User:DanOWL678/Muslim women political leaders

Afghanistan

 * Uzra Jafari

One of 200 women who participated in the loya jirga after the fall of the Taliban in 2002. She is the first female mayor in Afghanistan. She was the of Nili a town in Daykundi Province of Afghanistan from 2008 till 2014. She is a member of the Hazara ethnic group, a religious and ethnic minority in Afghanistan. During her term she worked on receiving funds to build infrastructure in Nili. Before taking office she had left to Iran due to the civil war in the early 1990s. There she ran a school for Afghan children. In 2001 she returned to Afghanistan to participate in a peace jirga.


 * Fawzia Koofi

In 2014, she became a candidate for President of Afghanistan after being elected as the Vice President of the National Assembly of Afghanistan in 2005. As Vice President she became the first female Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament. She was one of the few women selected to take part in a U.S. backed negotiation talk with the Taliban. On her way back from on one of the meetings she survived an assassination attempt. In August of 2021 she fled Afghanistan to Qatar on one of the last evacuation flights. She managed to leave despite being under house arrest by the Taliban. Since leaving Afghanistan she went to the United Nations with a delegation of Afghan women. Urging the United Nations to not compromise on inclusion and equal rights in Afghanistan.


 * Sima Samar

She served as the Afghanistan Ministry of Women's Affairs from 2001–2003. From 2004-2019, she chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission that holds human rights violators accountable. Her work on this commission lead to her receiving death threats. She is the founder of the Shuhada Organization which operates schools for boys and girls, in 2012 it managed more than 100 schools. Shuhada also worked on providing healthcare and managed ran 15 clinics and hospitals. Sima Samar was appointed as a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement in December of 2019.


 * Frozan Fana

Ran in the Afghan Presidential Election of 2009.


 * Shahla Atta

In 2005 she was elected to the upper house of the Afghan National Legislature Wolesi Jirga. She also ran in the Afghan Presidential Election of 2009.

Indonesia
The most populous Muslim-majority country.


 * Megawati Sukarnoputri

She is the daughter of the first president of Indonesia Sukarno. She was elected to to the People’s Consultative Assembly in 1987. She later served as the head of the Indonesian Democratic Party in 1993. She served as president of Indonesia from 2001–2004, becoming the first female president of Indonesia and the fourth female to lead a Muslim-majority nation.

Jordan
There are 15 seats reserved in the lower house for women.
 * Toujan al-Faisal

She became Jordan's first female member of Parliament when elected in 1993. She faced much backlash as a female in this position, including arrests and mistreatment while imprisoned, causing global outcry and the assistance of Amnesty International. She was denied her request to stand as a candidate in the parliamentary elections of 17 June 2003 by the Elections Committee.


 * Reem Abu Dalbouh

She has been a part of parliament since 2013.

Egypt
Nearly one-third of the Parliament of Egypt- the fifth most populous Muslim majority nation- also consists of women. Egypt has a quota for women in the house.


 * Rawya Ateya

In 1956 she became the first woman to be commissioned as an officer in the Liberation Army of Egypt. She is considered to be a pioneer for female leaders in Muslim-majority countries. She was the first female Parliamentarian in the Arab world when in 1957 she served in the Parliament of Egypt. She was an advocate for womens right and managed to implement a two month materntity leave. She lost her bid for relelcetion two years later but was able to get elected to the People's Assembly in 1984.


 * Farida El Choubachy

She is first women in 42 years to preside over the opening session of the Egyptian parliament. She is part of the newly elected Egyptian parliament.


 * Nadia Ahmed Abdou Saleh

Her political career started in 2010 when she was elected to the parliament as part of the National Democratic Party. In February 2017 she became Egypts first female governor. She was apportioned governor of the Baheira Governorate.


 * Eva Habil

She became the Egypt's first female mayor of Kom Buha in 2008. She won against five other male candidates, one of the candidates was her brother. Her father was the previous mayor there until 2002. She has worked on ending female circumcision and increasing literacy rates for women.


 * Anissa Hassouna

In 2016 she was elected to the Egyptian Parliament. She has advocated for women's and children's rights. One of her initiatives was to create playgrounds for children in very district. In 2019 she also worked on creating a law that would ban the use of plastic bags.

Morocco

 * Mbarka Bouaida

In July of 2019 Mbarka Bouaida was elected as the president of the Guelmim-Oued Noun region. Making her the first woman elected as a regional leader in morocco. Her political career first began when she was elected in 2007 to the House of Representatives. She served on many committee during her time in the House of Representatives including the Finance and Economic Affairs Committee, the Islamic Affairs Committee, and the National Defense committee.


