CAIRO, Egypt – International Women's Day took on special meaning for the more than 1,000 Egyptian women who braved harassment to march through downtown Cairo Wednesday. 

The demonstration was sparked by the belief of many women that the recent political victories by socially conservative Islamists, who now control over 70 percent of the parliament, will eventually undermine the few hard-fought rights they have won. 

“The situation is going backward,” complained flight attendant Nadia Salim. “The Salafists (conservative Islamists who believe in a strict interpretation of Sharia law and that women should have a limited role in society) and Muslim Brotherhood will bring us back 100 years.”

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Trying to preserve existing rights
The women said they took to the streets not to gain more rights, but to preserve those they already enjoy.  "We have to hold onto what we have because of the Salafists and Islamists," warned university professor Iman Azzad. 

Their main demand is that women should make up half of the committee that will draft Egypt's new constitution.  Women fear that the Islamist majority will take away their right to divorce and to win custody of their children

"Women are half of society," said Salim. "Why shouldn’t we form half of the constitutional committee?"

Activist Dina Abou El Soud said she had heard that the country’s judges had plans for women to make up only a 10 percent of the panel shaping Egypt's next constitution. She believes women's rights will be the first thing to be sacrificed in order to please the Islamist majority. 

It’s a sea change from the ousted regime of President Hosni Mubarak, when women were guaranteed 64 parliamentary seats.  In the latest post-revolutionary elections, the quota was eliminated and women won only five seats.  "The other seats went to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists," said El Soud, co-founder of the Revolutionary Women's Coalition, which has 4,000 members on Facebook.

 "We are going backward, backward and backward," she added as she passed out fliers in English and Arabic. "It is time to make a women's revolution”

El Soud also said that Islamists are trying to discredit existing women's rights by suggesting they were imposed by the Mubarak regime, deriding them as "Suzanne Mubarak's Laws,” the name of the former first lady.

"It’s ridiculous. They are international women's rights that we have gained,” she said.  

Ready for drastic measures
Considering what Egypt's roughly 40 million women stand to lose, Wednesday's turnout was miniscule. Mahy al Aref, a well-dressed pharmacy graduate, said the small crowd was probably due “a lack of educational awareness.”

She said she is worried about putting her German university degree to good use in an increasingly conservative society, a concern shared by her mother, Magda al Akkad, who runs an NGO. "I am worried because of the Islamist direction,” she said. “They have their ideas. I don't know where it will go, but I don't think they will be fair to women in general."

Al Akkad said she said she can foresee a day when Egypt would become unlivable for her and her daughter.  "If fanatics rule, I will leave this country,” she declared.

The plight of women in Egyptian society has been well documented over the years. From enduring daily sexual harassment to being marginalized from politics … being a woman in Egypt has been and is tough.

But there was something about the video of soldiers stripping and dragging women in the street and ferociously attacking them that has triggered public outrage here. Even as their bodies lay motionless on the concrete, the soldiers repeatedly beat them over and over …

On Tuesday, Egyptian women fought back and by doing so, pro-democracy activists say, they lifted the spirit of their cause and their country.

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Thousands of women took to the streets of downtown Cairo, walking on the same Tahrir streets where days earlier they had been beaten, arrested and dragged.

PhotoBlog: Egyptians rally to protest treatment of women 

They wore black and held signs that read “mourning.” They were protesting abuse by soldiers, not just over the past few days but over the past several months, which included alleged “virginity tests” against female detainees, sexual intimidation and harassment.

The women were from all walks of life. Young and old, Muslim and Christian, rich and poor walked shoulder to shoulder.

Niveen Redha, an Egyptian woman living in Canada and visiting Egypt, joined the march to denounce the military crackdown on protesters and women over the past few weeks.

Others called on people watching the march wind through the streets to join them, shouting, “It could be your sisters and mothers that will be attacked next.”

'True protectors'
As the women marched around central Cairo, men formed a human chain around them, making sure no one could disrupt their march.

On more than one occasion men came up to me and said of the obviously peaceful protesters, “look at these thugs” -- a sarcastic rebuke to the ruling military council, which has tried to paint the pro-democracy protesters as lawless thugs.

