U.N. Cites Arab World's 'Empty Gestures' on Women - washingtonpost.com
A United Nations report cites progress on women's rights in Morocco and a few other countries, but finds that the status of women continues to be below that of much of the rest of the world:
[Amat al-Alim Alsoswa, director of the U.N. Development Program's Arab bureau,] also said that although women's participation in politics has grown in such countries as Morocco, Bahrain and Iraq, it is "still below what it is outside the Arab world."
The report cites Morocco as not simply secularizing the laws related to women, but also creatively reinterpreting Islamic law to afford women more rights.