A History of Women’s Seclusion in the Middle East: the Veil in the Looking Glass

For someone interested in the Middle East and willing to subject themselves to an academic work reading any of Raphael Patai’s books might be time well spent but for someone with interest in either Women’s Studies or history Ann Chamberlin’s work is a good choice. She sees women’s seclusion in the Middle East as a natural adaptation to life allowing women to support themselves emotionally and share in caring for their families.

She quotes women from the Middle East who find fitting in with the other members of the harem more important to their life than a good marital match as most time is spent in female company. She also sees harems as female freedom enclaves against the male dominated life on the outside which women find contrary to their and their children’s needs and preferences. She sees women’s seclusion as a very much pro-family and pro-women social institution where men have no right to interfere but duty to protect and cherish women. She doesn’t see harems as a way for women to withdraw or perpetuate stagnant social structures. Ann Chamberlin is highly complimentary of harems.

A lot is said about the current situation of women in the West which Ann Chamberlin finds to be very much unequal and oppressive. Western women most often than not end up single parents without either emotional or financial supports Middle Eastern women might be enjoying. There is also a fair amount of male bashing including quotes from Selfish Cell and author’s own personal observations on life. Human biology underscores Ann Chamberlin’s deliberations enforcing the view that for women biology is destiny and that there are insufficient protections for women today since most of the old style clan, kinship or extended family ties and supports have been done away with. She stops short of suggesting that currently harems are one of the best ways of dealing with the need to nurture, care for and socialize children known to man.

Very few ethnographers or any other researchers have been to the Middle East and of those, most were men. First hand accounts of daily life in the Middle East on a scale of The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri, in case of India, are extremely rare . On top of already existing linguistic, cultural and distance barriers the current travel restrictions don’t make it any easier to foster new contacts, develop friendships or conduct new studies. Due to war much more than just the women’s sphere is the current “restricted” and ” forbidden” to people in the West and not even the sizable immigration wave from the Middle East into Europe has improved our inter-cultural understanding.