Houthis continue to marginalize Yemeni women: Their role is tenderness and affection only

Ahmed Adel

The Houthis in Yemen are increasingly restricting women’s freedoms, where the Iranian-backed group practices several violations against them, including increasing restrictions on their freedom of movement, requiring a mahram (male guardian) to allow them to travel, and reducing their social role in public life.

Mass abuse and violations

Yemeni women have not experienced injustice, arbitrariness and humiliation over the past centuries such as those they face during the rule of the Houthi militia in a short period of time, as the crimes committed against them include murder, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, torture, insults, slander, harassment, fabrication of charges, intimidation, beating, displacement, and other crimes committed by the Houthi militia against women.

Yemeni women have obtained a share of the unjust laws of the Houthi authorities and their unjust arbitrariness. Since the militia’s monopoly on power, it has begun to intensify its pressures and transgressions against women under the pretext of preserving morals, values and faith culture, claiming that many women’s professions, work, and even their customs are contrary to morals and fall within the list of prohibitions that the Houthi militia criminalizes in accordance with its extremist vision.

Demanding firm positions

More than 120 community and civil organizations called on the international community, the United Nations, UN and US envoys, and human rights bodies to take firm positions, condemn the criminal practices against women in Houthi-controlled areas, and put real pressure on the leaders of the militia to force them to stop their grave and continuous violations against women.

In a joint statement issued in March on the occasion of International Women’s Day, the organizations said that they condemn in the strongest terms the violations committed by the terrorist Houthi militia against Yemeni women, including violence in all forms, harassment, discrimination, restriction of freedoms, and deprivation of their rights guaranteed by the constitution.

It emphasized that women and girls in militia-controlled areas are subjected to systematic violations, including restricting their travel without a guardian, preventing access to health and reproductive care, preventing them from working, segregating the sexes in public places, and promoting anti-women attitudes.

The statement noted that the militia has adopted a discriminatory approach towards the status of women with the aim of suffocating women and girls and erasing them from the public sphere, describing them as incomplete or inhuman, and bringing shame and evil to the extent that the militia confiscated mannequins displaying clothes in shops, as well as exercising other restrictions on personal freedoms such as cosmetics, singing at weddings and owning smartphones.

Houthis restrict role of women

Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi made new statements regarding his militia’s position on the role of Yemeni women in building society and participating in various forums, addressing Yemeni women that practical matters that need direct communication come within the framework of men’s responsibilities.

Houthi affirmed in a televised lecture, broadcast by Al-Masirah channel on Monday, July 17, that there is no need for women to have direct relations with foreign men, referring to the restriction of women’s participation in narrow and limited career fields.

He explained that the role of women in this life is tenderness and affection only, and he considered women’s consultation in the areas of basic responsibility of men to be the advice of non-specialists in this role, as it is a role in which women have no experience.

Houthi accused those he described as enemies of seeking to separate women from their families, saying that Islam placed care and expenses on men.