Sunday, January 9, 2011

Women's News: Yemen Edition

The Yemen Times has chosen a woman as their 2010 Person of the Year.  Her name is Fauzia Ahmed Noman.  She helped found the Yemeni Family Association and was one of the first women to run for parliament.  She died in November.

The Yemeni parliament is looking to pass some constitutional amendments.  Some of them are not good, but one of them would dedicate 44 seats in parliament to women candidates.  This is part of Saleh's pledge to have 15% of parliament be female.  What I find ironic is that currently, in the US, about 17% of Congress is female.

Yemen Online has a story about a woman who is in jail, because she wanted to marry someone her father doesn't approve of.  I believe I may have mentioned this in another post a while back.  The reason her father doesn't approve is because the man's occupation is considered dirty.  Which means he's possibly a butcher or a barber, or something like that.

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