Should refugees be taught lessons on female equality?

[PinkyofPie]

Thangam Debbonaire MP, who chairs the all-parliamentary group on refugees, believes male refugees settling in Britain should be give lessons in women's equality. link here
This concern seems to have stemmed following the Cologne attacks.

Thoughts?

Training is a good idea. We seem to be very good at telling refugees etc. about all the benefits and support they can get, but we don't enough time telling them about the culture they are now living in. It isn't that ours or their's is better exactly, but they do need to understand what the differences are. After all, they are now living here. I'm sure most would welcome this.

It should be men, women and children too.

well said jaxhog

I used to teach English to foreigners and I would give my Spanish students a lesson on the importance of saying please and thank you, as that is not much done in Spain and was giving rise to them being labelled rude by the locals.

I do think it is presumptious to claim that there is equality between the sexes in the UK and that the UK has a superior culture, especially in the face of so much ignorance about the cultures the refugees are coming from.

I live in Mexico and there are a wide variety of cultures in Mexico for a start and, secondly, Mexico used to be much more advanced in women's rights and education than the UK. (It isn't anymore thanks to the transnationals taking over the country).

There are massive similarities across Asian and African nations on many matters including elderly care. Not sure what the point was about refugees not coming from India. My point was about not viewing the world through rosy lenses and glibly declaring we learn stuff from "them" when people have never been "them" and are not are "them"z

There are massive similarities across Asian and African nations on many matters including elderly care
Gosh that is amazing! How many different languages, religions and cultures are we talking about?

GETTING that's a sweeping assumption to make.

According to international development indexes, Afghanistan is the worst country in the world for care of elderly people and elderly people's rights.

That's really interesting almond

Sweden ranked first for treatment of elderly in UN report - www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-24346962

Global rankings table | Data | Global AgeWatch Index 2015
www.helpage.org/global-agewatch/population-ageing-data/global-rankings-table/

So rather being terrible at care of the elderly in the UK, the UK is 10th. Higher would be good but given the list of countries 1-15 I suspect the differences between them are minimal.

I don't know if GETTING's assumptions are so sweeping. I live in Mexico and a friend of mine has six brothers and sisters and they all pulled their weight looking after their father with dementia but they all ended up exhausted, so yes, they hired two carers to look after him.

I was really put on the spot when a young Afghan man asked me if it was true that we in the UK place our elderly relatives away from the family in care homes. He couldn't comprehend why we would even consider it

Because they have big families. Before my father died, he needed two carers to take him to the loo etc. If he had lived with me, I would still have needed help from elsewhere, I could not have coped on my own. And I'd have needed live-in care to deal with the nights. Anyway, do many Afghans live until they are 93? There's a difference looking after an elderly relative who is, say, 63.

I agree we can learn from their cultures too but they have to accept when they come to the UK or another Western country that having a penis does not give you the right to lord it over those who don't, and women are not whores because they don't cover their hair.

We still have a long way to go in the UK but we've come a long way too. However, my indicator for equality would be being able to go for a run in a quiet lonely place in the same way that a man could, without fear of meeting some nutter who wants to rape you. When we get to that point, we'll have true equality. But we don't need migrants from other cultures dragging us backwards - if they want to live here, they absolutely have to accept equality for women.

According to international development indexes, Afghanistan is the worst country in the world for care of elderly people and elderly people's rights.

Since most elderly people are women, and Afghanistan is one of the worst countries in the world for women's rights, this does not surprise me much.
Add some mistreatment of the elderly in general into it, and it's no surprise at all that they rank last.

Afghanistan: Critical concerns and challenges of ageing women | Women Reclaiming and Redefining Cultures
www.wluml.org/news/afghanistan-critical-concerns-and-challenges-ageing-women

There's a difference looking after an elderly relative who is, say, 63

A relative aged 63 in the UK is just a relative.

A relative aged 63 in the UK is just a relative.

Don't know about the UK, but in the US, this is the age group that is doing a large chunk of the caring for older family members. And the majority are women, of course.

I don't want my tax money spent educating refugees how to behave if they come to live here.

I've lived overseas for many years, including India and UAE and I've educated myself how to behalf. Let's give them a print out of what's expected and leave it at that. If they can't adapt then send them home.

women are not whores because they don't cover their hair

purplevase4 what you are failing to grasp here is that the refugees I I'm talking about (ie most of those involved in the current migration) have left their homes exactly to escape this kind of ideology.

