Philippe Fargues

Women in Arab Countries: Challenging the Patriarchal System?

Abstract Progress in the empowerment of Arab women was found to be low in a 2002 report. Yet Arab women’s status is not reflected in continuing high fertility, which in 2000 had dropped sharply in one generation to 3.4. This paper discusses why fertility decline could nevertheless have taken place in the Arab countries. Islam has not stood in the way of fertility decline, as Iran and Algeria show. From the mid-1970s to 1980s, subsidised consumption through oil wealth redistribution reduced the cost of children, and social conservatism kept married women out of the labour force, both of which promoted higher fertility. The early stages of fertility decline were mainly due to longer length of education of girls, rising female age at first marriage, e.g. 28 in urban Morocco and 29 in Libya, and entry into the labour force of young, single women. There is also a growing population sub-group of never-married young women. Collapsing oil prices and structural adjustment reduced household resources and became an effective fertility regulation factor. Girls born since the 1950s have not only been educated longer than their mothers, but also their fathers, which increases their authority. These factors, and women’s activism and civil and political lobbying for the reform of personal status now underway in a number of Arab countries, could all challenge the patriarchal system. Résumé D’après un rapport de 2002, les femmes arabes progressent lentement vers l’autonomisation. Pourtant, leur statut ne va pas de pair avec le maintien d’une fécondité élevée : en une génération, celle-ci a été ramenée à 3,4 en 2000. L’Islam n’a pas fait obstacle au déclin de la fécondité, ainsi que le montrent l’Iran et l’Algérie. À partir de la moitié des années 70 et pendant les années 80, les subventions à la consommation provenant de la redistribution des revenus pétroliers ont réduit le coût de l’éducation des enfants, et le conservatisme social a maintenu les femmes mariées à la maison, deux mesures qui ont stimulé la fécondité. La fécondité a commencé à diminuer principalement du fait de l’allongement des études des filles, ce qui a retardé l’âge du premier mariage, par exemple 28 ans pour les Marocaines urbaines et 29 pour les Libyennes, et l’entrée sur le marché de l’emploi des célibataires. Les jeunes célibataires sont aussi plus nombreuses. La chute des prix pétroliers et l’ajustement structurel ont régulé efficacement la fécondité. Les filles nées depuis les années 50 sont plus instruites que leur mère, mais aussi que leur père, ce qui accroît leur autorité. Ces facteurs, ainsi que l’activisme des femmes et les pressions pour la réforme du statut personnel en cours dans plusieurs pays arabes pourraient saper le système patriarcal. Resumen En un informe del 2002 se encontraron muy pocos avances en la empoderación de las mujeres árabes. No obstante, el estatus de las mujeres árabes no se refleja en la continua fertilidad elevada, que en 2000 había disminuido marcadamente a 3.4 en una generación. En este artículo se examinan las causas de esta disminución en los países árabes. Islam no ha obstaculizado el descenso de la fertilidad, como se observa en Irán y Argelia. Desde mediados de los años setenta hasta los ochenta, el consumo subsidiado mediante la redistribución de la riqueza petrolera redujo el costo de tener hijos, y el conservadurismo social mantuvo a las mujeres casadas fuera de la fuerza de trabajo; ambos factores promovieron una fertilidad elevada. Las etapas iniciales de la disminución de la fertilidad se debieron principalmente a una duración más larga de la educación de las niñas, un ascenso en la edad de las mujeres al primer matrimonio, p. ej., 28 en Marruecos urbano y 29 en Libia, y la entrada de las mujeres jóvenes solteras en la fuerza de trabajo. Existe, además, un creciente subgrupo demográfico de mujeres jóvenes que nunca se han casado. Los bajos precios del petróleo y el ajuste estructural disminuyeron los recursos hogareños y constituyen un factor eficaz en la regulación de la fertilidad. Las niñas nacidas a partir de los años cincuenta han recibido una educación más larga que ambos padres, lo cual aumenta su autoridad. Estos factores, y el activismo y cabildeo civil y político de las mujeres con el fin de reformar su estatus personal, actualmente en curso en varios países árabes, podrían retar el sistema patriarcal.

