WOMEN'S MIDEAST WONDERS

SHIREEN EL FEKI :

LONDON : '' I want to tell you something, so listen to what I say. When a man is talking, a woman should obey. She shouldn't say 'yes' and then forget the next day.

She should appreciate his value if she wants him to stay.'' So goes the title track of ''The Man,'' a new album by the Egyptian Singer Ramy Sabry.

Since its release in June, the song seemed to strike a chord with the listeners across the Middle West, amassing more than three million views on YouTube.

This summer, however, legislators in several Arab states appear to have tuned out. Over the past several months, significant legal reforms on *women's rights have advanced in a handful of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Some weeks ago, Lebanon's Parliament finally repealed its rape law, which allowed assailants to escape punishment if they wed their victims.

Two weeks earlier on, Jordan, too closed its ''marry your rapist'' loophole, and has also amended an article in its penal code that granted lesser penalties for ''fits of fury,'' a.k.a  honor killings-

None too soon for at least some of the 36 cases of women murdered last year still before the courts.

Tunisia, birthplace of the Arab Spring, has gone farthest on this front.

In July, its Parliament passed a landmark legislative package on violence against women. The laws break new grounds in the region by stiffening violence against minors [including the removal of a  ''marry your rapist'' provision]-

Mandating compensation and follow up support for survivors, and explicitly recognizing that  men and boys , as well as women and girls,  can be victims of rape.

When it comes to women's rights, governments across the region are generally more comfortable with criminalizing violence  than they are with protecting freedoms.

But some months ago, Predent Beji Caid Essebesi of Tunisia announced a significant departure from business as usual by launching a commission on how to put-

Laws on individual liberties and equality into practice for women, including the incendiary topic of equal inheritance between the sexes.