Nearly 3,000 years ago, parts of present-day Yemen were ruled by a woman. Belquis, the legendary Queen of Sheba, chose a site in what is today the Yemeni province of Marib as the political center of her kingdom that stretched from there to Ethiopia. Today, Yemeni Bedouins still guard the ruins of her ancient temple—with hardly any support for their efforts—from both the sands of time and modern-day rulers who reject both Yemen’s pre-Islamic history and most roles for women outside the home.[1]
Despite the stance of these rulers, even Islamic history remembers some Yemeni women who governed. Al-Khayzuran, a Yemeni slave girl, was sold to the Abbasid[2] caliph ruling in Baghdad during the second half of the 8th Century. Within two decades, she rose to become the caliph’s concubine and then wife—and is noted as the first woman in the history of Islam to rule de facto. While her husband spent his time hunting and having fun, she held court in her chambers, running the caliphate and wielding immense influence on state affairs during both the reigns of her husband and her sons.[3] Meanwhile, in the 11th Century, Queen Arwa ruled Yemen outright for five decades. Belonging to the minority Ismaili sect of Islam, she was known for her political skills and her mastery of religious law—grounding her fatwas in four different schools of religious jurisprudence.[4]
In the 20th Century, Yemeni women began building on this legacy of Yemeni women in governance to secure their democratic rights in modern-day Yemen. After throwing off the yoke of colonial rule, southern Yemeni women gained the right to vote in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) in 1967. Northern Yemeni women in the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) followed suit just three years later in 1970, in the wake of a popular revolt against a theocratic autocracy. When extreme religious Wahabism[5] spread to Yemen in the 1980s, the progress women were making in both countries slowed with the renewed emphasis on excluding women from public life and an insistence in urban areas on the all-black cloaks, head coverings, and face veils characteristic of Wahabi Islam. Nonetheless, following the unification of the PDRY and the YAR in 1990 to form the Republic of Yemen, two women were elected to parliament in 1997. By 2013, Yemeni women had managed to negotiate a 30 percent quota in elected bodies and governmental institutions at the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) that followed Yemen’s Arab Spring revolution. Now, however, nearly a decade of conflict has largely wiped out their hard-won gains, and women are virtually non-existent in Yemen’s governing bodies.[6] Yet despite their absence in high-level political circles, in some isolated cases, Yemen’s war has opened doors for women as community-level administrators.
In the Al Jumhuri neighborhood of Taiz City, 40-year-old Ishraq Al Jaashani has been serving since 2015 in the role of Aqel Al Hara—a position long designated for keeping the peace in urban neighborhoods all over Yemen.[7] Before the war started that year, a woman in Aden was the only woman in Yemen known to have functioned as an Aqel Al Hara, which literally translates to the “rational” or “sensible” person in the neighborhood. Ishraq told Daffaq News that when she took on the role during that first year of the war, she faced slander, insults, and physical assaults for her efforts. However, she said these aggressions came from people outside of her neighborhood who, “considered themselves responsible for the rebellion of any woman.” Neighborhood residents, meanwhile, accepted Ishraq’s supervision as she fought to obtain and fairly distribute much-needed relief for her enclave within the siege of Taiz that was being left out of aid distributions reaching other parts of the city. Her efforts earned her a reputation for wisely managing the neighborhood’s affairs and reflects a core dimension of tribal relations in Yemen—which is that tribal leaders do not inherit their status, but rather accrue power and influence by demonstrating their ability to protect and promote community interests.[8]
The province of Taiz, where Ishraq advocates for her urban neighborhood, has a heritage of “rebellious” women who have fought for the rights of their local communities. Today, Tuhfat Al Habal is remembered as the first Yemeni woman to lead a foot march against the regime of Yemen’s Imam Ahmad.[9] From the Al-Asila region of Sharaab Al-Salaam district north of Taiz City, Tuhfat was instrumental in arming the farmers of the district in the mid-1950s to the degree that it was suggested that she possessed a “weapons tree.” After arming the villagers, Tuhfat led them on a march from her rural district to the Imam’s palace in Taiz City. No shots were fired, but Tuhfat and her cohort refused to surrender their weapons and thus successfully negotiated the removal of the Imam’s deputies from Sharaab Al-Salaam—securing the region’s self-governance even before northern Yemen’s Republican revolution that overthrew Imam Ahmad’s son in 1962. Imam Ahmad even wrote a letter officially addressed to Tuhfat Al Habal, pledging that his officials would not encroach on her personal property or the property of any citizen in Sharaab Al-Salaam. In the absence of the Imam’s representatives, Tuhfat became responsible for resolving issues related to land and other disputes in her district. Meanwhile, following the Republican revolution, Tuhfat supported initiatives to educate the district’s young people. After her death in 1994, the people of Sharaab continued to remember her as a “Himyarite[10] queen.”[11]
Around the same time that Tuhfat was organizing the tribesmen of Sharaab Al-Salaam in Taiz, Radhya Ihsanallah founded the Arab Woman’s Association (AWA) in Aden. Southern Yemen was still a British colony then, and the AWA’s women were prominent activists in the anti-colonial movement, and some were even combat fighters in the armed struggle against imperial British rule.[12] As governing administrators and resistance figures, Belquis, Khayzuran, Arwa, Tuhfat, Radhya, and even Ishraq are among the notable exceptions of leading women within Yemen’s patriarchal tribal social systems. While those systems have largely restricted women from public leadership roles, they have also historically provided women with access and influence in dispute resolution processes—ranging from female-led tribal mediations to the important role that most women play in influencing community dispute processes through lobbying male family members at home or in private.[13]
“Our tribal customs grant women some powers in resolving disputes,” says Salim, a retired teacher from Taiz in his 60s. “Sometimes, this keeps men from taking up arms to solve their disputes. Women work to resolve conflicts every day. They work behind the scenes and pressure men to accept peace and to de-escalate problems, and they encourage men to agree to solutions and make concessions—and sometimes women escalate problems, too.”
