Volume 5, No. 1 - March 2001
Volume 5, No. 1 - March 2001
Editor's Summary: The women's movement in Egypt made gains in the late twentieth century but there were also many areas of scant progress or stagnation. Among the controversial issues have been the legal framework of women's rights, marriage and divorce laws, female genital mutilation, and issues of dress and modesty. The state's efforts to control women's groups have produced both a certain degree of official sponsorship along with aspects of control and manipulation. One critical and hotly debated question is whether feminism can be Egyptian in content or whether it is and must remain a Western import, thus reducing its legitimacy and acceptability.
The last century witnessed women's transition in Egypt from the harem to
corporate and governmental offices. The decade of the 1990s illustrated the
mixed manner in which feminist ideas, programs, and progress interacted with
social and political currents in Egypt.
Historians have remarked on the contradictory ideological currents that
appeared in the last century's end ("fin de siècle"), the
1890s. In the West, an active suffrage movement coexisted with new interests in
spiritualism. In the Middle East, the debate over female education, seclusion
and the veil, dubbed the "feminist awakening" occurred with mixed
motives, the continuity and improvement of women's domestic roles prominent
among them.(1) With Charles Dickens in mind then, one could ask whether the
1990s were the best or worst of times for women in Egypt?
Debates over feminism in Egypt in the 1990s began with consideration of
the most basic semantic, theoretical and political questions: How should the
term be written in Arabic? Is feminism primarily a creature of the West? If so,
how does one characterize the history of indigenous feminists such as Huda
Sha'rawi, Bahithat al-Badiya, Nabawiya Musa, and others?
Along with such questions, a variety of women’s voices and competing
ideas on women's potential and appropriate roles in Egypt have become manifest
in this decade. Does feminism represent women's struggle against men or women's
struggle with men for human rights? Since some who energetically seek the
transformation and improvement of women's status disavow the word
"feminist" how should one differentiate among different goals and
views?(2) Can individual feminists or specific feminisms be congruent with
Islam?(3)
Clearly, during the 1990s, there was a great increase in public debate on
feminist issues. For many years, Egypt has witnessed a growing number of women
professionals and the appearance of serious literature dealing with gender
issues. The principle of female employment has become entrenched and even
conservative forces have accepted education and political mobilization for
women.(4) Feminists penetrated many layers of society as educators and
activists. Many of them emerged from particular shillas (an age set,
often cohorts in college) and chose to make the political personal and
vice-versa, in an eminently feminist fashion.(5)
The conflict--sometimes violent--between Islamists and the Egyptian
government brought several women's rights issues to public attention such as
veiling and the relationship of intellectual freedom to personal status laws,
including divorce. One controversial Islamist tactic was to force a divorce via
a third-party lawsuit, on an unwilling couple to punish the husband.(6) For
example, Nasr Abu Zayd, a scholar whose writing appeared too secularist to his
Islamist critics, faced such an attack, and left Egypt in response.(7)
Economic developments have also had an important effect on the status of
women. The ruling National Democratic Party in Egypt, which enjoys support from
a new elite made prosperous by privatization policies, has been more open to
reforming the role of women. At the same time, an increase in poverty or
financial strain due to inflation and other factors increased the cost of
marriage for large numbers of people and encouraged the new practice of 'urfi
marriage wherein the established costs of shari'a marriage could be
avoided (discussed below). Thus, local customs combined with inflation
necessitated legal reforms that impact women. Feminist attitudes were in turn,
necessary to effect these changes.
Another area of change was a boom in the number of non-governmental
organizations. In 1999, there were an estimated 14,000 such groups, many of them
dealing with projects specifically targeting women. Officials close to President
Mubarak perceived the independent activity of such groups to be dangerous--and
inappropriate for Egypt's current socio-religious mood. The government created
what might be called GONGOs (government-created non-governmental
organizations--an oxymoron) and also sought to disempower existing NGOs. But in
response to international pressure against this action--coming from U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and First Lady Hilary Clinton among
others--some NGOs were permitted to resume activities while others are awaiting
approval. (It should be noted that some included among the NGOs were actually
GONGOs.)
To understand this
situation's complexity, consider the experience of Egypt's best-known, veteran
feminist Nawal Saadawi. Toward the beginning of the decade, the government
closed her Arab Women's Solidarity Association and reassigned its license and
assets to an Islamic women's organization. She had to leave the country for a
time. By early 2000, however, her message was in vogue again among many,
especially younger, women inspired by the January legal reforms. Her views
inspired the creation of a new organization, al-Nahda al-Fikriyya lil-Mar'a
al-Misriyya. However, this group has not as yet gained full legal status through
registration.