The refugees I'm working with are victims of the sweep of Daesh and they wish to assimilate into western culture, with all its diversity.

Again we need to stop conflating the words migrant and refugee. We have a collective moral responsibility to ensure those fleeing wars and persecution are safe. Migrants not so much. However we could class any woman fleeing an oppressive culture a refugee could we not?

My friend works in a call centre which deals with issues to do with refugees. She says many men ring up and refuse to speak to a woman.
She tells them to hang up and rejoin the queue and see if they get a man next time (there is one in the office full of women) or to get over it and she will help them.

Cuttedup you said you worked with refugees from everywhere. Just because someone is escaping Daesh does not mean they want to assimilate into western secular life. The enemies of Daesh are not just secular westernised Muslims, Christians or Yazidis; they also include supporters of al-Nusra and al Qaeda. Your original mention of a young Afghan man querying how we treat old people illustrated someone who is not willing to integrate into western life, which rather undermines what you just said there. Just because soneone is not a murderous fanatic doesn't mean it's not a problem when they believe women should be at home having large families instead of being educated and working. You should have had an answer for that young man.

However we could class any woman fleeing an oppressive culture a refugee could we not?

In theory, yes. But people in positions of authority would have to want that.
(I think it would even be feasible, as most women do prefer to stay home, even if home is a terrible misogynistic hellhole, so we wouldn't be flooded by refugees.)

It's not just daesh who have rocked up and decided that women are to be treated as inferior. It was the Taliban before them, who we ignored when they were abusing and opressing women, until 9/11, when it was suddenly evidence of how terrible they were. It was a deep seated traditions that went back centuries that decided that women were inferior. Anyone who has been to a MENA country and has been told to cover up for fear of being groped and exposed to in the street will tell you that. Not to mention the women who were sexually abused in cologne and other places. It makes me angry that people are excusing this as 'cultural differences' until we sleepwalk into an erosion of the freedoms we have in this country. Of course there is sexual abuse in this country, but it is not acceptable, or excused. Everyone should know this. Whatever country they come from.

Of course there is sexual abuse in this country, but it is not acceptable, or excused.

I think some people would disagree with this though, Raised. Isn't that what a rape culture is - the normalisation and excusing of male sexual violence against women? Granted we have laws against these things, but many feminists would argue that they are next to useless, given that the patriarchy belittles the struggles of women against male violence. So maybe the refugees feel that their culture and ours don't actually differ that much.

Not saying that I agree with this viewpoint, but that this is a constant theme on FWR.

Grimarse. You state that "No nakedness tolerated" between males in Muslim countries.
Could you explain how the practice of 'bacha bazi' ( dancing boys) is tolerated? I would imagine it would be difficult to have sex with a young boy without seeing some nakedness.

I don't know. Maybe I am naive, but I don't think that view is common. Of course there are both men and women in this country who don't think men and women should have equal rights to work, and that women who wear revealing clothes deserve to be sexually assaulted, but I don't think it's a cultural norm at all. I can walk around on a sunny day wearing whatever I want. I wouldn't have said the same thing when I was in Egypt or Dubai or India. We have a long way to go, but not as far as countries who live in the equivalent of the Middle ages and seem to be regressing, rather than progressing.

Grimarse. You state that "No nakedness tolerated" between males in Muslim countries.
Could you explain how the practice of 'bacha bazi' ( dancing boys) is tolerated? I would imagine it would be difficult to have sex with a young boy without seeing some nakedness.

I think it might be a bit like in Ancient Rome, you know, free men fucking slaves and adult men fucking boys is tolerated, but men of the same age having consensual sex is verboten, as it might discourage those men from taking part in the patriarchy game by acting as the oppressor of a wife.

This would lead to men fearing sexual violence from other men and subsequently wanting to cover up in public showers, etc. Male sexuality seems to be pretty malleable, and without marriage, men in some Muslim coutnries have about as much access to women as men in prison here, and you know what they say about dropping the soap in a prison shower ...

(It could also be completely unrelated. I think in many countries it is the norm to not be naked in saunas, etc ... isn't that also the case in Britain?)