Sex segregation

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Sex segregation is the separation, or segregation, of people according to sex or gender. Public bathrooms, public showers, dormitories, changing rooms, prisons and other areas are often sex segregated. Sometimes there are separate hours or separate facilities in public saunas. Some religious buildings have separate entrances and worship areas for men and women.

Men and women also tend to work in different occupations; for example, more than 90% of nurses are women in the United States. This is referred to as occupational segregation.

Sex education in public schools is often sex segregated. Private schools are sometimes entirely sex segregated or contain an entirely sex segregated student body. Some trains have, apart from mixed-sex cars, also cars for women only, see e.g. Josei Sen'yō Sharyō.

The term gender apartheid (or sexual apartheid) is a derogatory term applied to segregation of people by gender, implying that it is sexual discrimination. Gender segregation is a controversial policy, with the strongest critics contending that in most or all circumstances it is a violation of human rights, and strong supporters holding that it is necessary to maintain decency, sacredness, modesty, or the family unit.

1 In Judaism
2 In Islam
3 Islamic countries
4 Christian churches
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] In Judaism

Traditional Jewish synagogues are sex segregated.

[edit] In Islam

Main article: Sex segregation in Islam

Islam discourages social interaction between men and women but not all interaction between men and women. This is shown in the example of Khadija, who employed Muhammad and met with him to conduct trade before they were married, and in the example set by the other wives of Muhammad, who taught and counselled the men and women of Medina.

The textual basis for insisting on total segregation of the sexes is the hadith on zina (fornication and adultery) of the limbs narrated from Ibn Mas`ud by Imam Ahmad in his Musnad with a strong chain: "The two eyes commit zina, the two hands commit zina, the two feet commit zina, and the genitals commit zina." Another wording with a passable chain in the Musnad includes the tongue and specifies in the end: "Then the genitals actualize it or belly it.". However, it does not necessarily follow that this hadith can be used as justification for saying "Therefore, according to Shari'ah, to look, speak, listen, etc. to any Ghayr Mahram (women you are not related to or married to) except at the time of extreme necessity is Haraam and impermissible."

[edit] Islamic countries

The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

[edit] Afghanistan

Afghanistan, under Taliban religious leadership, has been characterized by feminist groups and others as a "gender apartheid" system where women are segregated from men in public and do not enjoy legal equality or equal access to employment or education.^[1] ^[2] In 1997 the Feminist Majority Foundation launched a "Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan", which urged the U.S. government and the United Nations to "do everything in their power to restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls." The campaign included a petition to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and U.N. Assistant Secretary General Angela King which stated, in part, that "We, the undersigned, deplore the Taliban’s brutal decrees and gender apartheid in Afghanistan."^[3] In 1998 activists from the National Organization of Women picketed Unocal's Sugar Land, Texas office, arguing that its proposed pipeline through Afghanistan was collaborating with "gender apartheid".^[4] In a weekly presidential address in November 2001 Laura Bush also accused the Taliban of practising "gender apartheid".^[5] The Nation referred to the Taliban's 1997 order that medical services for women be partly or completely suspended in all hospitals in the capital city of Kabul as "Health apartheid".^[6] According to the Women's Human Rights Resource Programme of the University of Toronto Bora Laskin Law Library "Throughout the duration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the term "Gender Apartheid" was used by a number of women's rights advocates to convey the message that the rights violations experience by Afghan women were in substance no different than those experienced by blacks in Apartheid South Africa." ^[7]

[edit] Iran

Iran has also been accused of implementing a "gender apartheid" system at the behest of religious leaders.^[8] In an article titled "Islamic gender apartheid" Phyllis Chesler asserts that:

"In a democratic, modern, and feminist era, women in the Islamic world are not treated as human beings. Women in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic world are viewed as the source of all evil. Their every move is brutally monitored and curtailed. The smallest infraction – a wanton wisp of hair escaping a headscarf – merits maximum punishment: Flogging in public, or worse. This is happening in Iran even as we speak. In 2005, a hospital in Tehran was accused of refusing entry to women who did not wear head-to-toe covering. In 2002, in Saudi Arabia, religious policemen prevented 14 year old schoolgirls from leaving a burning school building because they were not wearing their headscarves and abayahs. Fifteen girls died."^[9]

After the Islamic Revolution, gender segregation became sanctioned on buses, elevators. The mullahs had blasted Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for this and called him a "dictator" for not segregating men and women.

