Law is a critical issue. Therefore the penetration of women in this domain, albeit step by step, is dangerous. However, Ardakani is content to allow women to be doctors and gynaecologists. In religious societies where women are treated as chattels and empty vessels, they are, not surprisingly, hugely under-represented in offices of state and the professions. In a powerful piece on the place of women in Lebanon, Jean Said Makdisi summons a wealth of statistics to show that Lebanon's claim to be free and open, is over-stated.
Women play a very small part in Lebanese politics or public administration.
In some of the more fundamentalist Arab countries, the numbers of professional women would be much less. The book's editor, Mai Yamani, reports that in Saudi Arabia, women are barred from studying geology, petroleum engineering and law, so bolstering male hegemony in the kingdom's most powerful and lucrative business areas. Ironically, the horror of the Lebanese war gave some women a break and a chance to take more social responsibility. But the freedom was shortlived. The collapse of state and religious structures made it harder for the clerics and government officials to impose their misogynistic will, and the despatch of men to the battlefield and away from the home left a gap which women filled.