WATANI International
4 December 2011
100 years ago, Egyptian women broke their fetters and headed straight into the modern world. Today, are they retracting?
Al-Nour, the Salafi party in Egypt, innovated a new method of promoting its female nominees on party posters: giving her name and the seat she is nominated for, and adding a rose or the party logo instead of a photograph. Even stranger, al-Nour sometimes used a photograph not of the candidate but of her husband, labelling her as “Mr So-and-so’s wife”.
Face not recognised
So how can such women represent the Egyptian woman? And how will they speak in parliament when, in the view of the Islamic code, their voices are awra (indecent)? Did the enlightened women of the early 20th century—Huda Shaarawi, Seiza Nabarawi and Malak Hifni Nassef—who took it upon their shoulders to write so eloquently and struggle so hard to overcome backwardness and illiteracy at a time when women in Egypt were confined to the house, fight for this? The granddaughters of those women are now content to be nominated without a photograph, and make themselves look ridiculous. Among the many comments appearing on Facebook, someone wrote: “I wonder if the female candidate, when she wins her seat, will send a rose on her behalf?” Another wrote: “The Egyptian people would be the first on the globe to elect a candidate whose face cannot be recognised….”
The women whose foremothers fought so hard to gain women’s rights, including the right to vote in 1954, are now satisfied with being ‘nobody’—no photograph, no voice.
Independence and modernity
The story of Egyptian feminism is the story of feminism in a nationalist century. How could it be otherwise? The first half of the century was marked by a fierce anti-colonial struggle; the second half by the construction of a new, more independent nation.
During the course of the century, women have given shape to a newer, more modern identity—a new way of thinking, a new mode of analysis and a new guide for everyday and collective political activism. Women articulated feminism within the discourses of both Islamic modernism and secular nationalism. Feminist foremothers, like Aisha al-Taimuriya, Warda al-Yaziji and Zainab Fawwaz, gave expression to the emergent “feminist consciousness” in their poetry, essays and tales. Aisha al-Taimuriya wrote in 1894: “Oh, men of our homelands, Oh you who control our destinies, why have you left women behind?”
New way of thinking
Huda Shaarawi was an Egyptian educator and women’s rights activist. Born in 1879 in Minya, she was a daughter of wealthy administrator Mohamed Sultan, the first president of the Egyptian Representative Council. From early childhood she studied music and drawing, and spoke excellent French and Turkish. She wrote poetry in both Arabic and French.
Such an education contributed in shaping her character; it was the launching point towards a new way of thinking towards finding a better situation for contemporary women.
When in public, women at that time were expected to show modesty by covering their hair and faces with a veil. Shaarawi resented such restriction on women’s dress and movements. She began organising lectures for women on topics of interest to them. This brought many women out of their homes and into public places for the first time. Shaarawi persuaded the royal princesses to help her establish a women’s welfare society to raise money for the poor women of their country. In 1910 Huda Shaarawi opened a school for girls which focused on teaching academic subjects rather than practical skills such as midwifery.
After World War I, many women left the harem to take part in political actions against British rule. In 1919 Shaarawi helped organise the largest women’s anti-British demonstration. In defiance of British orders to disperse, the women remained still for three hours in the hot sun.
Removing the veil
Shaarawi made a decision to stop wearing her veil in public after her husband’s death in 1922. Returning from a trip to a women’s conference in Europe in 1923, she stepped off the train and removed her veil. Women who came to greet her were at first shocked, and then broke into applause. Some took off their veils, too. This was the first public defiance of the restrictive tradition.
That same year, Shaarawi helped found the Egyptian Feminist Union. She was elected its president and held the position for 24 years. The Union campaigned for various reforms to improve women’s lives. Among them were raising the minimum age of marriage for girls to sixteen, increasing women’s educational opportunities and improving health care. Egypt’s first secondary school for girls was founded in 1927 as a result of this pressure.
Shaarawi founded two magazines, l’Egyptienne in 1925 and Al-Misriyya in 1937, and she supported the founding of Al-Mar’a al-Arabiyya, the newsletter of the Arab Feminist Union. She spoke on women’s issues and concerns throughout the Arab world and Europe.
Shaarawi also led Egyptian women’s delegations to international conferences and held meetings with other Arab feminists. In 1944 she founded the All-Arab Federation of Women. She died three years later in 1947.
Landmark year
1909 was a landmark year in Egyptian feminism and saw a number of firsts.
The field of education was marked by two important advances. First, Nabawiya Moussa sat for the state secondary school examination and passed with flying colours—the first girl to do so, and the last allowed to by the colonial education authorities until after Egypt’s quasi-independence in 1922. Second, in answer to demands from women, special lectures were held by and for women at the new Egyptian University. Newly educated middle-class women, such as Nabawiya Moussa, Malak Hifni Nassef, Mai Ziyada and Labiba Hashim were the speakers.
Joining public protest
Women’s nationalist militancy in the period from 1919 to 1922 became the bridge from what was a mainly invisible social feminism to a highly public and organised collective feminism. Women went out in public protest for the first time when they mounted a demonstration on 16 March 1919, joining the entire nation in decrying the continued British colonial occupation and demanding national independence. While upper-class women went on organised demonstrations, lower-class women joined the more spontaneous public protests. It was women “of the people” who became martyrs to the cause, women like Hamida Khalil, who was shot by colonial police in front of al-Hussein Mosque.
The major exception to the rule of the public silencing of feminists was Amina al-Said (1910 – 1995), who had come of age during the time of the height of the nationalist and feminist movements. While still a student she used to write and give speeches in Arabic for the feminist organisation. In 1954, al-Said founded a mass circulation magazine for women called Hawwa (Eve) published by Dar al-Hilal. She became a member of the board of the Press Syndicate and later, vice-president. Al-Said tried to integrate the liberal feminist vision into the socialist state’s “gender-neutral” project for the mobilisation of citizens. She deplored the inequities imposed on women by the official Muslim Personal Status Code. She decried the double burden put on women who had taken up new jobs provided by the State, only to realise how the State had failed to help these working women meet their childcare needs. The socialist State’s extension of educational and work opportunities across lines of class and gender would later lead to unintended consequences.
First female nuclear scientist
Samira Moussa (1917 – 1952) was an Egyptian nuclear scientist who held a doctorate in atomic radiation and worked to make the medical use of nuclear technology affordable to all. She became the first Assistant Professor at the same faculty and the first woman to hold a university post, being the first to obtain a PhD in atomic radiation. She organised the Atomic Energy for Peace Conference and sponsored a call for setting an international conference under the banner “Atom for Peace”.
With the end of the 20th century, feminism is taking multiple shapes. Feminist activism is dispersed throughout society. This de-centered feminism is being expressed in the context of a massive proliferation of NGOs, and at a moment when the pragmatic takes precedence over the ideological. Nationalist feminism, as an ideology, seems to have run its course. Feminists are now operating in local and global spaces as the two increasingly intersect, challenging and redefining each other. As we bid farewell to feminism in the nationalist century and mark the achievements of its leaders and pioneers, it seems that feminism in a new paradigm will appear with the new millennium.