Other NGOs are cautiously surveying the situation after the surprising
crackdown on sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim and his Ibn Khaldun Center in the
summer of 2000. He and 27 associates were charged with treason and espionage,
and several were imprisoned for a while. The case is still in the courts. (8)
Ibrahim's organization sponsored the registration of women voters and called for
judicial supervision of the election process. The charges against the Ibn
Khaldun Center and the Women Voters Support Center were based on the claim that
their use of properly obtained research funds from the European Commission
constituted espionage on behalf of foreigners. This event could intimidate any
woman’s NGOs from seeking foreign funding. In addition, researchers have been
experiencing problems, delays or denials of grants that require the Ministry of
Education's approval if they involve topics dealing with gender, since the
mid-1990s.
The mixed situation for women can be seen in a survey of the following
women’s issues: obstacles persist in the fight against female circumcision;
the January 2000 legal reform, which enhanced women's ability to obtain a
divorce but also elicited a strong public backlash; a continuing public debate
over "Islamic" dress; and finally, a severe and troubling increase in
censorship has affected treatment of women's sexuality and gender issues in
print.
FGM (Female Genital Mutilation)
FGM, or female circumcision as it is termed in Egypt, has been an
important issue for women's rights activists in Egypt. According to various
studies, those who practice FGM believe it to be a "good tradition,"
in that it controls both female sexuality and enhances fertility. In fact, it
has decidedly negative effects on women's reproductive and psychological health
Estimates indicated that 50 to 60% of Egyptian women have been
circumcised. The reason that the figures are quite high is related to the class
divisions in Egyptian society. The far more numerous lower classes, both
Christians and Muslims, follow this Nile valley tradition, while the families of
Turco-Circassian derivation, the main segment of the small historic elite, do
not.(9) Furthermore, some prominent Islamists asserted that FGM is an
Islamic practice. For example, the Al-Azhar mosque-university, which has played
a role in promoting family planning, has produced conflicting statements on FGM,
and has not strongly opposed the practice.
New data has suggested that the practice is much more pervasive than was
previously admitted. A 1995 EDHS (Egypt Demographic Health Survey) showed that
97% of Egyptian women who have been married ("ever-married women"
including divorcees and widows) are circumcised.(10) A separate clinic-based
study confirmed these results. Although the study cannot tell us how many young
girls are being circumcised today, it does illustrate the magnitude of the
issue. Thus, FGM continues despite the attention originally drawn to this issue
by Nawal al-Saadawi many years ago (11); articles by feminists and journalists;
local feminist endeavors including creative anti-FGM advertising (including
posters designed by Caritas)(12); and increasing rates of female education.
The FGM Task-Force headed by Marie Assaad was established in 1994
operating under the National NGO Commission for Population and Development. It
has created research, mobilization, and advocacy groups, with a center for
documents and media reports on FGM. Yet despite the Task Force’s attempts to
show that it is a form of violence against women, this procedure will apparently
continue so long as Egyptians believe that it makes their daughters more
marriageable and moral. (13)
Somewhat paradoxically, several key members of the Task Force did not
support the 1996 ban on FGM in government hospitals and clinics. They thought it
was better for women's health to insist that any FGM be supervised by doctors,
taking it out of the hands of midwives and barbers, who often perform it. This
meant that some feminists opposed to any form of FGM were in conflict with the
Task Force's strategy.
The ban on FGM in government hospitals, it is interesting to note, came
about because of public controversy generated by international media coverage.
When CNN broadcast footage of a circumcision, the producer and network faced
legal charges for supposedly promoting a negative image of Egypt. The charges
were dropped, and the minister of health denounced FGM, issuing decree 261 in
1996 forbidding FGM in governmental medical hospitals and clinics. The decree
was challenged in the courts and overturned, but was reinstated in 1997.(14)
Dress/Modesty
The significance of dress is to divide women into two visibly different
groups, one of which seems to lay claim to Islamic modesty, while the other can
be criticized for adopting foreign ways, or even immorality. The hijab,
or modern Islamic dress, adopted from the late 1970s onward has maintained its
popularity among students and white collar workers.(15) By the 1990s, it had
spread to the lower classes, rural areas, some elements of the elite, and has
even been adopted by African and some Filipino immigrants in Cairo so that they
would avoid harassment in the streets.
This popularization has also meant that such garb does not necessarily
indicate support for Islamist groups. Indeed, the style has been visibly altered
from 1999 onward to the wearing of a discrete scarf, in many cases tucked under
the collar, rather than the previously more enveloping head garment, the khimar.
