Dear friends, Before Christ, or let us say before the history known to the world, Yemen was there, and Queen Bilqis of Sheba was the icon of ancient history, and the symbol of the glorious Yemeni history, as well as a symbol of the history of women and their pioneering role. I am from Yemen that introduced this great queen to the world.

 Yemen, which introduced Queen Arwa a thousand years ago. This reflection on the history is not insignificant, or just for bragging about my country's history, as much as it is an indication that the role of women is not lacking historical evidence, and is not a precedent attributed to the advancement in the modern era.

Women and men are the wings of the human race, just as they are the wings of society. The exclusion of women, or the derogation of their rights, is a derogation to the society at large. A dysfunctional society is based on superiority over women, and place them as inferior to men.

The truth is that when despotism occurs in a society, it does not differentiate between men and women, and if there is a difference here, it is the difference in the “levels of slavery and oppression,” not the difference in degrees of freedom.

Here I would like to emphasize a basic idea, which I have always touched on in many of my lectures and words. What I mean here is that the struggle for women's rights and participation is only achieved in an optimal way when it is part of the society's struggle to liberate from tyranny and injustice.

Societal experiences say so. The woman assumed her place as a leader when she put herself at the center of the issues of her community. Women took a leading role when they became part of political, social, and cultural movements that adopt a comprehensive vision of change and advancement of society as a whole, including the status of women and their rights.

Tyranny, systems of discrimination and inequality, when they control society, their effects impact everyone, men and women. When society is liberated from tyranny, oppression, and a totalitarian regime, all its members breathe the breeze of freedom.

When we look at the history of societies, we find that women who emerged as leaders of their societies were the product of political and social movements in which women actively participated. They came under the banners of general issues of interest to all segments of society, including the issue of women and their rights, and the issue of equality between men and women.

The policy of positive discrimination in favor of women, which is universally encouraged, to provide the opportunity for women to participate in the public sphere, are important measures, but they remain limited and do not lead to a fundamental change in the status of women and their participation in the public sphere.

Change takes place with the rise of political and social movements that establish a new system on the ruins of the old one. Change takes place with a cohesive struggle for all segments of society to establish the rule of law and the state that represents all its citizens and works to achieve their aspirations and hopes.

When issues of equality and women's rights are placed among the priorities of political and societal movement, the opportunities for change and women's participation are large and wide.

Positive discrimination in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes may bring about cosmetic changes, but it maintains the state of discrimination against women. It has happened that feminist models have emerged that worked in the service of tyranny, and within its goals that maintain policies of discrimination against women, and do not tackle deep structures of education, family laws, and discriminatory social systems.

From this introduction on the role of women, I will return to our most important experience in Arab countries.

Women had an influential role in the Arab Spring revolutions and the change that ushered in, which is the highest level of social struggle that attracted the largest participation of women in societies in which the world did not expect women to have this active will to participate in their society in mass uprisings raising the slogans of freedom, citizenship, equality, democracy, and human rights.

This history that women made in my country and the arenas of the Arab Spring in the Arab world made women an active participant in the issues and challenges of their society, and proved their presence in the squares and faced, besides tens of thousands of revolutionaries the bullets, repression, detention, and abuse those tyrannical regimes used on a large scale.

In the past ten years, the world has known a hideous kind of war that was invented by vengeful dictatorships against their societies.

Wars for the sake of absolute power that did not hesitate to destroy our countries and turn them into rubble over women, men, and children

They have tried to block our horizons with blood and death, but the will for freedom is stronger than death and destruction, and the future is ours, not tyrants and murderers.

I belong to Yemen, the country that witnessed a popular revolution in 2011 for change and the overthrow of the tyrannical regime, and which for seven years has been living a bloody war that I see only as a result of the counter-revolution that faced the entire Arab Spring and not the Yemen revolution alone.

That is why I cannot talk before you about the leading role of women without touching on the role of Yemeni and Arab women in the struggle for change and obtaining rights, an experience that represented a historic opportunity for Arab women to exercise an active role to obtain their rights and to have a voice, presence, and existence that expresses women’s aspirations, and through it, feminist models emerge to have a global role in issues of peace, women's rights, and combating violence and wars.

