The treatment of foreign women in rich Arab/Muslim countries.

[KlatooBNikto]

For the past three weeks, my wife had come down with the flu and had become so weak, we decided to retain the services of a cleaning company to tidy up our house.The ladies who came to our house during those three weeks were from India, Bangladesh and Thailand.Two of them have close relatives working in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as household help.They were recruited in their home countries ( India and Thailand) brought into their final destination by an employment agency.Their stories, as told by their relatives, is terrible in the extreme and I think we at DU should do something to remedy the situation of these unfortunate women.

As soon as they landed in their host's household, their passport had to be turned over to the chief wife of the man( They have four wives,one of them is called the Begum or the equivalent of the queen of the household). Their contract called for a one year stay which they could not break under any circumstances.They wouldn't have been able to do it any way because their passport was in someone else's hands. They were forbidden to go outside their master's home for any reason unless accompanied by one of the wives. They had to work at least 14 hours a day six days a week and on the seventh day, they needed to be on call all the time in case guests came in. They were constantly subjected to verbal abuse and many times to physical abuse.
This was especially the case with the Thai girl who was a young woman,not more than 20 years old and quite attractive.The husband, who got attracted to the young girl would sexually abuse the poor young woman who had no recourse to any help.As the wives discovered the attraction of the man of the house for this young woman the abuse from the wives got even more vicious.

When I listened to these tales of suffering from the women who came to my house, I asked them what they thought of what our President was doing in the Middle East.There was no hesitation in their voices when they fully supported what the U.S. and the President were doing. To them the treatment their relatives have received in Arab countries was reason enough, but they believe that this abuse of poor and defenseless human beings is quite pervasive in Arab countries.

It occurred to me that we, in the U.S., may have missed this component of the problem in the Middle East.The unanimity of the views expressed by these women has convinced me that we ought to be less harsh on ourselves although I do not like the abuse we have meted out to the Arabs/Muslims.Because this abuse has been on going for many years in the Middle East without any voices being raised in protest, it is essential we step up pressure on these societies to provide equal rights to these women and provide a safe working environment to them.

[AndyTiedye]

1. We're Making It Worse

Women in Iraq used to have rights. Not any more.
The incoming theocracy has taken all that away.

[KlatooBNikto]

3. I am talking about the foreign laborers (women) who are brought

into these Arab countries. They are the lowliest of the low with no rights whatsoever and their abuse usually comes from the native Arab women.

[bumblebee1]

16. Have you ever heard?

Crap rolls downhill. The Arab women get treated like crap. Naturally, the Arab women will do the same thing to the foreign female workers.

[Red Ted]

7. Women in Iraq

Women in Iraq used to have rights. Not any more.
The incoming theocracy has taken all that away.....WTF?????

The right to get raped, the right to be shot, the right to be pulled from your house in the middle of the night and be questioned and detained.

Just what they voted for..oh I forgot, they did not have that right either....

[newyawker99]

17. Hi Red Ted!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[LiberalVoice]

2. What we are doing in the middle east makes it even worse for women.

Just look at what party has the majority in Iraq.

[Ilsa]

4. I heard a Shite woman in Iraq who had just been elected to

Parlament. She said (translated) that although women should have recourse against a husband who beats them, the wife should consider what she did to make him so angry as to want to beat her. Inother words, it's the victim's fault. She said she also supported the law change allowing a man to have four wives.

Women in Iraq are becoming more concerned about religious fundamentalism and wear the veil out of fear. The deans of women's schools say there are fewer women coming out of fear of kidnapping and rape.

I hope these women are right and things will get better. But I don't see how if a secular govt is goign to be replaced with a fundamentalist one.

[KlatooBNikto]

5. As I said in my post before, the native Arab women, treat foreign

born women from poorer countries like dirt and indentured slaves.The idea of giving equal rights to foreign born women ( especially the poorer ones) does not compute.If, on the other hand, if you were a richer American,European or Japanese woman, you could not be treated any better in God's green earth.

[Ms. Clio]

8. Riverbend very poignantly expresses those fears

She sees it happening all around her, everyday.

She writes:

You feel it all around you. It begins slowly and almost insidiously. You stop wearing slacks or jeans or skirts that show any leg because you don’t want to be stopped in the street and lectured by someone who doesn’t approve. You stop wearing short sleeves and start preferring wider shirts with a collar that will cover up some of you neck. You stop letting your hair flow because you don’t want to attract attention to it. On the days when you forget to pull it back into a ponytail, you want to kick yourself and you rummage around in your handbag trying to find a hair band… hell, a rubber band to pull back your hair and make sure you attract less attention from *them*.

We were seriously discussing this situation the other day with a friend. The subject of the veil and hijab came up and I confessed my fear that while they might not make it a law, there would be enough pressure to make it a requirement for women when they leave their homes. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well women in Iran will tell you it’s not so bad- you know that they just throw something on their heads and use makeup and go places, etc.” True enough. But it wasn’t like that at the beginning. It took them over two decades to be able to do that. In the eighties, women were hauled off the streets and detained or beaten for the way they dressed.

It’s also not about covering the hair. I have many relatives and friends who wore a hijab before the war. It’s the principle. It’s having so little freedom that even your wardrobe is dictated. And wardrobe is just the tip of the iceberg. There are clerics and men who believe women shouldn’t be able to work or that they shouldn’t be allowed to do certain jobs or study in specific fields. Something that disturbed me about the election forms was that it indicated whether the voter was ‘male’ or ‘female’- why should that matter? Could it be because in Shari’a, a women’s vote or voice counts for half of that of a man? Will they implement that in the future?

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

(edited for clarity)

[Ms. Clio]

6. Well, those poor women are not going to be helped

by the U.S. raining death and destruction on "Arab countries."

[TR Fan]

9. You should know that what you are describing

is commonplace in most Arab nations in regard to foreign workers.

One point, however, is common to all foreign workers (in Saudi Arabia, at least). If you are working permanently in the Kingdom, you must surrender your passport to your employer upon arrival. This is why, although I worked in Saudi for 5 years, I never got a permanent work visa, bur relied, rather, on 90 day business visas.

The Arabs in the Gulf, at least, rely heavily upon foreigners to do virtually all manual labor and, historically, much of the professional/engineering labor. At one point, the number of expatriates in Saudi Arabia matched the number of citizens.

The cases of young, attractive Thai and Philippino women repeatedly abused by their Arab employers are numerous. A few years ago, in the Emirates (either Dubai or Abu Dhabi, I believe), a young Philippino domestic killed her employer after a long period of repeated rapes. She was imprisoned and, I believe, originally sentenced to death. However, she was later released due to the intervention of the Philippine government.

[KlatooBNikto]

10. This is exactly the kind of abuse I am talking about.It goes on with

impunity in Arab countries with not a voice raised in protest, least of all by the native Arab women.In fact, I have been told that women are even more abusive physically and verablly to these unfortunate women than the men.There have even been cases of the foreign laborers being badly battered and, in some cases, killed by their employers.

[LSdemocrat]

11. This is all about racism, not sexism

Rich Arabs against poor non-Arabs

[KlatooBNikto]

12. I think that these foreign workers are women makes them especially

vulnerable in a society that treats its own women as less than equal to men.That they are poor and defenseless in an Islamic Society that simply denies access to any courts to non muslims makes it even more of a horrible situation for the Thai and Indian women.

[forgethell]

13. This is not new

information for people who can read a newspaper.

[KlatooBNikto]

14. It may not be new but the fact we ignore this and even worse that it

continues to be ignored by Arab countries themselves tells me that it is an issue we need to keep alive.

[forgethell]

15. I totally agree with you.

Also, why in the Hell do we ignore the slavery that prevails in Africa? Why do we ignore the trafficking in women and children, another form of slavery?

Why isn't DU on top of this? I've brought it up before, and gotten very little response. Where is the Democratic party?