In the Islamic Republic, there is so much gender segregation and lack of interaction, that when opposite genders see each others, they alway blush and are very shy.

[edit] Malaysia

In 2006 Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia's former Prime Minister, and a campaigner for women's rights, described the status of Muslim women in Malaysia as similar to that of Black South Africans under apartheid. She was apparently doing so in response to new family laws which make it easier for Muslim men to divorce wives, or take multiple wives, or gain access to their property. Mahathir stated ""In our country, there is an insidious growing form of apartheid among Malaysian women, that between Muslim and non-Muslim women."^[10] According to the BBC, she sees Muslim Malaysian women as "subject to a form of apartheid - second-class citizens held back by discriminatory rules that do not apply to non-Muslim women."^[11] Her comments were strongly criticized: the Malaysian Muslim Professionals Forum stated "Her prejudiced views and assumptions smack of ignorance of the objectives and methodology of the Sharia, and a slavish capitulation to western feminism's notions of women's rights, gender equality and sexuality," and Dr Harlina Halizah Siraj, women's chief of the reform group Jamaah Islah Malaysia said "Women in Malaysia are given unlimited opportunities to obtain high education level, we are free to choose our profession and career besides enjoying high standard of living with our families."^[10]

[edit] Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's practices with respect women have been referred to as "gender apartheid". ^[12] ^[13] Andrea Dworkin referred to these practices simply as "apartheid":

Seductive mirages of progress notwithstanding, nowhere in the world is apartheid practiced with more cruelty and finality than in Saudi Arabia. Of course, it is women who are locked in and kept out, exiled to invisibility and abject powerlessness within their own country. It is women who are degraded systematically from birth to early death, utterly and totally and without exception deprived of freedom. It is women who are sold into marriage or concubinage, often before puberty; killed if their hymens are not intact on the wedding night; kept confined, ignorant, pregnant, poor, without choice or recourse. It is women who are raped and beaten with full sanction of the law. It is women who cannot own property or work for a living or determine in any way the circumstances of their own lives. It is women who are subject to a despotism that knows no restraint. Women locked out and locked in.^[14]

Saudi Arabia's treatment of women has also been described as "sexual apartheid". ^[15] Colbert I. King quotes an American official who accuses Western companies of complicity in Saudia Arabia's sexual apartheid:

One of the (still) untold stories, however, is the cooperation of U.S. and other Western companies in enforcing sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia. McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms, for instance, maintain strictly segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The men's sections are typically lavish, comfortable and up to Western standards, whereas the women's or families' sections are often run-down, neglected and, in the case of Starbucks, have no seats. Worse, these firms will bar entrance to Western women who show up without their husbands. My wife and other [U.S. government affiliated] women were regularly forbidden entrance to the local McDonald's unless there was a man with them." ^[16]

Azar Majedi, of the Centre for Women and Socialism, attributes sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia to political Islam:

Women are the first victims of political Islam and Islamic terrorist gangs. Sexual apartheid, stoning, compulsory Islamic veil and covering and stripping women of all rights are the fruits of this reactionary and fascistic movement. Political Islam has committed countless crimes both where they are in power, like the Islamic Republic in Iran, the Mujahedin and the Taliban in Afghanistan, in the Sudan and in Saudi Arabia, and where they are in opposition, as in Algeria, Pakistan and Egypt. Terrorising the population is the policy and strategy of this force for seizing power.^[17]

According to The Guardian, "[i]n the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sexual apartheid rules", and this sexual apartheid is enforced by mutawa, religious police, though not as strongly in some areas:

The kingdom's sexual apartheid is enforced, in a crude fashion, by the religious police, the mutawa. Thuggish, bigoted and with little real training in Islamic law, they are much feared in some areas but also increasingly ridiculed. In Jeddah - a more laid-back city than Riyadh - they are rarely seen nowadays.^[18]

[edit] Christian churches

The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

The terms "gender apartheid" and "sexual apartheid" have also been used to describe differential treatment of women in institutions such as the Church of England^[19] or the Roman Catholic Church. See, for example, Patricia Budd Kepler in her 1978 Theology Today article "Women Clergy and the Cultural Order".^[20]