One man said the “noble women of Egypt are the true protectors of the revolution” and called on the men of Egypt to “shave their mustaches” – telling someone to shave his mustache is often considered an insult in this patriarchal society.

Images of a veiled woman being beaten and stripped on the street, exposing her upper body down to her bra, have fueled the determination of pro-democracy activists calling on the military council to hand power immediately to a civilian government. The video and the images from Saturday’s crackdown have drawn strong condemnation from the UN and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people," she said Monday.

Sexual threats
Ghada Kamal was one of the women assaulted on Friday. For three weeks she was part of an “Occupy Cabinet” protest outside the prime minister’s office. The protesters there wanted to prevent the military-appointed prime minister from entering his office. On Friday, the military entered the encampment and attempted to break up the protest.

The 28-year-old pharmacist was dragged away by soldiers who kicked her in the face, groped her and clubbed her head with a baton. While she was in military custody, she said, a soldier taunted her by saying, “We will have a party with you today and show you how much of a man I am.”

Such accounts are common among women who are detained by the military. Human rights organizations also have documented cases of women being given forced virginity tests.

In the face of mounting domestic and international criticism, the military said in a statement Tuesday on the Supreme Council of Armed Forces Facebook page that it apologizes to the women of Egypt and said it had the deepest respect for them and their right to protest and to participate in political life during Egypt's transition to democracy. It added that the military would investigate and hold to account all of those responsible for these violations.

The recent military crackdown has united Egypt’s political forces in demanding a quick transfer of power to a civilian government. The closest thing to a civilian government taking shape in Egypt is the lower house of parliament. Two-thirds of that body has been elected, and the final round of elections is expected in early 2012.

But the military says that until then, it has no plans to concede power.

When Egypt's uprising began 10 months, pro-democracy activists trusted the military would protect the revolution. Now that trust is all but gone.

The U.N. estimates that about 90 percent of Afghan women suffer some sort of domestic abuse, but the victims see more repercussions than the abusers.

Gulnaz, a 19-year-old Afghan woman was jailed for two years on adultery charges after she was raped. She has now been pardoned - on the condition she marry her rapist.

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Watch video of NBC News' Atia Abawi interview with Gulnaz, still in her prison cell, above.

Related story: Afghan woman: I'll mary rapist, 'even though I can't look at him'

KABUL, Afghanistan – “I am obliged to marry him, even though I can’t look at him,” 19-year-old Gulnaz said about the man she claims raped her. 

Gulnaz, who uses one name, has been in an Afghan prison cell for about two years. She says she only has one choice if she wants to bring dignity back to her family and tribe: She must marry the man who forced his way into her home, tied her up, and then raped her.

The man was Gulnaz’s cousin’s husband, and the humiliation continued a few months after the attack, when Gulnaz finally got the courage to tell Afghan police what had happened. Instead of getting justice, she was accused of adultery and sent to prison.
 
“I do not know why they put me in jail,” Gulnaz said when NBC News recently visited her at the women’s prison in Kabul.

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Her daughter, Moskan, a result of the rape, lay sleeping on a bed nearby – she was born on the floor of Gulnaz’s prison cell.

According to Gulnaz, she was initially given a two-year prison sentence, so she appealed.  The court of appeals refused to accept her accusation of rape, she said, and raised her sentence to 12 years. They didn’t believe she was raped because they told her that a woman couldn’t get pregnant after her first sexual encounter, so therefore she must have had a consensual sexual relationship with her accuser, they told her.

Justice, with a caveat
The ruling and statement outraged many, including American lawyer Kimberley Motley who has been practicing law in Afghanistan for three years and decided to take on Gulnaz’s case.  Just last week Motley helped Gulnaz gain a pardon from Afghan President Hamid Karzai. 

But the pardon came with a caveat.  A press release from the presidential palace stated that the president had decreed her release “taking into consideration the consent of both sides for a conditional wedlock.”

In other words, she was free to go – if she agreed to marry her rapist. (Even though her rapist is already married, in Islamic societies, like Afghanistan, polygamy is allowed, with the specific limitation that men can have up to four wives).

Not the victory many were hoping for, but a small victory for women in a society who have seen few.