Arab Migration to Europe: Trends and Policies

Growing Arab migration to Europe is a likely scenario for the coming years, poorly prepared for by current policies. The paper examines three reasons for this scenario: new patterns of family-building in Arab countries; aging in Europe; and the emergence of a new demand for migrant labor. While the ongoing establishment of free trade may increase migratory pressures, government policies remain potentially conflicting –on the Arab side, optimizing the economic benefits drawn from emigrants and reviving their sense of belonging to their culture of origin; on the European side, restricting further immigration and integrating former migrants in the host society and culture.

International Migration and the Demographic Transition: A Two-Way Interaction

The paper explores the relationship between the demographic transition and international migration, that is, between population dynamics and direct connectivity between peoples. The first part examines how ideas conveyed by migrants to non-migrants of their community of origin are susceptible to impact on practices that lead to the reduction of birth rates in source countries of migration and concludes that international migration may be one of the mechanisms through which demographic transition is disseminated. The second part shows that declining birth rates in origin countries generate a new profile of the migrant and suggests that future migrants will typically leave no spouses or children in the home country and therefore their objective will no longer be to improve the familys standing at home for the mere reason that there is no longer such a family, but to increase opportunities for themselves. Migration policies of origin countries on remittances as well as those of destination countries on family reunification will have to be reconsidered.

State Policies and the Birth Rate in Egypt: From Socialism to Liberalism

One reason why the UN chose to hold the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo was to acknowledge both the countrys strong national policy to limit the birth rate and the results that the policy seemed to have achieved. For some years Egypt recorded a substantial decline in its population growth rate apparently the result of several decades of effort toward that end. However neither before nor after the ICPD was Egypts policy on population control critically examined. The author examines the countrys policy to find that no causal relationship has ever been established between the direct action of the Egyptian state to reduce the birth rate and its actual reduction. Contrary to common belief it appears that the lowering of the birth rate in Egypt is not the result of the systematic expansion of family planning services but a response to the countrys changing economic social and political circumstances.

La baisse de la fécondité arabe

Fargues Philippe.— Descenso de la fecundidad arabe. La fecundidad de las poblaciones arabes comienza a descender, pero con fuertes diferencias regionales. El articulo presenta en primer lugar los niveles y las tendencias mas recientes reveladas por el registro civil de algunos paises donde las estadisticas son confiables. A continuacion se examinan los factores de evolucion en el tiempo y de variacion en el espacio. Un lento ascenso de la fecundidad habia precedido al descenso registrado estos ultimos afios. Estos dos movimientos de direccion opuesta tienen su origen en las transformaciones del matrimonio : regresion del divorcio durante la primera mitad del siglo veinte, luego aumento de la edad de las mujeres al primer matrimonio. Si la urbanization y la escolarizacion se ven bien ligadas a las diferencias de fecundidad al interior de cada uno de los paises arabes, ni una ni otra explican las diferencias entre paises. En las poblaciones arabes, el segundo factor se halla a veces asociado al descenso de la fecundidad a veces a su persistencia, posiblemente porque favoreciendo a los varones, la escuela aumenta la desigualadad futura entre los conyuges. La tasa de participation de las mujeres en las actividades economicas ejercidas fuera del hogar se halla por el contrario bien correlacionada con el descenso de la fecundidad, sin duda porque resulta un buen testificante de la evolucion de los roles familiares.

A method for deriving mortality estimates from incomplete vital Statistics

Summary Although they are available in many developing countries vital registration records are very little used for mortality estimation which is still mainly based on census returns. However, defective death records may yield accurate estimations of mortality. This procedure requires few data only; a sex-age distribution of the population (preferably at the middle of a period) and a sexage distribution of deaths, either derived from vital records or from census returns to questions relating to deaths during the preceding twelve months. This method is based on the observation that for a fixed age structure of the population, there is a one-one relation between the age structure of deaths (measured by the proportion of deaths at older ages) and the level of mortality (measured by the death rate above a certain minimum age). It is assumed that at ages above this minimum the rate of underregistration of deaths does not vary significantly with age. Therefore, the age distribution of registered deaths makes it possible to estimate the true proportion of deaths at older ages. This in its turn will permit the estimation of the true level of mortality, because of the relation which exists between age structure of deaths and level of mortality. The true level is then compared with the observed, to estimate the rate of underregistration, and observed age-specific death rates can be adjusted in the light of this knowledge.

