Page 101 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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IQFleld Reports. no, 4, October-December, 1892, pp, 5-6,

■^Reverend Percy V, Boyes, "Neglected Mesopotamia," in
Neglected Arabia, no, 91, October-December, 1914, pp. 19-20.

•^Field Reports, no, 3, July-October, 1892, p. 6.

i ^Itid,, p, 6.

-^Fjeld Renorts. ^ . 4, October-November 1892, p.7 and
no
no. 6, April-June, 1893, p. 5.
15
* Field Reports, no. 8, October-December, 1893, p. 5.
■^Mason and Barny, op, cit.'. chapters VII and VIII, pp.-
107-166.

^Sharon J. Thoms, "The Hospital at Bahrain," -in Neglected
Arabia, no. 44, October-December, 1902, p, 13. .......~
18
Ibid •» p„ 13. Also see early accounts provided by
Eleanor Calverley, My. Arabian.,Days and,Nights: a Medical
Missionary in Old Kuwait' lNew York. 1953) .
The Islamic conception of the woman’s role in society is not
a simple one. While the image that many Westerners have of
the "jealously guarded harem" and heavy black veils has some
basis in fact, Islam has always permitted a certain amount of
freedom for certain women in certain roles. The bedu women,
for instance, have traditionally gone veil~les3 and worked
outside along with their men-folk, tending animals or pitch­
9 ing the camp. Likewise, some city women engaged in midwifery
and other forms of medicine and moved freely by themselves,
throtigh the mo3t traditional of Muslim societies. These wo­
men were often blacks or from other religious creeds and
were almost never Sunni Muslims of pure Arab stock. For
upper or middle class women (such as the missionaries) to

engage in a profession and move around independently was a
, new development, however, as was the concept of woman teachers
or women learning how to read and write (as they did in the
Mission schools). We should at the same time remember that
l
the early women missionaries would also have been considered • • •
exceptionally Westerner stadards in the early 20th. Century.
How rnanjr women had been through medical school in Eleanor
Calverley*s day? And how many of the few that had would have
picked such an arduous and challenging first practice as
Kuwait City? Thus the missionary experience should be looked
at" as a'real stride"forward for the "women’s-liberation" '
movement not only in the Middle East .but in the West as well.

^9sharon J. Thoms, "Six Months in the Bahrein Dispensary," : :
in Neglected Arabia, no.-45, July-Septeraber, 1902, p. 3.
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