Women's Rights and the Arab Uprisings, SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 16/12/2015

http://www.soas.ac.uk/development/
This lecture titled "Women's Rights and the Arab Uprisings" was given by Professor Ahlem Belhadj, MD, University of Tunis at SOAS University of London on 7 December 2015 as part of the Globalisation Lecture Series of the Department of Development Studies.

Five years after the ‘Arab Spring’, the situation in the Arab region is more complex than ever. Social and gender relations should be at the centre of any appraisal of the ongoing process. What role did the women’s movement play and what role can it play in social and political change? What balance-sheet can be drawn with regard to gender relations? Are women the principal losers of the upheaval as many pretend? The lecture will assess the fate of women rights in constitutional processes, the issue of violence against women, the feminisation of poverty, and the impact of rising terrorism on the condition of women in the Arab region. It will conclude with a discussion of the prospects for women emancipation in the Arab region.

Ahlem Belhadj is specialised in child psychiatry, which she practises and teaches in Tunisia. She is deputy general secretary of the national union of university hospital physicians, a cofounder and advisory committee member of the Coalition for sexual and corporal rights in Muslim societies, and chairwoman of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD) from 2011 to 2013, winner of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for 2012. She authored several books and reports on child psychiatry, child and women abuse, and women’s rights. She has given countless interviews on the Tunisian uprising while several articles have been written about her describing her as ‘The Arab Spring’s Tunisian Heroine’

Find out more about this event at http://www.soas.ac.uk/development/events/globalisation/07dec2015-womens-rights-and-the-arab-uprisings.html