Every time I stop at the term of "gender" and think deeply about women strives in the field of women's rights, and their desperate attempts to impose their rights through the discourse of equality with men, the following question often comes to my mind:

What is the priority for women: Is it the pursuit of gains of equality with men?! Or is it better for them to reinforce the idea of existence as a creation of high human value that was created to live on this planet as a complement to the eternal existence?

Through my supervision and experience of events within the family’s environment, either in the past or at present, or through my professional observation while working with the university or at my previous place of work in the hospital, or the ministry, or even within the framework of international organizations, I found that the inferior perception of women is still dominant in the collective consciousness with the relative variation in the ways of expression about them.

Although the international organizations operating in Yemen, are always trying to appear as advocates for women's issues through their employees, this depends of course on many factors, the most important of which is: the cultural backgrounds of the staff therein and whether they are Arabs or foreigners. The difference is that the foreign employee is aware of and fearful of the consequences of the law in which he was brought up in his country, regarding the participation and respect of women and their right in proving their existence. Despite this, Western women still suffer from disparities, such as the clear discrepancy in their wages, for example.

Nonetheless, if we talk about the Yemeni staff working within these organizations, most of them were not brought up on these concepts, as there are no laws or culture sown in their awareness about respecting women’s rights, but the new job environment always pressures them and reminds them of that commitment, and tries to educate them with the periodic international guidelines dictated to gender culture.

What I am about in this short article is what always catches my attention when I participate in meetings and conferences of this kind. It is the strenuous attempts of "some" of those involved in these issues, whose experiences have been accumulated by learning, when they appear as an enlightened elite free from obsolete restrictions. And this may sometimes be a true belief in the role and importance of this behavior, but in many cases, the active and implicit operator is what has accumulated in their awareness of outdated (restrictive) legacies, where you see them in actual reality behaving contrary to what they claim or discuss on those occasions without realizing it. While some of them engage in more dangerous practices - from my point of view - that humiliate and diminish the status of educated and uneducated women as well.

The Yemeni intellectual tries to demonstrate that he believes in the principle of equality in the surrounding society, and that he is modern and free from all reactionary cultures that prohibit and cancel the essential role of women in building their society. Therefore, in his speech, you find him referring to the principle of "gender" with pride and exhibitionism, trying to find a pragmatic form for the image of women, polishing, complementing and refining his liberated appearance in front of others and only in front of international organizations.

For example, the activist appears in his speech with a striking and strong tone that he appeared as a supporter and defender, but as it becomes clear to me in a sarcastic tone on the inside, as if the deep meaning in his speech: "We must bring a woman with us because we promote "gender", so that we appear as modern intellectuals, because we are originally with women's rights" and so on of fake allegations.

I think that the subject does not need rhetorical reviews whenever the opportunity arises to speak in front of the camera or during meetings with international partners, and it does not need to remind those around them of the role of women in life, but rather it needs practical steps to enhance this aspect on the ground, starting from within the family itself. Thus, if we do not feel the woman as a parallel being with her own presence, weight, and heaviness, then there is no need to evoke her as a decorative form to polish our presence with it. Briefly; We women do not need such practices and cultures and complementary frameworks to the role of the showman.

If this human being (woman) is not competent and able to perform her active and productive role in life with optimal efficiency, then there is no need to fill her with a show-stopping void, the inevitability of which is ultimately poor in content, like any weak male. 

We women do not need such “favor”; Because our right is clear, and it is an obvious right to equal and balanced coexistence and the performance of rights and duties and their exchange with men and the rest of society. And that our rights as women are guaranteed and legitimate without preference from anyone, just like we are like men, and the condition of women’s competence and culture is what determines their presence and participation in a major degree. Therefore, the presence and participation of women must be active and meaningful contribution to decision-making, otherwise there is no need for them to be present as a decorative complement and a subject of bidding and display.

An opinion like this may hurt many women, because it seems to them that it is against the principle of parity, but here I am promoting the principle of competence before equality for any being, male or female, although I see that parity is another issue and has saturated discussion. In fact, women in Yemen, until today, have not found their adequate right to appear and present socials issues without guardianship.

Parity will not be achieved unless the principle of taking into account the opinion of women and their active presence in all activities, actions and decisions is strengthened, and equality will be fair and intuitive if the right to accept women to exist is guaranteed first. The most important thing is that the society accepts her existence as she is, even if the woman is incompetent like many men, or in a more precise sense, like the labor imposed on society by males who assumed positions without any competence, education or culture.

Let's be honest and try to dismantle the worthless legacies inherited in our minds and permeated with (our chromosomes) first; Because these legacies distorted and deformed our culture and produced such an inferior and contemptuous view of this human being in our consciousness.

I have my own reservations about employing the term "gender" whenever we want to beautify space and time with the image of women in seminars and conferences, because I believe that each being has a specific function according to competence, level of education, its outputs and giving only. In spite of the fact that (male and female) differ in their biological functions, but both have rights and duties when it comes to performing their functions in society.

Let us rationalize the use of this brilliant term, and its brilliant functions, and remember only the urgent existentialism of integration, production, and then the efficiency and equality of the human being divided into a man and a woman.

Rectification  

The issue of the 30% women “quota” is another topic, and I see it as another form of exploitation and assimilation of the existence of an active half of society rather than limiting their portion to only 30%.

Women at all stages of their lives are half of society, and they deserve to act accordingly!