Ramallah, September 4, 2016 – Asserting the importance of school curricula in shaping the minds of students, the Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD) denounces the insulting image towards Palestinian women included in the new Islamic Education first grade textbook. The picture reinforces the stereotypical patriarchal image of women’s roles, and contradicts the principles of equality based on enlightened and progressive thought, respecting women’s existence in all its dimensions and implications.
In its press release issued on Sunday, PWWSD calls on the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to remove this negative and insulting image towards Palestinian women, and to focus on women’s wisdom and historical roles in protecting national identity since our people were uprooted in the 1948 Palestinian Nakba.
The organization also denounces this “drawing”, portraying a woman as an evil witch to fear and despise. Additionally, PWWSD expresses some reservations about the new school curriculum, which divides the map and geography of Palestine in a false and ahistorical manner, ignoring the suffering of our people under past and present occupation since the Nakba and mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.
PWWSD also emphasizes its complete rejection of these insults to Palestinian women in any form, and the utter disregard of their historical struggle together with Palestinian men. Palestinian women have been freedom fighters, mothers of martyrs, wounded, prisoners, and fighters, as well as women who themselves have been prisoners, martyrs, writers, students, engineers, doctors, lawyers, defenders of human rights, educators, workers, farmers, as well as political and social activists in cities, villages, and refugee camps, not to mention their roles in planning and executing development efforts in all governing bodies, including the cabinet, local and municipal councils, the parliament, in Palestinian embassies, and working in the media, cinema, theater, in addition to doing unpaid housework and raising children.
The organization demands that the Ministry of Education present a realistic and positive image of Palestinian women and their sacrifices, and to encourage female and male students to respect women’s rights as indivisible human rights not up for interpretation. In order to replace the negative and false stereotypical image burned into the minds of children as part of a larger paradigm working to exclude women by categorizing them in constructed binaries of angel vs. devil, and holy mother vs. evil witch. This is a culturally regressive image from the dark ages based in a despicable patriarchal system, which remains utilized today by the Israeli occupation to exclude half of Palestinian society from active participation in the national struggle.
We, at PWWSD, emphasize that the representation of women in this drawing is insulting to their image and the sacrifices they have made in this society, which remains dominated by a patriarchal mentality. This way of thinking falsely places women as the source of all conflicts and problems in Palestinian society. This kind of behavior by the Ministry puts the national authority under legitimate questioning on whether they have any real political will to adhere to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
End of statement.