The niqab (face veil) was actively discouraged and is rarer now than it
was in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
However, in general, women must now, as compared to earlier decades,
dress somewhat more conservatively in the streets and Islamists have mounted
campaigns against Western dress such as wearing jeans. (16). There are also
periodic news articles concerning the supposedly "seductive" dress of
students at the American University in Cairo. A particularly shocking rape took
place on a public bus in 1996, and the judge castigated the victim for not
wearing the hijab, although he approved of the long skirt she had worn
After many years of silence on the issue and claims that Islamism played
no role in the spread of hijab, the government took action to discourage the
niqab, particularly after the Islamist takeover of the Imbaba area of Cairo in
1993. Colleges, secondary, and technical schools have brought a certain degree
of peer pressure, or even directives from teacher's to wear a hijab. (17) A
headmistress of the Qasim Amin School had required the hijab of all students.
The Minister of Education then issued Decree No. 113 in 1994, indicating
schoolgirls could only wear the hijab with parental consent. The Ministerial
decree prompted outrage on the part of many parents, teachers, Islamists, and
the general public. (18)
Many women state and write, for instance in letters' sections of various
newspapers, that the emphasis on women's modesty in public conveyed through the hijab's
popularity has led to heightened harassment of unveiled women in public. The
issue clearly involves the conception of women and modesty in public space.
Organizational Issues
Many new, small groups have carried out important feminist work while
insisting on independence from the state's direct control. The FGM Task Force
has been mentioned. Other such groups include the Women in Memory Forum, which
has sponsored lectures and publications on topics of women's history,
literature, and drama, and the Nur publishing group, which has held conferences,
and published a periodical and other materials. Also active is the Association
for the Development and Enhancement of Women, which gives credit to women
entrepreneurs; the Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance; the New Woman
Research Center, originally established in 1983 and registered in 1990, engaged
in a variety of feminist activities, the Ma'an Research Center; the Bint al-Ard
association which grew out of an Egyptian Palestinian solidarity group in
Mansura; the Omdurman Women's Center, dealing with the numerous Sudanese women
refugees; and other groups such as the Alliance for Arab Women, including some
affiliated with political parties.
These small groups have limited funding and are dependent on volunteers.
They have sometimes avoided publicity, in order to deflect criticism from the
public or the press. There is also concern that too high a profile would bring
at least temporary cancellation of their licenses by the government. But
focusing on low-key activity, and limited memberships mean that they only preach
to the converted and need to expand their base if society is to be affected. The
groups also do not agree on all issues. For example, the group close to the
leftist Tagamu' party has applied a class-based critique to the movement.(19).
In the spring of 2000, the National Council for Women was established under the
leadership of Mervat Tallawy. It is not clear if it will absorb much of the
feminist activity of other groups or find ways to work cooperatively with them.
The independent women's groups cannot even be sure they will represent
Egyptian women at international meetings. At the 2000 UN Beijing+5 conference on
women in New York, Egypt's delegation was made up primarily of state-sponsored
representatives. Suzanne Mubarak, the president's wife, gave a determined and
politicized message there, and made proposals including those advocating
micro-credit for women. Egyptian critics of the proceedings were nevertheless
unhappy with the government-controlled group's lack of coordination and
consultation with the independent NGOs attending the conference.(20)
Feminist Aida Seif al-Dawla commented that the state had adopted the
feminist NGOs' rhetoric on women--in representing their needs as human rights
issues--but had not necessarily adopted the substance of the NGOs programs.(21)
The history of feminist organizations in both Asia and the West has shown
that grassroots based efforts as well as those of female politicians and
state-derived reforms were important in effecting feminist transformations. To
this end, Nawal Saadawi attempted to establish a national Women's Union in
February of 2000 to serve as an umbrella organization encompassing the many
independent feminist NGOs. (22) The government did not support this initiative,
however, and instead, set up its own organization.
The National Council for Women (NCW), was officially established in March
2000, with Suzanne Mubarak as president, and Mervat Tallawy, the former Minister
of Social Affairs, as Consul General. Tallawy has set out to improve women's
share of political power. The Council set up working groups in the various
governates, has held two Intellectual Forums and--with UNDP co-sponsorship and
in tandem with an NGO, the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights--advised and
supported women candidates in the 2000 elections.(23) One hundred and twenty
women ran for Parliament and seven women (two more than in 1995) won seats. The
group co-hosted the first Arab women's summit held in Cairo, November 18-20,
2000, along with the al-Hariri Institute and the Arab League. This event,
attended by numerous Arab first ladies, focused more on Palestinian women due to
the events of the al-Aqsa Intifada, rather than the broader feminist agenda that
had been planned.
Will the NCW absorb much of the feminist activity of other groups or find
ways to work cooperatively with them? State-promoted feminism could remain
ceremonial, or at worst, a potential source of backlash, but at its best, could
improve and give teeth to legal reforms as in the NCW's recommendations that
husbands who withhold alimony be imprisoned.
