Week 8: Women at the table and in the room
This post is dedicated to the strong female leaders of USAID Jordan, USAID Jordan CITIES Project, the women of the Arab world, and of course, my own personal female role models, Raghida and Ranya Abi-Falah.
As I continue to flip through community awareness reports, an observation seems uniform across all municipalities:
".الحضور لم يكن ممثلا بشكل جيد من ناحية العنصر النسائي"
Lack of female representation in attendance
Where are the Jordanian women? And before you answer that like their neighbors in Syria, Iraq, Saudia, Tunisia, or Lebanon they are oppressed and thus cannot participate in decentralization, consider this question: Have you ever met a weak Arab woman?
I am not so sure those exist.
***
The door let out a loud squeak as Monica pushed it open and walked under the archway and into the first-floor conference room at the Ministry of Planning where we were all waiting to start the meeting on preparing for next week’s debrief with the new Minister of Planning, Mary Kawar. Hatim stopped speaking as everyone rose from their seats. She was just recently made the new COR of USAID Jordan, but of course the poise and professionalism and strength she exuded throughout that meeting (and the one that took place upstairs later on and within the halls of the U.S. Embassy the next day) meant that not only did her title demand everyone stand as she walks into a room, but her character did as well.
I had always made it a point to take note of how many women were in the room at any given time—how many women were a part of the change USAID was hoping to make in Jordan. In our team office upstairs, Ghaida, Luna and I outnumbered the men—Lamar and Ahmad. But of course, in just two weeks those numbers will equalize as I depart from Amman and return to Richmond.
Here, at first glance, the numbers were equalized as well: six women (Ghaida, Luna, Maha, Monica, a female notetaker, and myself) to six men (Mark, Lamar, Qaryouti, Hatim, Nasser, and Brandon), but Monica’s strength made it seem like the men in the room were outnumbered. The meeting proceeded in discussions of reporting procedures and a better mechanism for MOPIC-USAID CITIES coordination. Qaryouti’s whispered translations to Mark and Monica echoed every word Hatim spoke. Monica nodded at his requests but never wavered from her main objectives or conceded unnecessary territory—no translator was necessary for her words or actions. After all, a woman’s strength is universal.
I was reminded suddenly of an art installation I had seen at the Jordanian National Art Gallery. In the middle of an empty, white room, the word “أنثى” (female) stood mounted on a wall in bright red-orange fluorescent light—drawing onlookers to its glow like a siren’s song. Five canvases depicting images of female reality surrounded the word, basking in the penumbra of the harsh, fluorescent light’s glow. The future is female, they say. But I look around the conference room, the office, and the field—the future is here in the present and it too is female.
Ghaida stood up days later across town in a small meeting room in the CITIES office to present her meticulously crafted work plan for the IMC to a MOPPA official. She spoke in her native tongue with words so eloquent and poised that again, like Monica, the room may have originally appeared to be male dominated with Mark, Lamar, Mohammad, Ali, George, and Ahmad looking up at her, but she truly dominated the room in action and speech rather than numbers alone.
I have a lot to learn from these women and many like them in Jordan and around the world. The truth is I have always been very lucky in my life to witness and learn from strong women far wiser and more experienced than I.
Ghaida asked me the other day, “When did we click?”, referencing the fact that in nearly two months we had become the best of friends. I thought back to all the moments I witnessed in the office, Ghaida being the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave in the afternoon, always hard working and determined. She reminded me of my mom, five thousand, nine hundred and fifty-five miles away on the other side of the world, my first and best female role model. I think that is why Ghaida and I clicked. I have been very lucky in my life to have been shown and taught how to be a strong woman—in the work place and beyond.
Perhaps today, in year two of the CITIES project, municipal awareness meetings and local decentralization efforts are male dominated. But with female leaders like Monica and more so, female Arab leaders like Ghaida, Luna, Hala, Ruby, Maha, Fahima, Salima, Tamara, Manal, Yasmeen, Al-Batoul, Bushra, Muna, Rawan, Ghada, Lara, Nour, Dima, Amal, Linda, Ban, Sawsan, and Rand—the women of the USAID Jordan CITIES—I think the balance may tip the other way very soon.
DISCLAIMER: This post reflects my own thoughts and not those of USAID or USAID Jordan CITIES.