Because She Created: Netflix Celebrates Arab Women Filmmakers
10
July 2022
• Because She Created: Netflix Celebrates Arab Women
Filmmakers
• Does Development Mean More Women In Work? Yes In
Pakistan But Not India, Says World Bank Study
• From Aladdin to Ms. Marvel, The Significance of
Iranian and Pakistani Women Representation
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/netflix-arab-filmmakers/d/127449
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Because She Created: Netflix Celebrates Arab Women
Filmmakers
Ahram Online
9 Jul 2022
The collection includes works of critically acclaimed
directors from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine,
Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Tunisia, celebrating the creativity of the Arab
world’s greatest female storytellers.
“While these stories are distinctly and authentically
Arab, the themes will resonate with women across the world, uniting women from
all walks of life through beautiful and poignant series and film,” explained
the world leading streaming platform in a press release.
The collection include important works like Let’s Talk
by Marianne Khoury, Nariss Nejjar’s Stateless, Suha Arraf’s Villa Touma, Leyla
Bouzid’s A Tale of Love and Desire, Fatma Zamoun’s Parkour and Suzannah
Mirghani’s Al-Sit.
Netflix launched the Because She Created platform last
year as a virtual panel discussion hosting Arab women filmmakers to talk about
the evolving role of women in the Arab film industry, hosting a talk by Hend
Sabry at last Cairo International Film Festival.
All the films, which are new on Netflix, have been
available worldwide since Thursday.
Source: English.Ahram
https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/471341.aspx
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Does Development Mean More Women In Work? Yes In Pakistan
But Not India, Says World Bank Study
Illustration: Ramandeep Kaur | ThePrint
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Nikhil Rampal
10 July, 2022
New Delhi: It’s generally assumed that economic
development and women’s participation in the labour force go hand in hand.
However, a World Bank study has found that the relationship is more complex in
South Asia — particularly in India — than previously thought.
Published in April this year in the World Bank’s South
Asia Economic Focus, Spring 2022, the study, titled ‘Reshaping Norms: a New Way
Forward’, found that economic development corresponded with a rise in women’s
participation in the workforce in some South Asian countries like Pakistan and
Bangladesh, but only up to a point in India.
The study took into consideration Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) based on purchasing power parity (PPP) from 1985 to 2019. PPP is
the rate at which one country’s currency would have to be converted into
another’s to buy the same amount of goods and services.
It found that female labour force participation (FLFP)
— the percentage of women currently employed or unemployed actively looking for
work — varies from country to country in South Asia. The study also found that
in India, FLFP fell after per capita income surpassed $3,500.
The South Asian countries included in this particular
analysis of the study were India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal,
Pakistan, and the Maldives.
“India saw a weak but positive relationship between
FLFP and GDP per capita growth at levels of development roughly below US$3,500
per capita and declines beyond this point,” the report said.
The study also notes that in South Asian countries,
there was no positive correlation between an increase in female education
levels and a decline in fertility levels on the one hand, and women’s participation
in the labour force on the other hand. (Positive correlation means when one
metric increases, the other also increases in a similar proportion.)
However, while the report cites trends in India’s FLFP
with respect to economic growth, it gives no clear reason for these. Maurizio
Bussolo, lead economist at the World Bank’s South Asia office and lead author
of the study’s chapter on gender, told ThePrint in an email that India’s
conservative social norms could explain at least a part of the phenomenon.
“[In our report] We highlight that the potential
failure of economic growth to bring increases in FLFP may be linked to
restrictive social norms that act as barriers to women’s engagement in the
labour market,” Bussolo said.
Gender economist Alice Evans, who teaches development
economics at King’s College, London, believes that India is caught in a
“patrilineal trap”.
“Female employment only rises when earnings are
sufficiently high [in order] to compensate for the loss of male honour,” she
told ThePrint. “Given jobless growth, female employment remains low.”
The study says that there’s generally a U-shaped
relationship between per capita incomes (measured in terms of PPP) and FLFP.
That is, as economic development occurs or as per capita incomes rise from lower
levels, women’s participation in the labour force declines up to a point and
rises thereafter.
The study claims that when a country is largely
agrarian, women’s participation in agriculture and allied activities is higher.
However, as a country industrialises and as the need to have more working hands
go down, this participation declines, largely due to societal biases against
women working in manufacturing units.
The curve rises again at higher-income levels as a
result of growth in the service sector coupled with higher education levels
among women and a lower fertility rate (that is, the number of children born
alive to women of that age during the year as a proportion of the average
annual population of women of the same age).
The study, however, shows that the growth trajectory
isn’t uniform across South Asian countries. For instance, in Sri Lanka and
Nepal, the FLFP has barely changed despite economic development. In Bangladesh,
Bhutan, Pakistan, and the Maldives, a rise in per capita income corresponds
with a rise in FLFP. India, too, saw a similar corresponding rise but only
until it reached a per capita income of $3,500, the study shows.
Evans told ThePrint that although both Bangladesh and
Pakistan have low female employment, “an additional constraint in India may be
labour regulation, which suppresses job-creation in the formal economy”.