“I think the biggest challenge [Afghan women] face is being women in this society,” said Motley. “I mean, there is no doubt that they are second-class citizens. They just don’t have the same opportunities as men. They don’t have a voice, or their voice isn’t as respected as men.”

Motley has been appalled at how women in Afghanistan are treated, but she acknowledged that some strides have been made and hopes Gulnaz’s pardon will set a precedent for future cases.

“It definitely is putting the attorney general’s office, the supreme court and also others that are working within this justice system sort of on notice,” Motley said.

Not enough
But others are more skeptical. Heather Barr, with Human Rights Watch in Afghanistan, doesn’t believe Gulnaz’s case will change the tide on women’s rights in a country riddled with traditional cultural obstacles.

“It would be really comforting to think that Gulnaz’s case is one strange aberration where the justice system for one particular case has gone wrong,” Barr said.  “Unfortunately, this is as far from the truth as could be.”

Out of the approximately 600 adult female prisoners in Afghanistan, more than half are in a similar predicament as Gulnaz, Barr said, meaning they have been charged with a “moral crime.”
So-called moral crimes are crimes that are not codified in Afghan law, but they are covered in the constitution as a crime against culture and religion.  That includes everything from adultery to even running away from home.

“Not only are there hundreds of these cases, but these cases send a message to all Afghan women who are facing forced marriage, or abuse in the home, or sexual assault that there isn’t any help available to them and the consequences of seeking help are likely to be further victimization,” Barr said.

In the meantime, Gulnaz is counting down the days until her release – which is expected to be soon.

LONDON — When Barbara Westgate joined the U.S. Air Force as a secretary in 1973, her career goal was to earn $5,000 a year.

"I thought I wanted to be a housewife," she recalled.

Today, Westgate is the civilian equivalent of a three-star general who helps to manage $822 billion (over five years*) in the Air Force's future defense program.

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Westgate was among the pioneering women serving in the military, intelligence and security services from around the world who gathered in London this week to discuss their experiences in leadership positions.

She told msnbc.com how an older male general offered his congratulations when she was promoted to director of logistics for the Air Force's advanced tactical aircraft program in 1988. "Of course you got the job, Barb, you're just so pretty," he said, before patting Westgate on the head.

"He was just from that generation," said Westgate, who is now a Washington, D.C.-based officer in the senior executive service of the Air Force. "He thought he was paying me a compliment." Furious as she was, Westgate didn't take it personally.

Amid the neat uniforms, gold insignia, polished medals, ribbons and brass buttons, the stories were often similar. The Royal Norwegian Navy commander who was the world's first woman to serve on a submarine, the British Royal Navy commander who was the first female flag officer, the Swedish Air Force colonel who was the first woman to command a regiment. When the latter was asked how it felt to be a woman in command, she said, "Well, I’ve always been a woman."

There was little bitterness. Delegates were quick to point out that their militaries had only really begun to open their doors to women in the past 20 years. It will take time for women to reach senior leadership roles, they reminded each other.

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Carol Pottenger said she started her career in 1978 on a tour in Pearl Harbor, a non-operational assignment far from any front line. It was a typical assignment for women then.

In the 1990s, the Navy began opening up ships and other divisions to women. Now 93 percent of assignments allow them – including the Navy SEALs in support capacity roles. However, that's not 100 percent. Pottenger explained the reality of what that meant for her current role as deputy chief of staff for capability and development at NATO Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation in Norfolk, Va.: "I could command 40,000 sailors, but in one of the … [divisions] I commanded, women couldn't even serve."

Speaking to a room full of nodding heads, she added: "If you're going to recruit and retain the best and the brightest, you can't afford to ignore half the population."

Pottenger commended the mentorship programs and other policies that have opened up the military to women but urged young cadets to actively put themselves forward for more leadership roles and encouraged senior officers to aggressively support the policies from the top.

'I guess the message got through'
"Don’t be silly, we didn’t mean women,” Commodore Elizabeth Steele was told when she applied for a post with Canada's navy on a U.N. mission in Cambodia in 1992. She had joined the navy in 1986, when women weren't allowed to be maritime officers because of a policy that deemed them "not qualified."

But by then sea logistics had opened up to women and Steele submitted her application for the tour. Disgruntled by the response she got, Steele shot back that they should have specified that women need not apply.

