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HM Queen Noor’s interview for Vital Woman, an Internet Magazine produced by the on-line department of the Condé Nast Publications Ltd.Q1. Her Majesty is an active patron of international institutions around the world. Does She see this as part of Her duties as Queen, or is it something She feels She has a personal involvement with? My national and international involvement stems from lifelong personal commitments and from a deep sense of responsibility, as a Jordanian and as a Queen, to play an advocacy role and be a catalyst for positive change. When I married, I hoped to continue to work for issues that had been important to me as a student and as a working woman. Growing up as an Arab-American in the United States, I was involved with the Civil Rights movement, the Anti-War movement and environmental activism. Those issues, that galvanized my generation into action decades ago, are now global challenges that are addressed by many organizations, in which I am actively involved, most notably the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and the International Commission on Peace and Food, which was founded to redirect military resources into programs to promote peace, democracy, food security and employment. I am particularly committed to international and national programs that use education as a tool of peace. I am President of the United World Colleges (UWC), a network of 10 multi-cultural colleges around the world, whose equal-opportunity international secondary program is designed to foster cross-cultural understanding and global peace. I also chair an international advisory committee for the United Nations University International Leadership Academy in Jordan, the world’s first global leadership training facility that aims to create a network of enlightened future leaders, who will enhance cooperation through dialogue and intercultural exchange.
Q2. In Her speech at Harvard University last October, the Queen referred to the "well worn stereotypes" imposed on Muslim women by the West. She also suggested that some media commentators saw Her Majesty’s role in the same light. Is this still a problem she often faces? How does She personally confront it? How should others deal with the problem? Those "well worn stereotypes" are a result of misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam in addition to historical political distortions, that still persist and may in fact be increasing despite the advances in communication technology, which is bringing our world closer together. Muslim women are too often perceived in the West as subservient second-class citizens, deprived of the basic rights that Western women enjoy. In fact, the rights of Muslim women to education, property, inheritance and paid work were prescribed by the Quran 14 centuries ago, centuries before Western women were accorded them; these rights enabled Muslim women to play a prominent political role, such as Aisha, the wife of the Prophet, and even economic roles like Lady Shafa’ whom the Caliph Omar bin Al-Khattab appointed as "muhtasabah" and the supervisor of city’s financial market. Other prominent Muslim women include the renowned poetess Zubaydah Bin Ja’far bin Al-Mansour, the wife of the Abbasid Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid, and the scientist Aisha bint Yusef Al-Ba’ouniyah Al-Dimashqiyah. The message of Islam is that of fundamental moral and spiritual equality of men and women, reinforced by the many sayings of the Prophet who once said, "All people are equal. They are as equal as the teeth on a comb." I have been tackling these persistent misconceptions since I came to live and work in the Middle East in 1975 and have found that in order to confront and dispel these stereotypes, women should become economically independent. When women become genuine economic forces in their communities, their status and influence increases as does the overall quality of life of the community. The Noor Al Hussein Foundation, which I founded in 1985, transformed traditional charity-oriented women’s social welfare practices by introducing modern business management concepts into training and income generation programs, oriented towards both local and international markets.
Q3. As President of the ISC (International Steering Committee on the Economic Advancement of Rural Women), Her Majesty campaigns hard on behalf of women’s rights. What sort of difference have groups like this made to women around the world? What is there left to be done? The International Steering Committee on the Economic Advancement of Rural Women (ISC) is an advocacy group comprising 15 wives of heads of states and governments representing the world’s five regions, who promote the implementation of the Geneva Declaration for Rural Women through the mobilization of political will and public opinion and the formulation and implementation of national policies for rural women around the world. The ISC has promoted innovative pilot projects that seek, within their local areas of impact, to reduce poverty and raise living standards primarily by building on the knowledge and productivity of rural women. The ISC’s work is based on developing networks among women to raise awareness and facilitate the exchange of information, experience and resources. The world is witnessing an alarming trend of the feminization of global poverty with 70% of the world’s 1.2 billion poor are women; 6 out of every 10 poor people in the world are rural women. About one forth of the female labor force in the Middle East is in agriculture and in some countries women make up nearly 50% of the agricultural workforce. Despite their precarious conditions, women, particularly rural women, often find themselves having to shoulder the double burden of caring for their children and households while taking on a significant share in the family’s farming and economic activities. Women, generally are discriminated against in access to credit, land, technology and training. Education and training are key to the empowerment of women and to rapid socio-economic development; for an educated women, wife and mother imparts her knowledge and enhanced awareness to every member of her family. As women, especially rural women, are given the means to develop their personal capabilities, to expand their opportunities and to participate in the decision-making process, they themselves will actively champion their cause by addressing issues of particular concern to them such as labor and inheritance laws, micro-credit for women, increased educational and training opportunities and improved access to socio-economic services. Q4. What does She feel is the most serious issue facing women today? The three main global issues requiring urgent action are first redressing the enormous imbalances between male and female access to training and education, particularly in the case of girls and young women, with priority given to rural women. In addition, national and international development policy must reflect a concern for gender equality; therefore, training in gender issues should be given to policy-makers, planners and development workers and, more importantly women’s participation in the decision-making process must be institutionalized and expanded. Finally, legislation should be passed or modified to increase women’s, particularly rural women’s, access to resources such as land and productive assets, technology, training, markets and employment. In short, governments, donors and NGOs should work together to ensure equal access to resources for women
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