By Elizabeth Kelleher
Washington File Special Corespondent

Washington -- Fern M. Smith, a U.S. district judge in the Northern District of California, has done a lot of work in the Middle East and other parts of the world to expand the rule of law. Currently, she serves as chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on International Judicial Relations.

A decade ago, in Egypt, Smith said she met with judges from that country's Supreme Court. In an informal conversation, she asked if they would allow women to serve as judges. She was told her question was not relevant because "women don't apply."

She then asked if women would be accepted, if they did apply. Again came a negative reply, she said.

Why wouldn't they be accepted? she said she asked, continuing the conversation.

She said one judge told her, "Women in Egypt have rights. But to become a judge, one must first work as a prosecutor. That means going out in the middle of the night to investigate a murder or some other gruesome crime. No Egyptian man would let his wife go investigate a murder."

Smith, who will participate in a conference titled "Women and the Law: A Regional Dialogue," to be held in Amman, Jordan February 16-18, said things have begun to change for Egyptian women involved in the legal profession during the past ten years.

Smith said one of the panel speakers of the conference will be Tahani Gebali, the first Egyptian female judge and one of three female judges who serve on Egypt's constitutional court. At the conference, Judge Gebali will speak about overcoming obstacles to become a judge and make suggestions for other women in the legal profession.

Co-sponsors of the conference are the governments of Jordan and the United States. The U.S. participation is part of its Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), a program launched in December 2002 to support economic, political, and education reform efforts in the Middle East and expand opportunity in the region, especially for women and children.

Smith's role at the meetings will be as a facilitator. "I try very hard when I do this to not be front and center," she said, but to keep the focus on speakers from Arab countries. She said one can not be critical of the small number of female judges in the Arab world, considering the slowness of the climb for women to the bench in the United States.

As only the second woman judge in the northern district of California, Smith served from 1988-1990 on the California Judicial Council's Advisory Task Force on Gender Bias. She said the task force has worked to raise the consciousness of both judges and lawyers about intended (or unintended) discrimination toward women lawyers or clients. Today, she said, judges are less condescending toward women in the courtroom.

The creation of Arab gender-bias task forces, career networks and professional associations are ideas that will likely be taken home from the conference by participants from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, conference organizers said.

Angela Conway, a director at American Bar Association's Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative and an event organizer, said, "there are no professional associations for women judges in the Middle East region." She said panelists would talk about the role such groups could play in supporting career success. (In most Arab countries, the percentage of women studying law or business is significantly lower than the percentage of men studying those subjects.)

The Amman conference is intended to help female Arab jurists to engage in networking. Alina Romanowski, director of MEPI said, "In the Middle East and North Africa, there are numerous challenges that face women as they attempt to solve their issues within the current judicial and legal systems."

Romanowski said the conference will provide specific training in how to network, set up mentoring programs and influence the media.

In addition to women's own legal careers, the topic of women's equality in terms of human rights will be covered at the meetings by speakers including Jordan's Minister of State H.E. Asma Khader and Judge Elisabet Fura-Sandtrom of the European Court of Human Rights.

"While every society is different...basic human rights should be transferable," said Smith. She named four key areas: the right to not be discriminated against based on gender, race or national origin; freedom of the press; freedom of speech; and, if there are elections, the right of both sexes to vote.

Those issues will at times conflict with some people's interpretation of religious principles, she said.

Incorporating human rights law into domestic law will be difficult in some places. Family matters generally are the province of religious law, or Sharia. According to Conway, there is a range of opinion about what the religious text calls for. "Some places interpret the laws in a very restrictive way," she said, "and others have more progressive interpretations."

Morocco is an Arab country where religious law has been interpreted progressively. In a package of reforms enacted in 2003, women were given the right to apply for divorce and to receive equal shares of inheritance along with their male siblings.

Smith said that when she recently met with a group of Iraqi women, there was a real concern among some and resistance among others about the concept of separating religion and state. Smith said there is no drive to impose foreign values on Muslim and Arab countries.

"We are not coming in saying, ‘here, just Xerox our form of government and use it,'" she said. "In Muslim and other countries where religion and state have been or are becoming closely intertwined, there are different factors. We need to be patient and try to understand."