I followed Sarkozy’s historic speech addressing the French Parliament this last June,  where he addressed one of the most debated issues in France, the Hijab!

“We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind bars, cut off from social life, deprived of identity,” he said. “That is not our idea of maintaining the dignity of women.” to know more about the story, read here.

What was not clear to me was whether France will ban burqas or was Sarkozy just encouraging people in France to feel and express hostility towards women who wear them? I also did not understand how denying women this choice would enhance their dignity?  It is interesting how the west always assumes that women who wear the Burqa do so because they are forced or pressured into it.   I would like to refer here to an Egyptian Anthropologist… Lila Abu Lughod, who researched the hijab extensively and referred to the hijab as a form of  resistance.

In one of her studies, she was talking about how the Americans made it a point to say that one of the reasons they would go into Afghanistan was to save the Afghani women from the Burqa… I guess they were expecting that all women will go in the street and throw the Burqas the moment they saw the Americans…

It, as we all know,… did not happen.

Actually… I really don’t want to talk about the hijab, this was not my intention in this post. What I really found interesting was that Sarkozy… the man who divorced his wife in a sex scandal after cheating on her with a model was talking about women’s dignity with so much confidence… I am not sure how women who wear the hijab are not dignified, but women who get cheated on through sex scandals by their partners are?…. I, as a women find that interesting, i wonder how other women feel about it? also I wonder how Sarkozy can speak about women’s dignity? when he was checking a young woman’s butt in a very indignified way… not too long ago actually. …

Just to add another dimension to this… researches affiliated with the Sorbonne have recently published a report on inequalities in France… The volume  includes extensive statistical information about social and economic inequalities in France… it addressed the gender inequality… Apparently, women in France are clearly discriminated against in the workplace… till today, these dignified French women don’t earn the same salaries as men, even though they hold the same positions…

I guess we should aspire to a world where women have their full rights, but let’s not get too lost in the western idea of rights to a point where we ignore the right to chose, and the right to be different in the process…