“It traps families in precarity, reinforces reliance
on kinship, and encourages jati-endogamy (the custom of marrying within one’s
caste),” she told ThePrint via email. “Moreover, employers frequently
subcontract to home-based workers in order to artificially reduce the size of
their firm and circumvent labour regulations. This kind of informal ‘gig’ work
keeps many women trapped by family surveillance and control.”
The study also observes while almost all developing
countries show a positive correlation between female education and FLFP that is
“almost causal”, South Asia doesn’t exhibit this trend.
“In South Asia, however, primary and secondary school
enrolment rates have improved dramatically over time and have either converged
or gotten very close to the levels in more developed regions, without
commensurate improvements in FLFP”, the report said
It made similar observations for declining fertility
rates that have been driven by improvements in female education, increases in
the age of marriage, and declines in child mortality rates.
“In general, a decline in fertility tends to raise
FLFP, as the opportunity cost of women’s time falls. However, most countries in
South Asia have experienced a significant reduction in the number of children
that an average woman has in her lifetime, with fertility rates now around the
replacement level,” the report said.
Bussolo told ThePrint that the effect of conservative
social norms in India was so strong that at the current level of its per capita
income, India’s female labour participation at work should have been higher.
“Indeed, using data for India and other countries, we
show two things. First, attitudes (a proxy for social norms) towards gender
roles have not improved in the last decades, and a growing majority of people
in countries like India believe that ‘men have more rights to jobs than
women’,” he said
“Second, we show that, when it is possible to measure
them, conservative social norms account for a significant share of the FLFP
deficit, i.e. for the fact that, at its level of development, India should have
a higher FLFP rate,” he added.
Source: The Print
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From Aladdin to Ms. Marvel, The Significance of
Iranian and Pakistani Women Representation
BY PARVANAE EMI
10-07-2022
Disney has misrepresented many cultures and stories
during its tenure. Though none so much as Iranian and Pakistani representation.
ThoughtCo. details common stereotypes that clump together Central Asian and
Middle Eastern cultures under the umbrella of ‘Arab’. A common stereotype is
that they are terrorists or barbaric. In the animated version of Aladdin, many
of these harmful depictions run rampant. Yet, as Disney set to make amends with
their problematic past, the live-action rendition of Aladdin and the MCU
Disney+ series, Ms. Marvel depict Iranian and Pakistani people in a more
positive light.
A positive depiction of Iranian women is through
Princess Jasmine, particularly in the shift in the clothing she wears in the
live-action film. A second way Jasmine is significant in the depiction of
Iranian women is how she advocates for herself and her people. Iran’s neighbor
to the southwest, Pakistan, is marvelously depicted in Ms. Marvel. Kamala Khan
and her family are depicted as joyful people who want to celebrate her
brother’s wedding. Of course, the most important part of Ms. Marvel is how the
series tackles the terrorist stereotype head on.
When Aladdin premiered in the early 1990s, it was
remarkable for little Iranian and Arab girls to see a tan woman with dark hair
on the screen being represented as outspoken and fierce like tigers. Yet, the
difference between her outfit and the concubines in the film is a thin facial veil
on the concubines. When Disney announced the live-action remake, they had
actors from across the Middle East and Central Asia like Nasim Pedrad, who is
from Iran, and Mena Massoud who is Egyptian. A natural progression was the
fashion in the film, particularly Jasmine’s. Cheetah-Adventures breaks down
street fashion in Iran and two aspects of Iranian fashion can be found in
Aladdin. First, Iranian fashion, and other forms of art, play with color rather
brilliantly. Most of Jasmine’s outfits have vibrant colorings and lots of gold
and jewels — she is a princess, after all. Another classic element of Iranian
fashion is for women to wear a manteau, or a body veil, which can be opened or
closed that overlays pants or a skirt and a top. Jasmine wears a magenta closed
manteau over teal pants, a nod to the original mint green outfit from the
animated classic, when she meets with Prince Anders.
As intricate and beautiful as the Iranian-inspired
fashion is in director Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, one aspect of the story
overshadows the fashion: the patriarchy. The film does not exaggerate Jafar
telling Jasmine to be silent and let the men lead. While Iranian women led the
Iranian Revolution in the early 1980s, the changes have been minimal over the
past 40 years. Iranian law uses population planning as their excuse to make
decisions over women’s bodies. Women have the capacity to be political
powerhouses as exemplified by Jasmine becoming Sultan. Jasmine reminds the
audience that the power of “no” can become overwhelming when the laws attempt
to orchestrate your every move, but that doesn’t stop her. One massive
difference between animated and live-action Jasmine is that she doesn’t just
want to escape the palace walls, she wants to bulldoze the entire system
because her people are suffering. That’s why Jasmine is a feminist icon and an
empowering woman Disney character. Her position as Sultan shows the audience
that despite outdated laws and beliefs, an individual is more than their
labels.
Source: Movie Web
https://movieweb.com/disney-aladdin-ms-marvel-iranian-pakistani-women-representation/
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URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/netflix-arab-filmmakers/d/127449