The Daily Star - Politicians call for boosting women’s rights, March 8, 2012

BEIRUT: Lebanese politicians called Wednesday for improving women’s rights in the country, ahead of International Women’s Day Thursday.

President Michel Sleiman said on the eve of the occasion that “women should be offered more opportunities to enable them to perform roles in various fields, in addition to humanitarian messages, and women [should be able to] break into political and administrative fields and prove their presence and competence.”

Bsharri MP Strida Geagea, one of four women MPs, saluted the region’s women for their role in the Arab Spring, because they are the “mothers, sisters, wives and daughters of martyrs who fought for freedom and democracy,” while also becoming martyrs themselves for these causes.

However, she also expressed concern over the difficulties of translating this role to the participation of women in the reform processes in these countries, as well as their exclusion from key positions of power.

Geagea urged that a draft law on combatting domestic violence, now being studied by a parliamentary subcommittee, be accepted in its original version, after the criminalization of marital rape was dropped from the draft.

Meanwhile, a new pastoral office dedicated to women’s affairs was inaugurated Wednesday by the Maronite patriarchate in Bkirki. Patriarch Beshara Rai said the new office was an expression of papal directives that stressed the need to enhance women’s dignity.


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