A 10-minute short film produced in 2018 in partnership with Nahj Consulting provides case studies from four different provinces of Yemen that illustrate the local conflict resolution work that Yemeni women are carrying out within Yemen’s current protracted conflict.[14] According to the research of Nahj Consulting,[15] in Yemen’s tribal areas there have historically been four ways for a woman to resolve or stop a conflict: 1) cutting her hair; 2) taking off her veil and placing it with the opponents; 3) taking weapons away to stop the fighting; and 4) invoking tadreek (suspension of hostilities)—a temporary measure to stop fighting in order to seek a third party to arbitrate—or by going to the opposing tribe to ask for tahkeem (arbitration).[16] In 2023, The Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies released a study that described a version of such traditions used by women in Shabwa, one of Yemen’s most conservative provinces. The study is introduced with the dramatic story of Aunt Ridha, who once saved a man detained for stealing eggs from having his finger chopped off by throwing her face veil to call for reconciliation.[17] During Yemen’s 2011 Arab Spring protests, women in Sana’a drew on similar tribal traditions when they burned their face veils in a provocative action adjacent to Aunt Ridha casting off her veil in Shabwa. By thus exercising their agency within the scope of accepted tribal practices, the women pushed tribal leaders to join the protests and accept women’s political activism while also pushing the protestors and political leaders to avoid violence.
The traditional tribal customs that have allowed Yemeni women these recourses to sue for peace, have also historically deemed women as vulnerable and sought to shelter them accordingly. “According to our norms, women are treated as a protected class, and those who harass or mistreat women are scorned with shame,” says Salim.
It is these norms around protecting women that often contribute to preventing them from trying to resolve disputes in which their own tribe is not involved or otherwise taking on more public roles as mediators. “Her family and tribe fear she will be mistreated by the other tribe,” Intisar Al-Qadi from the Early Warning Center for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding told researchers from the Sana’a Center in 2022. “Any mistreatment, even if verbal, can cause a problem that’s larger than the one she is attempting to resolve, since assaulting a woman is a ‘black shame,’ and a tribe can entirely mobilize to defend her.”[18]
Nonetheless, in Taiz’s Arab Spring protests, women leveraged the norms that prohibit harassing or assaulting women when they demanded to be put at the front of protest gatherings to protect the protesters behind them. This also served to make them more visible. However, those protests and the NDC that followed drew out elements who justified defying those norms in resistance to more visible roles for women in Yemeni society. Women who participated in public activism were verbally and physically attacked, called out on social media as dishonorable, and accused of “holding meetings with strange men at night.”[19] A 2023 study from the Sana’a Center found that similar defamation campaigns were the prime obstacle hindering women from engaging more publicly in peacebuilding initiatives to end the current conflict.[20] According to some researchers, such opposition to women’s public activism does not reflect the will or opinions of the majority of Yemenis but rather a lack of support for gender equality within Yemen’s political parties—especially religious political parties.[21]
Today, in Yemen’s complex and evolving tribal, political, and conflict-affected context, approaches to empowering women have a lot to consider. According to the Yemen Policy Center, many international organizations and activists adopt a narrative grounded in an oversimplified understanding of Yemeni women’s lives that centers rescuing women from their patriarchal societal structures and customs that may seem misogynistic to Westerners. Such approaches risk eroding other valuable roles that women have historically played within those structures, such as tribal mediation and reconciliation. Those roles—which have traditionally been carried out without remuneration—are more at risk than ever within Yemen’s war-devastated economy since fulfilling them effectively typically involves time-consuming practices as well as travel and expressions of hospitality that can be costly. That war economy, rather than Western feminist narratives, is now driving Yemeni women both into the public workforce as well as away from traditional duties in their communities relating to reconciliation.[22]
“In Yemen, the level of women’s participation in the labor market was one of the lowest in the world,” says Amira, a Yemeni woman who lives in Taiz. “However, with the outbreak of war, many wives lost their husbands, many single women lost their fathers, and women otherwise lost the breadwinners they were relying on. We reached a point that we had to shift from being consumers, economically speaking, and become producers. Many women began enrolling in economic empowerment courses—whether they were educated or illiterate. After completing these courses and training, some launched their own enterprises and have been working to expand them.”
