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  • “I Will Raise My Daughters to Be More Confident”:Women’s Empowerment and Applied Theatre in Jordan
  • Fadi Fayad Skeiker (bio)

Introduction

“Teacher, we tried everything; nothing will work,” declared one woman at the end of the session. This fatalism was her conclusion to a theatre workshop designed to explore, and perhaps promote, empowerment among women, one of two conducted in community centers in Amman, Jordan, under the direction of the author, an applied theatre specialist, with three assistants.1 Paradoxically, the pessimistic view of this workshop participant speaks to both the success and limitations of this kind of theatre work, especially in the context of conservative communities in the Arab world. Applied theatre, with roots in popular education, political organizing, and activism, has been used throughout the world to foster consciousness about issues and to bolster the abilities of less-enfranchised peoples. While applied or participatory theatre offers tremendous promise in promoting a political voice and justice in the Arab world, the task of translating techniques that were developed in other cultures to conservative, religious communities in Jordan and elsewhere faces significant challenges. These two workshops revealed several of these challenges in relation to using the body, filming, and specific theatre techniques. The women participants, despite some differences in education and economic status among them, were able to vocalize views about gender equality in Jordanian society, all voicing some of the same problems. The project demonstrated that participatory storytelling—my blend of several methods of applied theatre—serves as both a means and end for empowering women in the Middle East.

NGOs in Jordan and Women’s Empowerment

These two workshops contribute to the growing discourse on women’s empowerment in Jordan, where numerous nonprofit organizations (known as nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs) and community organizations are working on issues relevant to women and gender. There are organizations dedicated to women’s issues, programs to provide women with income-earning work, such as artisan crafts, and ordinary, community-based organizations that run programs for adult women and girls. But it is important to ask how they are doing so. Most programs that I have witnessed during five years in Jordan use traditional lecturing or demonstration formats as the means to empower women, change beliefs, or encourage new kinds of behavior. Participating in applied theatre workshops offers a stronger, more exploratory method for promoting thinking about and knowledge of many subjects related to social position and practical life: when people participate in group exercises and games and are given voice in collective discussion, the process advances their questioning and understanding more effectively. [End Page 115]

In this essay, I articulate some challenges of using applied theatre within local communities in Jordan. I document two episodes in which another facilitator and I tried using participatory storytelling at the Haya and the Ruwwad cultural centers to highlight the ways in which applied theatre practices must adjust to this context, especially when focusing on women’s empowerment issues. My conclusion speaks to both the constraints and the positive potential of integrating applied theatre for women’s empowerment in Arab culture.

Women in Jordan, as across the Middle East, experience challenges in daily life and professional paths. Statistics about health and education look fairly positive in relation to the developing world and UN goals, but in terms of international development goals, according to Fida Adely’s 2012 study of the country, “education has not delivered what it should for young women in Jordan” (138). Also, even as Jordanian women enjoy relatively high rates of education relative to the region and the Global South, they are underrepresented in labor, both public and private, especially for the eastern Arab areas of the Middle East and North Africa (Khuri). Nor does higher education overall bring lower fertility rates (Adely 140), so the continual trend of having large families imposes limits on women’s time, as well as their economic independence. There are women involved in higher political positions in parliament and the cabinet, but that visibility in the public sphere does not fully reflect the power of women at the local level, in communities and the family structure. At the social level, under the growing influence of fundamentalist...

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