 * Latifa Jbabdi

She is a feminist activists fighting for human rights and women's rights. In 1977 she was arrested and held for three years as a political prisoner for her involvement with leftist political activity. After leaving prison she resumed her fight for humans right and was one of the founding members of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. She worked on leading the initiative on reforming Moroccan family law called the Moudawana. Latifa Jbabdi was led the women's rights group known as the Women's Action Union (UAF). This group in collaboration with others launched the one million signature campaign to reform the Moudawana. The final reforms were implemented in 2004 was gave women rights they did not have access to before such as the right to divorce and the right to child custody. She gained political office in 2007 as a member of the Moroccan Parliament and later left in 2011.

Saudi Arabia

 * Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

She was appointed as the country's ambassador to the United States on 2019. She is the first women ever appointed as ambassador in Saudi Arabia. She grew up in the United States attended George Washington University. Her father served as the previous country's ambassador to the United States previously. She was featured on Forbes list of the top 200 Most Powerful Arab Women. Before she became ambassador she was Vice President of Women’s Affairs at the Saudi General Sports Authority in 2016. In 2018 she became President of the Mass Participation Federation and served in that position until becoming ambassador.

Tunisia

 * Najla Bouden

On 11 October 2021, Bouden became the first female prime minister in the Arab world. Before becoming prime misnister she was director general in charge of quality at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. Where she was in charge of overseeing World Bank programs. Additionally she was a professor of geosciences at the National Engineering School in Tunisia. She was appointed after the president Kais Saiedth removed the former prime minister and suspended the parliament in July of 2021.

Egypt
Women have been active participants since the 1919 Egyptian revolution, demanding the liberation of Egypt. However, when the 1923 constitution was ratified, it did not give men and women equal rights. This led to the formation of the Egyptian Women's Union and the Muslim Women’s Society. Their aim was to establish equal rights in the social and political domain. In 1952, after the fall of the monarchy, feminist movements advocated for women's right to be included in the new Egyptian constitution. In the 1956 constitution women were given the right to vote and stand for elections. In 1957, for the first time, seven women ran for elected office. Amina Shokry and Rawya Ateya then became the first women elected to the Egyptian parliament. Although women were granted political rights, women's activits were still fighting for equal social rights. During Abdel Nasser's reign, legislation was introduced that all civil society organizations were now under state control. This period is referred to as "State-feminism". In 1979, President Anwar Al Sadat issued a law allocating thirty parliamentary seats for women, which increased the amount of women in parliament from eight to thirty-five. This law was later recinded in 1986 due to a revison of electoral laws. During the Mubarak era, the amount of women's organizations increased from 10,000 to 30,000. In 2000, the National Council for Women was established. New laws were established giving women the right to divorce without her husbands consent (Khul'). Additionally new measures were added to facilitate access to court for ‘urfi marriages, religious marriages not officially registered with the state. A new marriage contract was also enacted that included a list for conditions in the appendix. Women were granted a quota of 64 seats for the 2010 election. This quota lasted until the 25th of January 2011 Egyptian revolution. The following elections had an unprecedented turnout rate but less then two percent of women were elected. For the 2020 elections, a new constitutional amendment was passed allocating 25 percent of seats for women in parliament. Women won 162 out of the 596 seats, making them 27 percent of the Egyptian parliament for the 2021 to 2026 term.

Tunisia
Tunisia gained its independence from France in 1956. In the same year the Code of Personal Status (CPS) was enacted, reforming family law and aiming to establish equality between women and men. The CPS banned the practice of polygamy, required consent from both sides for marriage, and set a minimum age for marriage. It also gave women the ability to initiate divorce and mandated that divorce procedures must be done in secular courts. Women gained the right to vote in 1957 and the ability to run for political office in 1959. However, it wasn't until twenty years later, in 1983, that women were elected political office. Fethia Mzali and Souad Yaacoubi were the first women to hold political office. In 1985, Tunisia ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. However, there were some reservations made. In 1983, changes to the CPS continued to expand women's rights such as the passage of citizenship matrilineally and custody of children following divorce. Following the Jasmine revolution, women's movements fought to insure the existence of the CPS in the new government and that women would be guaranteed equal rights in the constitution. In 2011 a quota was passed requiring parties using parliamentary lists to alternate between men and women. In 2016 an additional provision was made to the quota stating that the parties using parliamentary lists also had to have their list headed by women.