It’s Mothers Day on Monday: Another occasion to remember that Lebanese mothers are second-class citizens who are expected to be superheroes. It is, however, another occasion to say that the only gift I want to be given is equal rights. If the law forbids it, then change the law. 

Mothers are encouraged or even forced to work. At the same time, Lebanese women are expected to be perfect mothers, exactly as tradition requires, with or without the father’s involvement.

Lebanon is always held up as an example of the perfect melting pot between East and West, of modernity and traditional values, but it is Lebanese women who have to pay the price for this image. We have to be perfect employees, perfect wives and perfect mothers, and yet we are blamed for any small mistake. But are we given equal rights? Absolutely not. We are regarded as second-class citizens because the religious institutions say so.

There is no civil status law that protects us. Lebanese law recognizes 18 confessions and grants authority to the 18 religious courts. Personal status law depends on these various religious laws and not on one unified civil code.
As a working mother, I want to reach a point, before I die, where I can go to the bank and open a bank account for my child, without feeling inferior or insulted. One day I tried to do so. What is so odd about that? In principle, this should be seen as a prudent decision taken by a working mother who is concerned about her child’s future financial security.

The reality check, no pun intended, came from the teller, herself a mother, as it turned out. “You cannot open an account to your son; the father should sign the documents here,” she said bluntly, without empathy.
Apparently, I, a mother, am not qualified to take care of my son’s financial affairs. According to Lebanese law, the father is the sole guardian of the child, and the only one who can decide on his or her finances, even if the mother happens to be the breadwinner. If the father dies, the responsibility passes to the child’s paternal grandfather, not the mother.

Any real legal change in the advancement of women’s rights would have to be made by a constitutional amendment.  Sectarian leadership and confessional courts, however, have all opposed modifying the clause on personal status, fearing that the abolition of sectarianism in personal status regulations would upset the delicate confessional balance in the political arena. 

A few banks have recently tried to get around the law and created a service whereby mothers can create a fiduciary bank account for their children. It is a contract between the bank and the mother to the favor of a third party: the minor. This initiative has received positive reactions from local media, calling it a breakthrough in women’s rights. However, a number of women’s rights activists have been critical of the initiative, as it does not address the core problem.

Wafa Abed, head of the Internal Audit Department at Bank of Beirut and the Arab World, and a women’s rights activist, was behind the new initiative. “After a legal and an economic study, we decided to create a banking product without breaching the custody law,” she said, adding that a feasibility study showed that in 10 years, there will be $400 million in 100,000 bank accounts of this type in Lebanon.
This is great news for banks, but what about mothers?

The problem is that this initiative, which it must be said is a positive move given the imperfect reality, merely has the mother act as an assignor in trust in a commercial contract. The bank is the assignor, and the child is the beneficiary. She can create the account, which is by nature a deposit account, but has no right to access it if she needs the money. Only the child can, when he or she is 18.

In addition, the initiative is not a law, so it is not binding. In fact, most bank managers and lawyers interviewed for this article said that they have not started offering this service. Furthermore, you need to have a decent chunk of money at your disposal.

Wassim Khoury, operations supervisor at Bank of Beirut, said that his bank is in the process of preparing this service. “These kinds of fiduciary accounts are protected in case of bankruptcy, but in order to do that, we need to invest the money in other banks. This means that the amount should be enough. In the case of our bank, the minimum amount needs to be $50,000,” Khoury said.
 
Iqbal Doughan, lawyer and head of the Working Women Committee in Lebanon, said that fiduciary accounts are similar to the life insurance programs sold at banks everywhere. “The only difference is that the child can access the account when he or she turns 18,” she added. “If you do not mind putting your money away for so many years, there might be a small advantage. Interest rates are higher when a child is involved.”

Doughan suggests a rather simpler method if one wants to get around the law. “A mother can open an account for herself, following the usual procedures, and add the minor’s name next to hers. It is a small and simple procedure that would guarantee both her and her child access to her savings.”

Nevertheless, Doughan believes that the only true solution to the problem is a new civil status law. “The current law is like a sword constantly pointed at women’s necks,” she said. Bottom line, nothing has changed the fact that women are still second-class citizens and are not treated the same way as men, who can open a regular bank account for their children with full access.

According to Lina Abu Habib, Executive Director of the Center of Research and Training on Development, this initiative is purely cosmetic, because it hasn’t involved reform. “It is ridiculous to pretend that it was an achievement because, in principle, the idea is wrong,” she said, adding that the common trend of dividing rights and demands is contradictory to the principle of Human Rights.

Abu Habib stressed that women’s rights or human rights should be discussed as a whole. “We need real reform, not small, although realistic, initiatives that play around the law without confronting the real problem.”
The real problem is the inability of the state to reform itself without fearing the religious institutions. As long as these institutions have power over social and personal issues, the state, and women, cannot evolve, and a patriarchal domestic hierarchy will always marginalize females. In addition, the relative absence of women in political life does not help. The powerful partnership between men in state and religious institutions makes it very difficult for women to demand and attain their rights.

To be able to open a bank account for my son is now beyond the personal relation between me, a mother, and my son. It is more about how I want him to perceive his country: a backward state where his mother is denied her rights, or a democratic secular state where men and women are truly equal.

Hanin Ghaddar is managing editor of NOW Lebanon.