The independent women's groups cannot answer these questions yet. At the
2000 UN Beijing+5 conference on women in New York, Egypt's delegation was
dominated by state-sponsored representatives, although two reports were
prepared. One report was written by the NCW along with the National Council for
Motherhood and Childhood. The other included the views of 421 NGOs and was
sponsored by the Alliance for Arab Women and UNICEF. Suzanne Mubarak, the
president's wife, gave a determined, and politicized message there, and made
proposals for a Global Facility which would for example offer credit to women
entrepreneurs. Some Egyptian observers of the proceedings were unhappy with the
government-controlled group's lack of coordination and consultation with the
independent NGOs attending the conference.(24) Feminist Aida Seif al-Dawla
commented that the state had adopted the feminist NGOs' rhetoric on women but
had not necessarily adopted the substance of the NGOs programs.(25)
One area where the government has sought to improve women's status is
through economic development projects, in which additional income can contribute
to women's independence, well-being, and self-esteem. Some of these programs,
however, are not economically viable while others are initiated but not fully
implemented. In the weaving center established by Suzanne Mubarak in Siwa, women
work on pseudo-Oriental rugs with the goal of saving up for the costs of
marriage. This program, though, is purely economic and lacks an educational
component, and does not challenge the social system that requires marriage with
its currently high costs.(26)
Many such economic endeavors are funded by the U.S. A.I.D program or by
agencies funded by European states. In one of the latter, a project consultant
related his shock at discovering that women were told to buy jelly from stores
to display in a provincial women's association festival as their own produce,
since this area lacked any traditional craft products.
One might contrast this depressing example with an NGO project in Minya,
whose goal was to increase women’s consciousness through meetings and
discussions. This project was sponsored by the Coptic Evangelical Organization
for Social Services. Muslim and Christian participants contributed very positive
ideas regarding self-esteem, the need to end violence against women, including
domestic violence, the irrelevance of media articles designed for women, and
Egyptian women's history--a topic neglected in the national curriculum.(27)
Legal Reforms
A new personal status law passed by Parliament and signed into law by
President Hosni Mubarak on January 29, 2000, energized women's activists. It
includes the creation of a family court able to facilitate divorce cases and a
family insurance plan. But there were also sharp criticisms of the new law. The
most hotly contested clauses involved women's right to invoke khul,
meaning that women may initiate a divorce on any grounds, so long as they return
the groom's gifts of jewelry (the shabka) and dowry payments (mahr).
(28). The payments are often made in two installments, with the second often
withheld in case of divorce. Women are thus able to ransom themselves from
marriages, although the better educated and wealthier will obviously be the
greater beneficiaries from this aspect of the reform.
The new law would allow such a divorce after intervention by one arbiter
for each side. This measure follows the Quranic command, "If ye fear a
breach between them twain. Appoint [two] arbiters, one from his family and the
other from hers" (Surah IV:35). When the arbitration process fails, then a
divorce is granted in three months and is irrevocable. If the arbitration
process fails then the divorce will be granted in three months and is to be
irrevocable. The new law also prohibits men from divorcing their wives without
immediately informing them (talaq al-ghiyabi). This practice was probably
the worst abuse of the existing legal situation and stemmed from an earlier
limited practice of pronouncing "I divorce thee" three times, (talaq
al-bid'a) thus bypassing any efforts to mediate, or reconcile partners.
Finally, the law recognizes 'urfi marriages. 'Urf is a actually a
category of law derived from customary practice and tribal law which has, in
certain cases been employed as an acceptable source of shari'a. However such
marriages were not previously considered to be as legitimate as were registered
nikah (the "normal" category of the marriage contract) marriages.
'Urfi marriage is to date, an Egyptian phenomenon. Many young Egyptians,
reportedly often including university students, resort to 'urfi marriages
because "regular" marriage is beyond their financial means, costing
more than six years' wages for many young Egyptian men. The funds include
payment of the dowry (mahr) gifts, formal engagement and wedding parties,
purchase of an apartment and major appliances and furniture. (29)
If not for this alternative, young people would have to postpone marriage
for many years and in the meantime are not, according to local custom and
Islamic law, supposed to have sexual relations. Although many have engaged in urfi
marriages, the courts had previously refused to consider the legal issues such
couples might encounter if they seek to divorce or have children.
The laws of personal status (including marriage, divorce and inheritance)
have been codified in many but not all Muslim states, and are based on laws
formulated within particular schools of Islamic law, (shari'a). Debates
over these laws first emerged in the nineteenth century, when the customs of
female seclusion and the lack of education for women were also questioned. The
Ottoman Empire which held formal authority over Egypt first passed two imperial
edicts allowing women to sue for divorce on limited grounds in 1915 and codified
family law in the Ottoman Law of Family Rights two years later.