"I guess the message got through because I ended up in Cambodia," she said.

Steele, who is now the deputy chief of staff and associate deputy minister at Canada's department of defense, advocates the concept of gender intelligence – or recognizing the different strengths men and women have and using them effectively.

"We have better teams … if we have teams that are diverse," Steele added.

However, one of the most important results Steele has seen of women entering the military is the influence it has on people in countries like Afghanistan — where women are not considered equal citizens.

It is important "for a young child to see women in a combat or military role," she said. “There is a connection that a female soldier makes with a person" that is unique and powerful.

Hosted by the Royal United Services Institute, an independent think tank for defense and security, the Women in Defence and Security Leadership conference wraps up today.

*The initial post failed to indicate that the $822 billion budget was over a five-year period.

By NBC News' Lubna Hussain
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – In a country where women still don’t have the right to drive, they may soon gain the right to vote.

King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s 87-year-old monarch, recently announced that women will get the right to vote and run in local elections for the first time in 2015.

Although the news was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm at first, many remain skeptical that the announcement will really herald a step towards equality for women in this desert kingdom.

What do Saudi women think of this latest announcement?

In a stylish café in the well-heeled Riyadh neighborhood of Olaya, five sets of mothers and daughters of the city’s elite band of western-educated families recently gathered for coffee and casually discussed their hopes and fears for the future.

A fleet of Maybachs and Bentleys delivered the women to the family section of the restaurant, where they entered sporting oversized sunglasses, designer veils and bags. They spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.

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A new world
“You have to understand, it’s very frustrating for us,” said Shireen, a stay-at-home mother of four, “because on the one hand the king is really trying hard to give us our rights and on the other hand there are so many people who are against him.”

Her 17-year-old daughter Sarah, unveiled and irreverently exposing her mane of thick brown hair agreed. “I think it’s worse for our generation,” she complained. “I mean, we see what’s going on in the world and you can’t expect us to just accept the fact that we can’t have a life because we are told that this is the way it has been for over a hundred years. There are people of my mum’s age who maybe did that because you know, they didn’t have a choice and they weren’t exposed like me and my friends are.”

Reem, who is Sarah’s classmate at school, echoed her friend’s sentiments. “Our grandparents and parents’ generation was totally different because in those days the authorities could control what was going on through the media and things like that. They reported the news on television and in the papers about what they wanted the public to believe. Not that many people traveled and most Saudis didn’t question what they were told. So they just lived with whatever decisions were made for them.”

How is it so different now, I asked. After all, local media is still subject to censorship and many issues are still considered too taboo to even discuss publicly.

“Now,” Reem said emphatically, “even if they screen what’s going on, we can watch news from a hundred different news channels and have friends from all over the world through Facebook and email. That’s how the whole Women2Drive campaign took off through Facebook and Twitter.”

That’s a far cry from 20 years ago when anyone owning a prohibitively expensive satellite dish would be subject to an exorbitant fine and run the risk of members of the religious police shooting it down with a rifle!

Nowadays, watching “Desperate  Housewives” and surfing the web is a common activity shared by all Saudis rich and poor. And it’s perceived, by those opposed to change and modernity, as an unavoidable social hazard. Many sites that contain pornography, or even allusions to it, are blocked, although tech-savvy youngsters manage to work their way around such firewalls and pretty much have access to everything.

Getting behind the wheel
Indeed, it was through this very platform of technological advancement that Saudi women finally found a voice. June 17 was announced as the date for women to throw caution to the wind and get behind the wheel and drive.

An aggressive campaign launched on Facebook and Twitter saw scores of women in the driver’s seat for the very first time in a country where women are still forbidden from driving. Emboldened by the Arab Spring and seizing the opportunity to send a clear message to their government, those women brave enough to take to the streets were greeted with a traffic violation and no further repercussion.

Nonetheless, in a country filled with paradox and seemingly endless contradiction, two days after the king declared women eligible to vote, religious clerics sentenced one of the Jeddah drivers to 10 lashes. Furious with the decision, the king then personally repealed the flogging – signaling in no uncertain terms that anyone opposing the empowerment of women in the country would be in direct conflict with him personally.

