Campaigns, surveys and shared reports

• Radio Arta participated in the Media4Women campaign launched by Free Press Unlimited, in cooperation with international organisations, with the aim of establishing an international media movement to highlight the importance of gender equality in and through the media. Arta *
• “Public Space and the Body” is a report produced by the Syrian Female Journalists Network (SFJN) with the aim of producing intersectional feminist content.
• Syria Untold published a collection of articles within the “Let’s Do Justice” campaign, in cooperation and partnership with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.
• Ongoing cooperation and partnership between Syria Untold and the Syrian Female Journalists Network, including the “Women, Peace and Security” programme. Syria Untold *
• Many women and civil society organisations hold empowerment courses for Syrian women in the Turkish city of Gaziantep so that they become ready to enter the labour market, but the question always arises: “Are these training activities made just about funds and grants, or do they actually achieve the goals for which they are organised and carried out?”

Rozana distributed a questionnaire to more than 60 women as a follow up on the impact of these training activities and listened to women who participated to compare the results of these reports on the ground. Rozana *

– Another questionnaire directed to Syrian women looks at available access to the law on exposure to violence or to human rights organisations concerned in this regard. Rozana*

– Suggestion of a questionnaire from guest editor Yamam: if you answer 10 questions with yes instead of no, you may only be a carrier of an unconscious male inheritance shared by 80 percent of men. This is not evil, just that it needs a bit of struggle, knowledge building, care and increased sensitivity to these issues, but if you answered yes to more than 15 questions, you are closer to being misogynistic. Aljumhuriya *

The gender section of Aljumhuriya.net will host, for an indefinite period, an editor who volunteered to respond to our readers’ many messages on various topics related to the section. From the first moment we called on this editor, she immediately announced her volatile, dry and sharp temperament, her generally “anxious frame” and her lack of particular fascination with feminist, queer and liberal theories and political correctness, despite her knowledge of all of them. She also stipulated that we should not force her to always be correct in this difficult media and journalistic exercise in which we imprisoned her. However, we will try to frame her as correctly as possible knowing that she is always trying to find answers to our questions and those of our readers, although sometimes she asks more questions than the original question. We ask our readers to be bold, as there is no shame in science, but also to be kind in their questions, because she might become someone else if she gets angry over unexpected things. We could not commit her to a specific rhythm for answering questions in her corner because of her temperament, and she suggested that she refer questions to knowledgeable experts and consult friends if she did not have satisfactory answers. Our guest editor, as we said above, is named Yamam. We invite you to welcome her with us and wait for her during the coming weeks and to not hesitate to ask your questions from now on.

Ask Yamam: courting

Rahaf, a Syrian immigrant woman who has been based in a European capital for years now, wrote to Yamam a few weeks ago with a statement and an inquiry: “Hello, madam, my teenage son surprised me with a question that made me sad when he asked me: Is inviting a classmate to a coffee considered harassment?”

“Before I let you talk to your son, I suggest you listen to Scheherazade’s piece by Koraskov, a piece that suggests this beautiful verbal fanfare that we call courting.” Aljumhuriya *

Ask Yamam: swipe left

We received from a young expatriate, Huyam, who recently moved to eastern Germany, the following question: “I am new to dating applications and I would like to get your tips on making use of these apps as much as possible and avoid disasters.”

Here we can summarise the first rule: if the online dating platform requires you to sit on a chair and deal with a laptop, then this means that you are sitting in front of a passage into the past, and you will meet people who smell the fragrance of history. This in itself is not a problem, especially if your taste is vintage, which is something we respect, and as such dedicate to you this immortal song by ABBA.” Aljumhuriya *

Ask Yamam: I really love women

Ismail wrote to us from the city of Batna in eastern Algeria asking: “What exactly is meant by the word misogynist? Bearing in mind that I adore women and consider them goddesses and embodiments of angels on earth, and knowing that my neighbour and childhood friend Ahmed does not desire women – let’s leave it at that to avoid saying anything else – and he was not subjected to this charge before, to the best of my knowledge.”

“Dear Ismail, I wanted to ask you two questions as well, but I have smoke shooting out of my ears at the moment unfortunately. I will suggest that you listen with me to a nerve-wracking piece by a nineteenth-century composer – you certainly didn’t hear about it, because she is a woman, not because you are ignorant or something, and her name is Marie Jaëll.” Aljumhuriya *

Ask Yamam: get out of my head

L.Q. wrote to us from the Al-Khazzan neighbourhood in an Arab coastal city, inquiring about the meaning of the expression “mental burdens”, which her friends used to tell her since she began complaining of clouds that always hover over her brain and prevent her from concentrating, along with other symptoms such as permanent fatigue, bad mood, anxiety and sleep disturbances. Meanwhile, her husband is open to helping her around the house and she doesn’t think that the burdens fall exclusively on her. L.Q. is newly married, working and has a three-year-old child.

Finally, if you are reading this short text, or if you are gathering and collecting for the 60^th time the stockings and other stuff of your children, I advise you to listen to Raphael’s Bolero, you will definitely remember me and guess why I suggested it. Aljumhuriya *