Beirut 1984: a population and health profile.

The results of a survey of approximately 2752 households interviewed in Beirut Lebanon in 1983-1984 as part of an effort to establish a population laboratory in that city are presented. The methodology used in developing the survey is first described. Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the survey population including age and sex composition nuptiality mortality fertility and migration are discussed in one chapter. The bulk of the report is concerned with morbidity and the use of health services (ANNOTATION)

International migration and the nation state in Arab countries

International migration and the nation state have had, in all times and in all places, a difficult relationship. While the nation state is a community that recognises itself as one people sharing one territory and one narrative, international migrants are perceived as transgressors to the founding principle of the nation: emigrants, because they live outside the territory of which they still share the narrative; immigrants, because they are not yet part of the narrative attached to the territory in which they are newcomers. This article will, firstly, recall how Arab emigration in the age of nation-states has created an expatriate population that keeps links with its land of origin. It will show how states have shifted from disinterest and even distrust towards expatriates, to envisioning them as economic resources for national development and construction. The article will describe how development and security advantages, as compared with their African or Asian neighbours, have turned Arab states into receivers of new waves of international migrants and refugees, including a small minority of transit migrants stranded on their way to Europe, which some of them will reach clandestinely. While labour markets and, to a certain extent, societies are open to newcomers, Arab nation states demonstrate increasingly deny aliens full membership and, eventually, citizenship.

Demographic Islamization: Non-Muslims in Muslim Countries

O hundred million non-Muslims are presently living in Muslim countries, i.e. countries with a Muslim demographic majority. Muslim countries comprise three quarters of the world’s 1.26 billion Muslims. Most of them have an overwhelming Muslim majority1 (see table, p. 106) and Islam as a state religion.2 Non-Muslim communities in Muslim countries are shrinking, in relative size and in some places in absolute numbers. These communities are affected by a process of Islamization, understood as an increase in the percentage of Muslims. Islam being the latest of the great religions, its expansion took place at the expense of the preceding ones. Four, and only four, processes have led to Islamization in the demographic meaning of the word:3 conversion to Islam, differences in birth and/or death rates between Muslim and non-Muslim segments of the population, replacement of non-Muslims by Muslims through migration, and intermarriage, which automatically gives birth to a Muslim second generation. This article focuses on non-Muslims living in the central part of the Muslim world, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where they form 4.4 percent of the total population.4 It argues first that this is a period of rapid Islamization, and second that the present decrease in the proportion of non-Muslims is not the result of coercion or intolerance by dominant Islam as much as of intermarriage, a sign of the openness of these communities to their Muslim environment, and of international migration, a sign of their openness to the outside world.

Un siècle de transition démographique en Afrique méditerranéenne 1885-1985

Fargues Philippe. — Un siglo de transition demografica en paises africanos riberefios del Mediterranee. Se admite habitualmente que la transicion demografica en Egipto y Argelia es el resultado de la introduccion de progresos medicos en la epoca colonial. Pero una relectura de las estadisticas de poblacion de estos dos paises, recopiladas desde hace un siglo, induce a pensar en otra explicacion : la disminucion de la mortalidad es mas antigua y habria estado asociada, por lo menos en un primer tiempo en el siglo XIX, a un crecimiento economico. Se pueden discernir tambien dos tendencias de la fecundidad : una a largo plazo al aumento de la fecundidad, que va cediendo lentamente su lugar a otra tendencia a la disminucion. Tanto una como otra tendencia son los resultados sucesivos de una misma evolucion hacia una mayor estabilidad de los matrimonios.