During the eleventh class of
Intercultural Management, we had the presentation of the Sub-Saharan Africa and
Middle East Cluster. In addition, during the twelfth class we had the
presentation of the Latin America and Latin Europe cluster. First, I am going
to explain both cluster with some examples used by classmates, and then I will
finish with my research question, Is Islam related with male chauvinism in the
Middle East?
The Sub-Saharan cluster
The Sub-Saharan cluster is composed
by Nigeria, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. The cluster shares the
similarity that was British colony in the 19 and 20 century and these countries
had high scores on humane orientation and had average scores on most other
dimensions (Ortony, n.f) .
Something that I found interesting with the presentation was the question asked
by my classmates; could a high power distance be the heritage from being mostly
a colony continent? I would say yes (personal opinion), the relation
master-slave have continued since the decolonization process. Europeans and
North Americans are still seem as the master of the continent; that are
involved in all the economic sectors of the region and are the ones that
generate jobs. Still we see how white descendants in South Africa gets better
jobs and salaries than others natives and the ones that gets into college or
have the money to pay for it are white people. In addition, most of the
government of these nations are full of corruption that plays against the
development of the nations; even we can classify the governors as
individualistic because they are looking for their benefits nor the benefit to
the society.
Metaphor:
Sub-Saharan bush taxi
The Bush taxi represents the African
Time orientation in which time is take in a more relaxed way, where there is
not thoroughness towards scheduling or be on time for meetings or reunions.
Also, it represents the sense of communalism and community sharing in which
every time you have the possibility to share (have a conversation) with someone
in the taxi is exploited, something curious is that anyone is left behind even
though they do not have money to pay the taxi fare
Middle East Cluster:
The Middle East cluster is composed
by Qatar, Morocco, Egypt, Kuwait, and Turkey. I would say that is the cluster
more stereotype in the world, even though they do not have direct problems of
security with IS (Islamic State, Al Qaeda and others). They have been
classified as a dangerous region, this is mainly because the news that remark
the difficult situation in other countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and
are been group in a single region call the Middle East. The
Middle East Cluster scores high for in-group collectivism and low scores on
gender egalitarianism, future orientation, and uncertainty avoidance/acceptance
of risk (Ortony, n.f) .
Metaphor:
Turkish coffee houses:
Coffee houses in Turkey were used to
the social life contribution, in which people seat together and have a
conversation with their friends of different topics. In addition, the coffee
houses were used as recreational locals where people can see different performs
of artists, theatre and taste different coffees. With the expansion of the
Ottoman Empire, the Coffee houses did it as well. Now coffee houses are
representatives of the Turkey culture around the world.
Latin America cluster:
The
Latin America cluster is composed by Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia, Bolivia,
Brazil, Guatemala, Argentina, Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Mexico. The cluster share the similarity that were part of
the Spanish and Portuguese Empire (In the case of Brazil) the region speaks a
common language (Spanish) and is intelligible with Portuguese. Even though we
are not a single entity, we share similar customs and traditions. In addition,
from other people eyes we are seem as friendly, kind, “rumberos” and that we
want to dance every time. In my opinion, I consider these stereotypes as good
because is not the rule but in Latin America we try to be always happy. According to the Hofstede study, the countries
of the clusters are predictably scored high on in-group collectivism and low on
performance orientation, future orientation, and uncertainty avoidance/risk
acceptance.
Latin Europe Cluster
The Latin Europe Cluster is composed
by France, Portugal, Spain, French-speaking Switzerland, Italy, and Israel. Something
that gained my attention of this cluster is Israel; I do understand why the
other countries belong to the cluster. However, Israel do not share the same
background as France or Italy, for example the romance languages (in which is
included Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese) I would say that Israel have
more in common with the Middle East Cluster even though they been fighting for
more than 50 years. Hebraic for example was born in the Middle East, the nation
is located in the Middle East and unbelievably Arab is part of Israeli society.
The
cluster had fewer high scores on any of the cultural dimensions and the scores were
quite moderate, but the cluster scored low on humane orientation and
institutional collectivism
Is Islam related with male chauvinism in the Middle East?
According to As`ad AbuKhalil “Although
there is no gender equality in the Middle East (including in Israel), the
phenomena of sexism and misogyny are global—not peculiar to Islam, or to the
Middle East” (AbuKhalil, n.f) . We as western people, always look at
Middle East countries as sexism countries, in which women do not have rights,
where male controls all the spheres of the society and where women are look as
weak and passive. This is mainly because the stereotypes we have of the Arab
society. Yes, there are countries such as Saudi Arabia where women are not eve
allow to drive a car. However, there are other countries such as Tunisia in
which abortion is legal, Egypt in which women are allow to vote, Syria,
Jordanian, and Turkey in which women occupied ministries and are allow to vote.
In conclusion, even though there are
countries such as Saudi Arabia in which women rights are inexistent, there are
other countries that recognizes the importance of women and that they should
have all the rights that were granted to men years ago. In relation whit Islam,
even Christianity and other religions considered women as not part of the
political society until the last century in which were granted fundamental
rights in almost all the countries in the world (in 1920, the right to vote was
granted for women in the USA) . This means that Islam is not the cause of
sexism in Arab countries is something cultural that comes from our ancestors
and was replied in all the religions around the world.
Bibliography
AbuKhalil, A.
(n.f). Islamic Research Foundation International. Obtenido de
http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_401_450/women_in_the_middle_east.htm
Ortony, A. (n.f).
sagepub. Obtenido de http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/30903_Chapter1.pdf
Team, S.-S. A.
(2015). Sub-Saharan Africa and Middle East Cluster.
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