In Egypt, laws passed in 1920 and in 1929 broadened the grounds for
divorce by incorporating principles outside the strict Hanafi legal code but
acceptable in the more lenient Maliki version. This change allowed women to
obtain a divorce under certain conditions: if they were deserted, mistreated,
denied financial maintenance, or whose husbands were imprisoned or had a serious
contagious disease.(30)
Other reforms, rejected by King Fuad and re-proposed during the 1940s
were drawn up to allow women to write clauses into their wedding contracts
restricting their husband's right to take another wife. Subsequent efforts
ensued in 1971, due in part to efforts by the Minister of Social Affairs 'A'isha
Ratib. These eventually resulted in reforms decreed by President Anwar al-Sadat
in 1979 during a parliamentary recess, and then later passed by the
legislature.(31) Due to this extra-parliamentary method of legal passage,
however, the reforms of 1979 (known as Jihan's laws, for First Lady Jihan Sadat)
were declared unconstitutional by the Higher Constitutional Court in 1985 and
most, but not all of their advances were rolled back.(32)
The 1979 personal status reforms had incorporated new grounds for divorce
by a woman if her husband took another wife without her consent. She was to be
informed if her husband divorced her and allowed to obtain a notarized
certificate of divorce. The divorced wife retained custody of her
children--until the ages of 10 for a boy and 12 for a girl--and was to be
awarded the family apartment as a residence until she remarried. These reforms
also gave women the right to work, so long as it did not interfere with their
"family duties" and ended the practice of bayt al-ta'a (house
of obedience) wherein the husband could lock up a wife who had tried to leave
the marriage (or to initiate a divorce) at home until he obtained her
"obedience."
It should be noted that earlier and recent reforms
do not apply to Coptic women. Although the intent of such legal reforms has been
to create a civil personal status code, the Church refused to recognize divorces
that did not involve grounds of adultery and has denied couples who were
divorced in "civil" proceedings the right to remarry. In part, this is
the Coptic Church's reaction to other civil laws which imposed precepts derived
from shari'a upon non-Muslims.(33)
Backlash
The rescinding of the 1979 reforms and the opposition to the 2000 reforms
is related to the continuing rise of Islamist influence and an increasingly
strong profile of religious authority within Egypt. Several key issues are
absent in the new (2000) law. These include restrictions on polygamy and efforts
to encourage women's inclusion of protective clauses in their marriage
contracts. Egyptian women who marry a non-Egyptian man still may not confer
their citizenship to their children, while non-Egyptian women who marry Egyptian
men are eligible for citizenship after two years and their children are
Egyptian.
Particularly controversial in the new reform law was Article 26, dealing
with a woman's right to travel without her husband's consent. In Islamic law,
women have required the permission or presence of a mahram, a close male
relative who acts as a guardian for travel. The Egyptian government decided to
drop Article 26 from the draft law just before passage as a concession to its
opponents, although the Shaykh al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi had supported
the new law even with that provision (and was criticized by the Islamists for
this support).
Fierce opposition to the reforms appeared. Cartoons featured female
harridans pursuing frantic husbands with their brooms, women rushing to the
airports, or men donning women's clothes and headscarves and assuming domestic
chores. After the law's passage, one cartoon featured a woman determinedly
packing her suitcase. Her husband protests, "You can't travel without my
permission!" but the wife retorts, " I can't? Then I divorce
you!" Both humorous and serious debate revealed doubts that women should be
entrusted with expanded rights to divorce or given the ability to travel like
men. The implication was that they would flee the confinement of marriage if
given an opportunity to do so. (34)
Beyond the cartoons, some of the backlash is no doubt partisan. The main
support for legal reforms comes from the ruling NDP (National Democratic Party).
Opposition spokesmen were furious at what they regarded as a steamrolling
process and promised legal challenges to the new law. Given previous judicial
defeats over such laws, this is worrisome for feminists who are gearing up to
present their own legal challenges to expand the reforms, for example by
challenging the travel ban.
Gender in the Culture Wars
Another form of backlash has occurred through conservative and Islamist
attacks on writing that deal with Islamic themes in unconventional ways, discuss
sexuality openly, criticize traditional gender roles or practices, or the Gulf
states, or somehow evince too secular a worldview by the author. Arab women
fiction writers--including Hanan al-Shaykh, Alifa Rifaat, Ahdaf Soueif, and
younger authors like Miral Tahawy--have meanwhile, forged ahead in exploring
issues of gender and sexuality. A definite increase in censorship has taken
place in Egypt and more than 500 titles have been "withdrawn from
circulation," as the main category of censorship is euphemistically termed.
