Forms of Discrimination against Working Women: Between Law and Reality

Abstract

The civilisational history of humanity has been a history of change that ran against women, even though the course of women's history over time reveals that they occupied an inferior position relative to men in most human societies. Proceeding from the way religious symbolism affirms the innate equality of men and women, the researcher ʿAlī Laylah holds that "traditional culture became entrenched and biased in favour of men at the expense of women, until human maturity was attained through the creation of philosophies that reflected on the condition and circumstances of things regardless of whether the subject was a man or a woman, and that established that both possess equal rights and equal citizenship". In Europe, the case for the emancipation of women came late, emerging only in the nineteenth century, when it became bound up with the Industrial Revolution and with the world wars, that is, once women had entered the sphere of paid work to replace the men who had left for the front.The entry of women into paid work has likewise grown in recent times, giving rise to a set of issues tied to the traditions of male domination, which have moved from within the walls of the home to the workplace. Such traditions obstruct and impede the improvement of social life in general and the advancement of society and its members, and of the married working woman in particular. The question therefore arises as to the forms that discrimination against her assumes, a matter that weighs heavily on the lives of working women and on society at large.