ABU DHABI // Jane Fonda, the actress, praised the UAE for its "progressive" attitude towards women. Tonight, Fonda, who is also a political activist and women's rights campaigner, will be given the Black Pearl Award for lifetime achievement at the Middle East International Film Festival.
Speaking soon after arriving in the capital last night, Fonda said: "I was surprised to hear about the award and I am delighted." Just days after the country's first female judge was appointed, Fonda described it as a significant achievement for the country's women. "This is fantastic news and I have been told that Abu Dhabi is rather progressive." Fonda said more women need to be in positions of authority since they tend to have a more progressive point of view. "I don't think we are going to achieve what we need to, in terms of peace and the environment, for example, until women assume their rightful place in the world's leadership roles - judges, diplomats, in corporations. In all areas, we need more women."
Fonda, 70, was in Dubai earlier this year for the Women As Global Leaders conference, where she met many of the Emirates' up-and-coming young women. "They can contribute a lot to this country and to the rest of the Arab world." Fonda, whose life has taken her from campaigning against the war in Vietnam to winning two Academy Awards, said her children were her own personal lifetime achievement award.
It is the four films she not only starred in but also produced that she feels have made the biggest difference. On Golden Pond, Coming Home, 9-5 and The China Syndrome were all released between 1978 and 1981. Fonda has for the past few years campaigned against the war in Iraq, her first openly anti-war effort since the Vietnam War. She was nicknamed Hanoi Jane by an outraged nation for posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in 1972. She said she also felt passionately against Lebanon's civil war, although she refrained from speaking publicly about the issue as "it wasn't our war".
She said she is backing Democrat Barack Obama for US president on the strength of his stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict, which she called the world's "number one" geopolitical issue. "If he becomes president, we stand a better chance of resolving the conflict, which is at the heart of so many other problems. I care about both countries. Israel can't be safe until Palestine is stable. I pray for a solution there."
Fonda is about to start working on a new film about Bosnian refugees in conjunction with V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. She will play a middle-class American psychiatrist thrown into a refugee camp. She said: "It shows how when you get below the surface, as women, we are all the same no matter where you come from." mswan@thenational.ae