Works by Hanan al-Shaykh, Alifa Rifaat, Mohamed Choukri, Abd al-Rahman Munif,
Said Ashmawi, Edward Said, and many other authors have appeared on the list,
which has even included rather innocuous women's studies' texts such as Women
Imagine Global Change. The suspicion with which such works are viewed has
been intensified by controversies over works deemed to be objectionable on
religious grounds, such as Maxime Rodinson's Muhammad, and in the mass
protests and threats of violence against Haydar Haydar's book Walima li-Aashaab
al-Bahr (35).
This has led to self-censorship, heightened suspicion of overtly feminist
themes, and hysteria about any mention of homosexuality. One uproar, reaching
even into parliamentary committee deliberations, concerned a work included in a
course on modern Arabic literature taught by a scholar who has been identified
as a feminist. Even when treatments of FGM or men's use of women as sexual
objects are included in non-explicit language, or written from an exclusively
Egyptian perspective--as in the short stories of Alifa Rifaat (Distant View
of a Minaret)--they are simply considered to be too provocative.
Conclusion
The situation regarding women's rights and demands is thus extremely
complicated in Egypt. The state has supported certain legal reforms for women
but these have been limited. It permits NGOs, including those with a feminist
agenda, but sometimes pressures or suspends them. Micro-credit for women-led
businesses is encouraged but international displays of Egypt's poverty or
publicity about practices such as FGM have been condemned.(36) The government
moves against certain Islamist-favored restrictions on women, but also, as if
seeking society's approval--expresses its own version of Islamic conservatism.
It advocates a moderate, elitist form of feminism which it perceives to be
helpful to the development process but does not necessarily want to introduce
any disruptive social change regarding gender roles or women's status. Thus,
intellectuals and writers who choose to deal with gender issues are constrained
both by two potential adversaries--Islamist attacks and the government's
paternalistic efforts to contain them, or failure to support their freedom of
expression.
In this same environment, violence against women, and legal efforts to end discrimination on the basis of sex (including items in the constitution) are described as being too controversial or too "Western" to pursue. In such an environment, the net effect of feminism in the decade closing the century has certainly engendered mixed results.
NOTES
1. Lila Abu Lughod, "Feminist Longings and Postcolonial
Conditions," in Lila Abu Lughod, ed., Remaking Women: Feminism and
Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton; Princeton University, 1998).
2. Azza Karam, Women, Islamisms and the State: Contemporary Feminisms
in Egypt. (New York: St. Martin's and London: MacMillan, 1999) pp. 4-14.
3. Sherifa Zuhur, Revealing Reveiling: Islamist Gender Ideology in
Contemporary Egypt. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992);
Nadje al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle EastL The
Egyptian Women's Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
Azza Karam, Women, Islamisms and the State; Safinaz Qassim
"Al-Feminism: Harakat al-getto
al-nisa'iyya," al-Musawwar, (24 June, 1994). Zuhur,
"Women Can Embrace Islamic Gender Roles in Paul Winters, ed. Islam
(San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1995) pp. 93-94; and in discussions of particular
figures, such as Durayya Shafiq, in Cynthia Nelson, Doria Shafik: Egyptian
Feminist, A Woman Apart. (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1996) as in the quote on 142 and pp. 275, 282-284.
4. Sherifa Zuhur, Revealing Reveiling 92-95, 98, 106-108; Arlene
MacCleod, Accomodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling and
Change in Cairo ((New York: Columbia University Press, 1991) pp. 85-91.
5. al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State.
6. Some depictions of this incident portray it as a natural outcome of
the limited freedoms of Arab intellectual life, whereas my interest here is in
the Islamists' intervention in the marriage status of those they perceive as
enemies. An example of the "limited freedoms" approach is Milton
Viorst, "The Shackles on the Arab Mind. Washington Quarterly, 21:2
(Spring 1998).
7. A similar effort was made when Islamists charged Toujan al-Faisal of
Jordan with apostasy in 1989 and tried to divorce her from her husband after
labeling her feminist views as anti-Islamic. Nancy Gallagher, "Women's
Human Rights on Trial in Jordan: The Triumph of Toujan al-Faisal," in
Mahnaz Afkhami, ed. Faith and Freedom: Women's Human Rights in the Muslim
World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995) pp. 209-231.