Reem’s mother, Mashael, a British-educated doctor who is responsible for the lives of both male and female patients alike, interrupted her daughter and said, “Social media can be a good thing, but it can also be negative. This is also the same media that has the power to galvanize the hardliners in the kingdom and gives them an equal voice.”

Mashael believed it was up to the king to help usher in real change. “What I feel is that like with King Faisal who had the guts to introduce girls’ education, in spite of the objections and disapproval of the same people who now object to women driving, our king must do the same.”

She was referring to the very popular monarch who was seen as being directly at loggerheads with the religious establishment by allowing women to have an equal education to men in the 1960s. Indeed, Faisal was seen as a visionary by his people and even established television broadcasts for the first time throughout the kingdom, which led to his assassination in 1975.

“It’s as simple as that!” Mashael added. “You don’t want to send your girls to school, you don’t have to! You don’t want your daughters and wives to drive, you don’t have to let them! But what is so ironic, is that all these people who are against it now, in 20 years’  time, all their women will be the ones driving them around!”

‘Give me a day as king’
The appeal of being able to vote or stand in the 2015 municipal elections got a far more muted response.

Wafaa, a Harvard University graduate with her own business, dismissed the idea that the proposed right to vote was a significant achievement.

“I don’t think that voting in a process where we can’t effect change is a big deal at all. It sounds a lot more glamorous than it is because at the end of the day, even our men aren’t bothered with these councils or their elections,” said Wafaa. “I read somewhere that only a fifth of registered voters even bothered showing up, so this is all a bit of a show with no real substance at all. Give me a day as king and I will show you what real progress is all about,” she giggled.

There is a definite contradiction that exists within this deeply traditional culture that most Western audiences fail to understand. Saudis, it seems, seek modernity without compromising their religious values or heritage.

So whenever a controversial issue such as driving, or women’s voting crops up, there is almost a Newtonian response whereby the push and pull are almost equal. That might help explain why any real change to the outside eye is quite imperceptible, whereas to those within, it can be perceived as being monumental.

 

Kulsoom Abdullah headed into Friday's USA National Weightlifting Competition with modest expectations, but even before she stepped up to the barbell she had won a major victory.

Until two weeks ago Abdullah didn’t expect to compete because internationally sanctioned events didn’t allow her to compete with her arms and legs covered — and doing so without the covering ran counter to her Islamic faith and the modesty that she practices. So she went to the top — and persuaded the International Weightlifting Federation to change its rules.

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“I am going to do my best though I will only have had two weeks of preparation since registering,” Abdullah, 35, said prior to the competition. She’s in the 48 kg (105 lbs.) senior women’s weight class. (The Associated Press reported that Abdullah cleared a snatch of 41 kilograms, or just over 90 pounds, and 57 kilograms in the clean and jerk. That earned her a fifth-place finish out of six competitors in her weight class.)

As we reported on June 27, Abdullah only learned she couldn’t compete at the national level when she managed to qualify last fall. USA Weightlifting officials denied her request for alternative dress, because the international body sets rules for competitions that ultimately can lead lifters to Olympic competition.

She didn’t attend the December competition at Cincinnati, but neither did she take no for a final answer. Instead, with the help of a lawyer, she put together a 44-page appeal laying out her argument and detailing several long-sleeved, long-legged garments that would meet both modesty requirements and competitive needs.

Her goal was to illustrate sports gear that would allow judges see if the knees and elbows were in the “locked” position, in order to declare whether the lift was successful.  

Abdullah, bolstered by activist women and Muslims, then persuaded the US Olympic Committee to present her case at the International Weightlifting Federation annual meeting in Penang, Malaysia.

Lo and behold, on June 29, the IW agreed with her and announced it would allow a close-fitting “unitard” with long legs and arms under the standard singlet that most competitors wear.

“Weightlifting is an Olympic Sport open for all athletes to participate without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin," stated Tamas Ajan, IWF President. "... This rule modification has been considered in the spirit of fairness, equality and inclusion."

For Abdullah, getting to take part in high level competitions will allow her to focus her training, but she has greater hopes for her triumph over the old dress code:

“It will help increase female participation in weightlifting, and possibly increase the participation in other sports, regardless of faith,” she said. “I hope to continue and be able to help others in similar situations,” she said.

