By Rachel Avraham
Today is International Women’s Day. In honor of the occasion, the Economic Peace Center would like to pay tribute to Azerbaijani women. Azerbaijan is a staunch ally of the State of Israel. It was also the first country in the Islamic world to grant women the right to vote. Presently, the country has a female Vice President and 7 women sit on Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court.
Azerbaijani activist Arzu Jaeed Mamedova noted in an exclusive interview, “The women of today owe the luck and opportunities to women of yesterday who pioneered and dared to change the path of history. For the past few years, I’ve been actively doing research on Azerbaijani women and I’m still learning about the nation’s vast resources.”
“Let it be known that the first woman-diplomat or female director in the East, one of the first pilots in the world, first scholars, composers, lawyers, sculptors, etc.” came from Azerbaijan, she stressed. “The social change was on the constant agenda of Azerbaijani women throughout history. Emboldened by the compulsion for empowerment, women shared their education in self-made and self-taught courses in their apartments with the underprivileged, launched schools and foster houses.”
According to her, “One of the most critical shifts that Azerbaijani women have made and continue to make is to encourage us to look at history in new ways, with new questions and a much broader range of historical characters. Today, we must unite our voices and energy, support each other not just by words and actions and double the contribution made before us and for us because hundreds of people have worked to make this path easier.”