8. The prosecutor has requested the maximum penalty for charges
"ranging from accepting foreign funds without government authorisation to
compiling false reports about domestic conditions. They are also accused of
attempting to embezzle money and making plans to bribe radio and television
officials to broadcast programmes about the Ibn Khaldun Centre" Jailan
Halawi "As Long as it's Fair," Al-Ahram Weekly On-line (23 - 29
November 2000) . The European Commission has issued a statement declaring
the validity of its funding of these programs, and the lack of financial
irregularities "Statement of the European Commission on the trial of the
Egyptian democracy activist Professor Saad Ibrahim." Brussels, 13 December,
2000.
9. Leila Ahmed recalls that she did not know what cliterodectomy was as a
child, and her mother's comment on hearing about one was simply "That is
not something that we do." The word "we" here refers to the sort
of Turko-Circiassian family to which her mother belonged. Leila Ahmed, A
Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1999) p. 97.
10. Fatma H. El-Zanaty, E.M. Hussein, G.A. Shawky, A.K. Way, and S.
Kishor. Egypt Demographic and health Survey 1995 (Calverton: National
Population Council and Macro International Inc., 1996). Guenena and Wassef write
"Some women from this nationally representative sample underwent a
gynecological examination, and a validation study was done on the entire sample
to confirm the figures." Nimat Guenena and Nadia Wassef, Unfulfilled
Promises: Women's Rights in Egypt. (New York: Population Council, 1999) p.
61.
11. Nawal Saadawi, "Circumcision of Girls" in Saadawi, The
Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World. (in English, London: Zed, 1980;
and Boston: Beacon, 1982) pp. 33-43.
12. These show for example, a happy smiling girl-headed flower with a
whole stem, beside another girl-flower with a pained face being snipped by
shears, or a picture of children playing together and a large scissors snipping
off the image of one girl. Both bear the caption " La lakhtan
al-banat," and are included in Guenena and Wassef's booklet. But the
posters are not in evidence in the streets of Cairo, and it would be highly
controversial to include them in a television campaign on FGM. Yet that is the
sort of approach that is necessary to really affect public consciousness. Family
planning initiatives have used television for such purposes.
13. Although there are differences in circumcision in Egypt as compared
to the Sudan (where a more severe form of the operation takes place), an article
on FGM in the Sudan illustrates the deeply rooted attitudes about women that
help to perpetuate the practice. Janice Boddy, "Womb as Oasis: The Symbolic
Context of Pharaonic Circumcision in Rural Northern Sudan" in Roger N.
Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo, eds. The Gender Sexuality Reader: Culture,
History, Political Economy. (New York and London: Routledge, 1997) pp.
309-324.
14. Guenena & Wassef, Unfulfilled Promises, p. 50.
15. Zuhur, Revealing; MacLeod, Accomodating; Andrea Rugh, Reveal
and Conceal: Dress in Contemporary Egypt. (Cairo: AUC Press, 1986) pp.
149-156 (also discusses men's Islamic dress); Fadwa El Guindi, "Veiling
Infitah with Muslim Ethic: Egypt's Contemporary Islamic Movement," Social
Problems, 28 no. 4 (April 1981) pp. 465-85; Fadwa El Guindi, Veil: Modesty,
Privacy and Resistance (Berg: 1999).
16. "Al-Jeans fi Wizarat al-Awqaf," al-Nur, 20 February
1991.
17. As is clearly portrayed in a scene in a technical school in the film,
Of Boys, Girls and the Veil (1997) directed by Youssri Nassrallah. The
film also shows that the protagonist's sister adopts the hijab without peer,
teacher, or parental pressure to do so.
18. Guenena and Wassef, p. 46, who discuss the polorization of women via
dress in an insightful manner and "Akhir Iftera'at Wazir
al-Ta'lim…al-Hijab Hurriya Shakhsiyya" al-Nur 21, October, 1992.
19. The New Woman Research and Study Center, "The Feminist Movement
in Egypt" in NWRSC, The Feminist Movement in the Arab World (Cairo:
Dar al-Mustaqbal al-'Arabi, 1996) p. 43.
20. Mariz Tadros, "No Time To Talk," al-Ahram Weekly
(8-14 June 2000).
21. Yomna Kamal, "United they stand--if they're allowed" Middle
East Times, 25 Feb. 2000
22.
NWC Members include Dr. Farkhonda Hassan, Dr. Gaber Asfour, Dr. Zeinab Radwan,
Ms. Mona Zulficar, Dr. Heba Handoussa, Ms. Seheir Kansouh, Dr. Hoda Sobhi, Dr.
Salwa Gomaa, Dr. Laila El Khawaga and other prominent individuals. See the NWC's
home page, <http://www.ncw.gov.eg/newsncweng.htm>.
Also, Paul Garwood, "Project Aims to Boost Egyptian Women's Voice,
Middle East Times, 30 June 2000; Amina Elbendary, "Ladies of the
House," Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Issue 504 (19-25 October 2000);
Amina Elbendary, "The Meaning of Success." Al-Ahram Weekly Online,
Issue 509, (23-29 November, 2000).