Click here to follow Kari Huus on Facebook  

By Lubna Hussain, special to NBC News 

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA – This desert kingdom may be on the road to change.

It's been 21 years since 47 Saudi women took to the streets of Riyadh in a convoy in defiance of Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving. And although the issue has been discussed at the highest levels of government since then, nothing has changed.

But a Facebook, Twitter and YouTube campaign that urges Saudi women to stop talking and start driving this Friday may force the issue. Women2Drive encourages Saudi women to get behind the wheel in protest of an unwritten "law" that makes them the only ones in the world without the right to drive.

"I can’t understand the fuss," complains Hind, an 18-year-old student from Riyadh who requests that her full name is not used for fear of repercussions for her government scholarship to pursue a degree in Boston this fall. "Can you imagine that before Manal (Al Sharif) drove in Khobar and Najla (AlHariri) in Jeddah, the last women to drive took to the roads in 1990? I really find it hard to believe that we are still even discussing an issue that should have been resolved before I was born!"

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However, the attempt to reverse this ban has polarized opinion within Saudi society and even families.

 "Personally I am against this whole thing," says Jahan Y, a self-described ‘liberal thinker’ and physician at a government hospital in Riyadh. "I feel that the women who started this enjoyed the publicity and liked the fact that they could get some iconic status because of it."

Digital Life: Making the transition from Web to road

So, was she against the concept of women driving?

"If there was a decree tomorrow, then I would be one of the first to drive, but I don’t like the way that they went about it. I think it’s wrong to just bring our problems to the attention of the outside world and especially the media. They don’t really care about Saudi women. They just want to sell newspapers. It’s much worse if we do this the wrong way, and then the cause will be set back, like it was during the Gulf War."

'King Abdullah ... will understand'
In a kingdom filled with contradictions, support for the most controversial of causes sometimes comes from the most surprising quarters.

Umm Khaled, a fully veiled grandmother who can neither read nor write and guesses her age to be around 70, lends her backing to the protesters.

"I have to rely on my sons to take me to the hospital for all my appointments and they are working." she says. "I hear that there are women like me in America and outside of Saudi Arabia who can drive cars and nobody stops them. God willing, one day women in my country will also be like them. King Abdullah is a good man and he will understand this."

Would she drive in protest alongside the Women2Drive campaigners if she were able to?

She giggles and then pauses. "People here might talk, and we don’t want trouble with the authorities. But if I were a young woman, then I would do it to fight for my rights and the rights of my daughters. There is nothing wrong in it, because it’s like a knife you can use to cut or to wound. It’s not driving that’s the real issue."

Support among men
The ban also presents challenges to Saudi men, many of whom feel they are being punished.

Take the case of Saeed, a 34-year-old security guard for a private television company. He can't afford to employ a driver on his meager salary of about $1,000 a month and yet has to assume the responsibility of transporting his wife and five children around the city.

"It’s hard, very hard," he says thoughtfully. "I have to work a nightshift, but during the day bring my children back and forth from school and then run regular errands as well."

If the current restrictions were relaxed, would he allow his wife to drive? He grins widely and says, "Definitely. Yes, definitely. There is no shame in that. It would make my life so much easier. My wife doesn’t work and she sits at home all day, so she could be in charge of all those things."

And there may be wider support among men for dropping the ban.

"Most men I know are for it," said a businessman who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It is an economic necessity in two ways: Firstly, we cannot force people to hire private drivers and pay their salaries, which are estimated to be around 2 to 3 billion Saudi riyals per month that is repatriated abroad; secondly, there has been a huge drag on the economy because of the extra trips that have to be made by these drivers. ... I can’t believe we are the only country in the world that doesn’t allow women to drive! What is the big deal?"

So if many Saudi men seemingly are unopposed to their wives and daughters driving, where is the sticking point?

"You would be surprised to know," Hind says with great authority, "that there are many, many Saudi women who want things to remain like this. It’s true that there are some religious scholars who are against women driving, but even girls in my own family, young like me, don’t like the idea. But my point is that they can stay home and use drivers if they wish, but the rest of us should have the choice. We are not forcing every single Saudi woman to go out and drive, so how come they are imposing their will on every single Saudi woman?"