sharia law, she demanded the same punishment for him in order to dissuade men from blinding other women. Amnesty International condemns the retribution blinding sentence, and Iran decided to postpone eye-for-an-eye punishment.
Source : Al Jazeera
The anguish and the will of the victim reveal the deep aspirations of women. While The New York Times fears the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the infringements of women rights in Tunisia, The Huffington Post reports the fight of Arab women in Israel. In Saudi Arabia, women are along the road, demonstrating for their right to drive cars, says Angie Nassar on her blog… Women empowerment is a necessary and crucial starting point in the democratic process.
Internet is a powerful tool for empowerment of women and several programs were launched for them to acquire literacy and autonomy, including in health. Mona Eltahawi on the World Bank Website reminds us that social media are a strategic issue in Arab countries: “No Twitter Revolutions or Facebook uprisings, rather those upheavals of courage are testament to how powerful that belief in “I count” garnered online had become.” And social networks can help to prevent chronic diseases. A recent study on diabetes published this week, like Susannah Fox said, reveals that the use of social networks improve the quality of this chronic disease monitoring.
- The University has the capacity to enroll about 50,000 students and includes a 700 bed-hospital. [↩]
