West Bank women look to divorce marital status from IDs
Although President Mahmoud Abbas approved the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Palestinian women still face discrimination concerning their marital status.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — While Palestinian journalist Nahed Abu Taima was looking to rent a home in the West Bank city of Ramallah, she had great difficulty as a divorced woman in finding a landlord willing to rent to her.
Abu Taima, 43, who works as the gender unit coordinator in the Media Development Center at Birzeit University, told Al-Monitor, "I experienced difficulty in finding a home to rent as a divorced woman. Landlords kept telling me, 'You're a woman, where are we supposed to find you to collect the rent?'”
Following the case of Abu Taima and dozens of similar cases, activists in the West Bank launched a campaign, titled “Together we remove marital status from ID cards,” and demanded that Palestinian Authority (PA) officials remove "marital status" from ID cards, as Palestinian society looks negatively at divorced women.
Campaign founder Mona Hawash told Al-Monitor, “The campaign was launched in April [2015] and is receiving wide popularity among feminist activists and institutions as it aims to stop harassment of women.”
