Female parliamentarians, activists meet to discuss ‘discriminatory laws’

AMMAN — Female parliamentarians on Monday met with the women’s movement to agree on legislation related to women and children which needed to be addressed under the Dome in the near future.

The meeting aimed at coming up with a list of laws that still discriminate against women and need to be addressed both by the women’s movement and female MPs and senators, according to the organisers.

The one-day event was organised by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in cooperation with USAID’s office in Jordan, women senators and deputies representing different committees in Parliament.

Senator Sawsan Majali said legislative priorities discussed during the meeting included many laws such as the Personal Status Law (PSL) in relation to the age of marriage, as well as issues related to divorce and alimony.

According to Chief Islamic Justice Department official statistics, there were 77,700 marriage contracts issued in 2017; of which 10,434 (around 30 a day), involved marriages in which the wife was under the age of 18.

Meanwhile, the statistics showed that cases of divorce amounted to 5,335 in 2017, in which 413 cases involved wives under the age of 18.

Other laws that needed to be tackled according to Majali included the issue of equal pay in the Labour Law and “incriminating sexual harassment, especially in the workplace”.

Moreover, Majali told The Jordan Times that equality in citizenship rights was one of the more urgent matters which needed to be addressed.

As it stands now, Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians cannot pass on their citizenship to their spouse or children, while Jordanian men married to non-Jordanians enjoy full citizenship rights.

“I believe this is a very discriminative against women. We either allow both men and women the same rights in this regard or take them away all together,” Majali added.

The senator also said another topic that needed to be discussed in the future was the PSL with regards to the laws governing churches in Jordan.

“There is no unified law that is adopted by all the churches in Jordan because of the different denominations, which results in different rulings in family and other cases. We aim to unify the legislation so all can be treated equally under the law,” Majali explained.

MP Wafa Bani Mustafa also stressed the need to address all the “discriminatory laws against women praising unified efforts with the civil society”.

“Our meeting today is a reflection of the efforts between female parliamentarians and the civil society because their work is in the field and they can convey urgent matters and laws that need to be addressed and amended accordingly,” Bani Mustafa told the gathering.

Head of the Parliamentary Women’s Caucus, MP Rasmieh Al Kaabneh told the gathering that “we will hold similar meetings in various governorates around the Kingdom to hear their demands”.

“The idea is to try to solve the problems Jordanian women are facing in all parts of the country by opening up dialogues and collecting information to move forward and tackle laws that discriminate against women,” Kaabneh told the gathering.

NDI Senior Country Director Arianit Shehu told The Jordan Times the meeting was a working group whereby “women come together and they themselves adopt an action plan to advocate for legislation that is discriminatory towards women”.

“Our idea is to gather women’s groups with the women parliamentarians... and to lobby the male MPs to get involved in this process as well,” Shehu told The Jordan Times.