23. Maha Khalil, "Global Women's Issues Tackled at New York
Conference" Middle East Times, (9 June 2000); and Dahlia Hamouda
"Treading Carefully for Women's Rights" Al-Ahram Weekly (15 - 21 June
2000)
24. Mariz Tadros, "No Time To Talk," al-Ahram Weekly
(8-14 June 2000).
25. Personal communications with women workers, Siwa, April 2000. This
might be compared to projects elsewhere in the Arab world which include a
components of literacy and management courses, and health courses as well as
more explicit discussions of women's status.
26. Tadros, "No Time to Talk."
27. Guenena and Wassef, pp. 64-66.
28. Muslim women's rights to divorce are more limited than men's. One
category of divorce is tafriq involving women's right to petition the
court for divorce given particular grounds such as injury, the husband's
physical defects, failure to pay for the wife's maintenance, or more recently
absence or imprisonment. Khul', a different legal category, allows the
woman to "buy" her divorce by forfeiting the delayed portion of the
dower or bride price, or by paying a sum of money. For good summaries see
"Marriage and Divorce," Legal Foundations (by Aziza al-Hibri) and
"Modern Practice" (by Eleanor Doumato) in John Esposito, ed., Oxford
Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World Vol. 3 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995).
29. As early as 1980, Andrea Rugh cited journalists comments that
marriage costs were unmanageable and explained new strategies for saving since
such costs had out-stepped wages, Andrea Rugh, Family in Contemporary Egypt
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1984) pp. 254-256. Diane Singerman
estimated the cost of marriage at $10,490 in the mid 1980's, Diane Singerman,
"The Family and Community as Politics" in Diane Singerman and Hoda
Hoofar, eds. Development, Change and Gender in Cairo (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996) p. 169. Singerman along with Barbara Ibrahim of
the Population Council presented a table of marriage costs by area within Egypt
and explained how and why the groom's and bride's sides assumed different
relative proportions in rural vs. urban locations in a conference on women and
the family held last spring in Cairo at the American University in Cairo. The
cost of marriage is now approximately six times the average male's annual
salary, although this may range even higher.
30. John Esposito, Women in Muslim Family Law (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1982) pp. 53-55.
31. Fauzi Najjar, "Egypt's Laws of Personal Status," Arab
Studies Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1988).
32. Mervat Hatem, "The Pitfalls of Nationalist Discourses on
Citizenship in Egypt," in Suad Joseph, ed., Gender and Citizenship in
the Middle East . (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2000) pp. 55-56 and
Mona Zulficar, al-Mar'ah al-Misriyya fi 'Alam Mutaghiir (Cairo:
Rasa'il al-Nid'a al-Jadid, n.d.) pp. 3-4 and 17-19.
33. Ibid, pp. 54-55 and also see, Ghalli Shukri. Al-Aqbat fi watan
mutaghayir. (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1991).
34. Sherifa Zuhur, "Freeing Egyptian Wives " WIN (Women's
International Network) Magazine No. 30, March 2000.
35. The opposition Sha'b party was suspended on the 20th of May for
allegedly inciting the demonstrations over the book which led to the death of
several students by Egyptian security forces. Al-Ahzar University's weekly
newspaper, The Voice of al-Azhar had published a statement confirming
that the book "crosses the borders of what is dictated by religion,
violates what is sacred to Islam, religion and public morality." Middle
East Times 25-31 May 2000. Intellectuals responded to the attacks on the
book with a collective statement and appeal to support freedom of expression.
36. For years, police discouraged photography of Egypt's poorest
residents and squatters. During the current era of privatization, the government
estimates a lower rate (less than 30?) of poverty based on those who earn less
than $1 per day than do some NGOs. In an article commenting on the poor
nutrition of young women, Aida Saif al-Dawla held that the poverty rate has
increased "in Egypt from 29 percent in 1981/8 2 to 45 percent in
1998/99." Rasha Mehyar,
"Rising Poverty Affecting Appearance," Middle East Times,
(Online) 2 June 2000.
*
Sherifa Zuhur is Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern
Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Her publications include Asmahan's
Secret's: Woman, War and Song (Austin: Center for Middle Eastern Studies,
2000) and Revealing Reveiling: Islamist Gender Ideology in Contemporary Egypt
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1992). She is contributing editor of Images of
Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East (Cairo: AUC
Press, 1998) and Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Music, Dance and Art.
(Cairo: AUC Press, in press for April 2001). The author has also written
articles on women, politics, the arts, and Islamism in Egypt and Lebanon and is
president of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies.