MIDDLE EAST: Secular rivals fear setback for equality, writes Nuala Haughey in Jerusalem
If she is elected to the Palestinian parliament in this week's polls, Hamas hopeful Fathiya Qawasmi says she will work for the rights of women, children and the family.
"I'm going to support women's rights to education, health, safety and security and the participation of women in social life and decision-making," says the 42-year-old girls' school principal and widow of a Hamas militant from the West Bank city of Hebron.
And lest there be any doubt about it, Qawasmi stresses that her conservative Muslim face veil, which means voters see only her dark eyes framed by thick eyebrows, "would never stop me from doing any business I like". The socially conservative and hugely popular Hamas organisation is competing in national elections for the first time, and its female candidates pose both an electoral and ideological threat to secular women competitors.
Religious activists like Qawasmi want to preserve women's traditional familial roles in Palestinian society while sharing political power, while more western-minded candidates fear hard-fought equality achievements will be undermined if Hamas makes the significant electoral gains that polls predict.
"As a woman I feel really afraid that after this struggle for women to get rights we will go back 40 years ago, because we feel they [ Hamas] will damage our achievements with women in policy-making partnerships and gender issues," says Jihad Abu Znaid (38), a candidate with the ruling Fatah movement who helps run a women's centre in Jerusalem.
While Hamas's Koran-inspired views of women's societal role falls short of western visions of equality, the movement does promote women's participation in public life through education and training programmes. Its military wing even reversed its long-standing objection to using women as suicide bombers on "modesty" grounds.
However, a glimpse of its view on gender relations came last summer when a new Hamas-led towns council in the West Bank town of Qalqilya banned an outdoor music festival, saying it disapproved of the mixing of men and women.
"Hamas talks about their support for women's rights and so on. This is good, but how far can they go with women's rights and when will someone say this is a fatwa, all women should go home?" asks Dr Eyad Sarraj, a Gaza psychiatrist and parliamentary candidate with the National Coalition for Justice and Democracy. "In a male dominated society what do you mean by women's rights?"
Asked to outline her policies in this area, Qawasmi begins to read verbatim from Hamas's election manifesto, which outlines support for families of prisoners, funding for paediatric and gynaecology services and opposition to the media depiction of women, "as a body, not as a human being whose life should be respected," she explains.
"Hamas are not idiots. They are not stupid enough to force Islamic law or ask women to wear the hijab [ headscarf] by law," insists Ms Rula Abu Duhou, a lecturer in women's studies at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah.
"Hamas have ideas about women's rights but their priority is to end the occupation. Secular women have nothing to fear from Hamas."
While every party running in the elections includes women's issues in its manifesto, even the national plan of the secular liberal Third Way movement shies away from sensitive issues which are part of the tribal social system, such as domestic violence or the so-called "family honour" killings of women.
The impact of a new raft of Hamas lawmakers on society remains to be seen, but it is clear that there will be more women in the second ever Palestinian parliament than the first elected a decade ago, thanks to new de facto quota system.
Of the 132 parliamentary seats, 66 will be filled in a national proportional election based on party lists, while the other 66 will be elected from district constituencies. Election rules require about 20 per cent of the candidates for national party list seats to be women. However, in the district constituencies, where no such obligations apply, only 15 women are running in a field of 414.
Jihad Abu Znaid, a long-time grass roots activist, acknowledges that among some of her male Fatah colleagues, women's gains due to official affirmative action are seen as a zero-sum game.
"Fatah men, they like to give us our rights but if we touch their rights, wow! They are still very traditional in their mentality."