Libyan Women Defy Tradition to Answer Call to Arms

The 16-year-old instructor’s pink dangling earrings tremble slightly as she hoists an anti-aircraft missile launcher to her shoulder and takes mock aim at the sky.

“It’s very heavy, but it works very well,” Aisha Abdullah tells a group of new recruits on a vast, open cement court at the Tripoli Women’s Military Academy. A large portrait of Col. Moammar Kadafi watches over the training session from a nearby building.

Abdullah is one of about 350 young women at the ground forces school which, with an all-female pilots’ school in Misurata, is the most prominent symbol of Kadafi’s stated drive to “totally liberate women in Libya.”

Anomaly in Uniform

“We are answering the call of our leader to all Arab women of all Arab nations to speed up the arming of the people,” says 1st Lt. Nouria Assias, 22, whose sharp eyes peer out from a neatly coiffed bun and a military hat.

“We believe woman should stand beside her countryman. This is equality between man and woman. This should not be just in paradise, but in hell. And by hell I mean war.”

Kadafi’s call, however, does not appear to have been heeded by all the people of this traditional North African country of more than 3 million.

The idea of a woman in arms, a radical one for most Arab societies, has met with stubborn resistance from many sectors, according to Libyan and Western observers. “The issue touches a sensitive nerve and could cause Kadafi big problems down the road,” a diplomat said.

Academy, Assemblies

Although the Tripoli academy has graduated nearly 1,000 officers since it opened in 1978, Westerners also talk about Libyan friends who have pulled their daughters out of regular school--where military training is on the curriculum--because they do not want them to train as soldiers.

In early 1984, the People’s Congresses, the grass-roots governing groups charged with making policy decisions, suspended women’s military training. But that decision was reversed at the insistence of Kadafi, who blamed “reactionary” forces and warned: “We will not give any further opportunities to any forces that have no stake in the revolution.”

In a recent interview, Kadafi--who is generally believed to be in his early 40s--conceded that some Libyans resent the overturning of such traditional ideas as keeping women at home.

“But I feel my ideas are spreading,” he said.

Homemaking is still the No. 1 occupation of Libyan women, according to Western and Libyan observers. Even Libyan feminists with outside jobs argue that a woman’s chief role is at home.

Men still overwhelmingly dominate public life--from the board room to the coffee shop. And young women seeking a career are likely to choose the roles of nurses, teachers or secretaries.

Not Too Quickly

“You can’t expect at this early stage to have women in high places,” said Kadija Jahmi, 69, a pioneer of women’s rights who became the first female broadcaster in Libya 29 years ago. “There is still a long journey to full liberation. We must have more education, become more involved in politics, speak more openly.”

She recounted how she once went to Kadafi in the early 1970s and complained that women’s opinions were not being respected at People’s Congress meetings.

“He said, ‘Go back and impose yourself. Nobody is going to help win your fights but yourself,’ ” Jahmi recalled. Today, in televised congress sessions, women are often among the most vocal participants, making speeches and chanting anti-American slogans alongside the men.

Libyan women have made big gains in education and in the eyes of the law.

The number of female university students has multiplied fivefold since Kadafi’s 1969 coup, though they are still outnumbered by men 3 to 1. Comparable numbers of boys and girls receive primary education, government figures show. Child brides have been legally barred and arranged marriages are allowed only with the woman’s consent, although few girls challenge parental authority.

Liberalized divorce laws allow women a nearly equal say in the decision. Before the revolution, a man could break up the marriage simply by repeating to his wife three times in public: “Divorced.”

Unhappy Alternative

But an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant must marry her lover or face prison, with her child put in an orphanage. Abortion is illegal except in rare cases endangering the mother’s health. Polygamy still exists, although Kadafi is trying to limit the practice by barring families from owning more than one home.

Jahmi says that a woman who is not married by age 30 is considered “unhappy”--a failure, by society.

Kadafi’s revolutionary manifesto, known as the Green Book, derides work that “stains a woman’s beauty and detracts from her femininity.”

An Italian women’s magazine in 1972 termed him “Anti-Feminist of the Month” for saying that if women considered themselves equal to men, “no one should complain if we ask a pregnant woman to parachute.”

But he has made a public about-face, assailing other Arab nations for keeping their women “oppressed and paralyzed,” and recently inviting six Western women journalists for an interview “because I would like to see a world of men and women equal.”

Kadafi’s wife, Safia, 32, no longer wears the traditional Islamic covering, which he says “has no meaning.” But a majority of Libyan women still do, and many young military recruits wear head scarves.

But, like their pretty earrings and the high heels that often show beneath their olive-drab fatigues, the feminine trappings are just one side of the young generation of Libyan women.