While the British and their allies supported the royalist North, the new government of South Yemen embarked on a programme of nationalisation, introduced central planning, put limits on housing ownership and rent, and implemented a land reform. By 1973, the GDP of South Yemen increased by 25 percent. And despite the conservative environment and resistance, women became legally equal to men, polygamy, child marriage and arranged marriage were all banned by law. Equal rights in divorce were also sanctioned. The Republic also secularised education and sharia law was replaced by a state legal code. Sources: Asef Bayat, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring , 2017, p. 5. Maxine Molyneux, Aida Yafai, Aisha Mohsen and Noor Ba'aba, Women and Revolution in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen , Feminist Review, issue 1, 1979, pp.4-20.
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51