Violence against women in Qatar

[qatarperegrine]

As I have often remarked, I came here prepared (by cultural bias) to be horrified by the treatment of women in the Arab world, but quickly learned that this is not where the story is. The flagrant human rights abuses that take place here in Qatar are predominantly against immigrant laborers, not against Arab women.

This week, however, a researcher at Qatar University released the first ever study of violence against women in Qatar, entitled "Violence against Women in the Qatari Society." In her study, Dr. Kulthum Al Ghanem surveyed 2,778 female students at Qatar University (aged 17-25, 84% Qatari). I haven't tracked it down in English, but here are some highlights from local media (here and here).

• 63% of those surveyed had been beaten, usually by male relatives (husband, brother, father).
  
• 4% had been sexually harassed and 2% had encountered "'strong violence' like rape".
  
• 45% of victims had been subjected to violence since childhood, 34% since adolescence.
  
• 47% said they'd suffered ill effects after their abuse, such as depression. 2% said they'd attempted suicide.

The finding rocking the news media, though, is that 42% allegedly said that they deserved to be beaten. And, in a related study of 703 Arab female QU students, 37% said that men should "discipline" women and 63% said more generally that women needed "someone" to "discipline" them.

Some of the statistics reported in these three media sources were mutually contradictory (e.g. the percentage of women who had been beaten was reported variously as 63%, 65% and 23%), and subjective terms such as "beaten" were not defined, so do with this information what you will.

I still suspect that violence against maids is more pervasive and more extreme, notwithstanding a recent claim that it is "not a widespread phenomenon" and (even more perplexingly) that "invariably all cases of violence it is the lady of the house who is responsible for violent behaviour against a female domestic." The gentleman putting forward these views concluded, in keeping with Al Ghanem's findings, that the solution to this problem was for the men of the household to discipline their wives.

Comments

[lasa.livejournal.com]

One of the things I find particularly disturbing is that these numbers come from women at the University. I assume that these women are ones who come from more educated, progressive families? If that's so, the actual numbers for the population overall would be much greater, I'm guessing.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

These are women at Qatar University, which is the sex-segregated state university. So the families who send their daughters there are progressive enough to send their kids to college, but not progressive enough to allow them to go to American universities.

thank you

[(Anonymous)]

your blog post regarding the women in Qatar was great. I used it as a source in my blog http://tarek.hoteit.org, under http://tarek.hoteit.org/2007/12/marjorie-in-qatar-violence-against.html

Thank you,
Tarek Hoteit

Re: thank you

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found it useful!