Like the women she describes, Amira participated in a personal financial training course offered by a local non-profit and used the principles she learned as she launched her own small business. Offering her services as a seamstress, Amira now sews women’s robes of all shapes and kinds—including prayer robes—as well as dresses for girls and curtains. Her customers are mostly colleagues and neighbors and despite the rising prices of fabric and other sewing materials, her marginal profits are enough to help meet her family’s basic needs for food and drink and to buy her parents new clothes at the Eid holiday. According to Amira, as women contribute more to their household’s financial means, they tend to have a greater role in decision-making and conflict resolution at the household level. Thus, Amira sees increasing economic resourcefulness as the way forward for strengthening the position of women in Yemeni society today.
“It is time for every Yemeni woman to invest in her abilities,” she says. “We make up half of the society and we are able to lead development side by side with men. I eventually became a trainer myself and presented a number of courses, including human development and embroidery courses. Since the days of Belquis—the Queen of Sheba—Yemeni women have been known for their wisdom and ability to manage their society, participate in it, and contribute to its improvement. Today, we are the legacy of that great woman, who began working in agriculture, trade, education, and leadership side by side with men. We must honor that legacy, restore it, and advance it so that we can prosper and thrive.”
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73JaAYArXHw
[2] The Abbasid Caliphate was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic Prophet Muhammad, overthrowing the Umayyad Caliphate in 750 CE and ruling until it was destroyed by the Mongol invasion in 1258 CE. The Abbasids were descendants of Al-Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, of the Hashemite clan of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca.
[3] https://martinifisher.com/2022/06/23/al-khayzuran/, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Mernissi, Fatima; Mary Jo Lakeland, Oxford University Press)
[4] https://sanaacenter.org/publications/analysis/33
[5] Wahhabism is a revivalist movement that grew out the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The name derives from its 18th century founder, the Hanbali teacher and reformer Muhammad Ibn Abd Al Wahhab. Wahhabism maintains a strict and puritanical view of religious rites, prohibits dancing and music, and prescribes a rigid dress code for women.
[6] https://sanaacenter.org/files/Womens_Voices_in_Yemens_Peace_Process_Priorities_Recommendations_and_Mechanisms_for_Effective_Inclusion_en.pdf
[7] The Aqel Al-Hara, or neighborhood chief, is an influential government appointee whose primary function is to keep peace in his assigned neighborhood or area and liaise with police if crimes occur. Appointees are usually male, and their duties include coordinating matters of marriage, births and deaths, and other government-related issues.
[8] https://daffaqnews.com/?p=37637
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxn_8la865M
[10] The Himyar tribe was prominent in the ancient kingdom of Sheba and later ruled much of southern Arabia from about 115 BCE to 525 CE.
[11] https://www.almashhadnews.com/19099
[12] https://almadaniyamag.com/2020/12/26/yemeni-feminist-discourse/
[13] https://arabstates.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20Arab%20States/Attachments/2018/Women%20on%20the%20frontlines-WEB-REV.PDF
[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlTfgWpQHQQ&list=PLt6Jq6O7V3eT2DMqKCpxmMe1jzOLRe7Vr
[15] https://arabstates.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Field%20Office%20Arab%20States/Attachments/Publications/2019/02/WomenInConflictResolutionAndPeacebuildingInYemenFIN.PDF
[16] Tahkeem (arbitration) is a tribal process that occurs when both parties to a dispute or conflict agree on one person, usually a tribal leader or public figure, to make a judgment in a conflict and propose a solution. Each party then provides the arbitrator with physical guarantees (which can be in the form of guns, money, cars, or expensive daggers) to ensure that the two disputing parties will not commit further offenses and will abide by the arbitrator’s decision. The parties then present an account of the case and their allegations, and the arbitrator makes a decision. While there are options for appeals, in general the outcome of this process is considered final.
[17] https://sanaacenter.org/files/The_Role_of_Shabwani_Women_in_Tribal_Mediation_and_Reconciliation_en.pdf
[18] https://sanaacenter.org/files/Women_Non_Traditional_Roles_in_Tribal_Societies_en.pdf
[19] https://opus.uleth.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/19449a31-7f33-4868-ada4-a1624829d29a/content
[20] https://sanaacenter.org/files/Grassroots_Voices-Women_and_Everyday_Peacebuilding_in_Yemen_en.pdf
[21] https://opus.uleth.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/19449a31-7f33-4868-ada4-a1624829d29a/content
[22] https://www.yemenpolicy.org/ingos-must-navigate-feminism-and-womens-empowerment-with-cultural-sensitivity-to-avoid-a-backlash/
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