The peaceful change was the approach of the February 11 revolution in Yemen and the revolutions of the Arab Spring in general, and the peaceful revolution was a wide door that attracted a large feminist population from all parts of Yemen to contribute to making change and to participate in the most important event in the history of the society.

While women were in the squares and demonstrations announcing the birth of a new history in the struggle of Yemeni women for their rights and the liberation of the whole society from despotism, tyrants rallied with their regional and global allies in an unjust and brutal war against our peaceful revolution.

Our Arab countries did not know the effective and influential presence of women as they did in the peaceful spring of revolutions in 2011. The peaceful choice of change encouraged women to participate extensively in colorful freedom festivals that included the capitals of the Arab Spring from the ocean to the Gulf.

This civilized scene will remain immortal in the memory of our nation and a catalyst in the future, for women, women’s and civil organizations who lived a rich experience amid the popular masses who flocked to the squares and chanted in one spirit for change and for peace, freedom, and democracy to prevail.

I could not find a better experience than this to talk about women and their role in change.

This is the popular revolution that we experienced in Yemen, both men and women, in the face of those who confiscate our freedom, women, and men, and practice discrimination, oppression, exclusion, and confiscation of rights and freedoms against us.

Our experience inspires us to say that there is no liberation for women without the liberation of the entire society. This is proven by events and history, with all the revolutions, changes, and stations involved. Hence, the role of women in change represents the forefront of their efforts to free themselves from the grievances, abolition, oppression, and discrimination that they suffer from.

Raising the voice of women inside is the gateway to their arrival to the world to participate with the global feminist movement in their struggle for women's rights and to promote peace in the world and combat violence, wars, and injustice.

Hopes were high for a radical transformation of women’s issues, their role, participation, and their long struggle for a citizenship state that is equal under its law and constitution for all men and women, citizenship in which there is no discrimination based on gender, color, belief, race, sect, religion, social level, and influence. However, the war hindered all these aspirations as it cast a dark shadow over the entire society, and thus postponed these transformations that appeared within our reach to make a difference in the status of women, but it will not put an end to them.

Our struggle against the war and its perpetrators is a struggle for these values that we strive to consolidate in our societies and countries.

The change we started will not stop. The war was and still is the project of counter-revolutionary forces, tyranny, injustice, and domination over the whole society with its men and women, forces in whose interest it is to keep the status of women more backward and to prevent any transformations that will bring women a greater presence in their quest and struggle for the rights of full citizenship, freedom, and dignity that they deserve as human beings with full rights.

Our struggle for women's rights and their participation in the public sphere in their societies, and the achievement of equality between men and women, will be fruitful when it is placed within the struggle of the whole society for liberation from injustice, tyranny, and totalitarian regimes.

The setbacks that the world is witnessing today are evident in two examples, in Yemen and Afghanistan, where two medieval movements prevail today, the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Houthis in Yemen.

These militias adopt anti-women attitudes and impose restrictions on them akin to slavery. These two movements are not satisfied with imposing a state of slavery on women, but rather use some of them in tyranny ruling, through women belonging to the two movements. The Houthis have created women's militias called "Zeinabiyat" to practice special types of oppression against women. This type of sectarian religious group oppresses everyone, men and women, and even those women who exercise roles within the system of religious and sectarian discrimination are victims like the majority of women who are subject to the restrictions of slavery, and they do not enjoy any rights.

With this example, I wanted to show that the rule of militias, as well as totalitarian regimes, takes advantage of the fact that the society is under its oppressive grip, and uses some women in its repressive machine, to further humiliate women and society.

Therefore, encouraging the political and societal movement to attract larger numbers of women to participate in changing the reality of injustice, domination, and enslavement, will put the issue of women’s participation and equality between men and women at the top of the priorities of society and the desired state, the state of law, equality and justice, which guarantees the preservation of the dignity of all members of society; women and men.