By Dr Numan Gharaibeh
Empowering Arab civil societies is doomed to fail without empowering 50% of the Arab societies (girls and women). Concepts such as empowerment, dependence, independence, autonomy, self-reliance, etc are tricky. They lend themselves of over-simplification and over-generalization and other black and white and extreme interpretation. Most humans don’t deal well with vague, slippery, and unclearly defined, or clearly undefined concepts. There is no absolute dependence or absolute independence, only a mix of different proportions of the two. Social and moral judgment—not known for its sophistication—has it that independence is “good,” and dependence is “bad.” Or to put it in relative terms, independence is better than dependence. However, a close examination of an average day reveals the depth of the problem of separating dependence from independence. We no longer hunt and gather our food; we simply go to the supermarket to buy it. After all we are not interested in going back to becoming hunters and gatherers. We are dependent on the supermarket, the gas company, the electric company, the phone company, endless manufacturers and so on. Read more ...
Empowering Arab civil societies is doomed to fail without empowering 50% of the Arab societies (girls and women). Concepts such as empowerment, dependence, independence, autonomy, self-reliance, etc are tricky. They lend themselves of over-simplification and over-generalization and other black and white and extreme interpretation. Most humans don’t deal well with vague, slippery, and unclearly defined, or clearly undefined concepts. There is no absolute dependence or absolute independence, only a mix of different proportions of the two. Social and moral judgment—not known for its sophistication—has it that independence is “good,” and dependence is “bad.” Or to put it in relative terms, independence is better than dependence. However, a close examination of an average day reveals the depth of the problem of separating dependence from independence. We no longer hunt and gather our food; we simply go to the supermarket to buy it. After all we are not interested in going back to becoming hunters and gatherers. We are dependent on the supermarket, the gas company, the electric company, the phone company, endless manufacturers and so on. Read more ...
Source: Arab Democracy
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