The position of women and feminist movements
p. 42-43
Texte intégral
| 1932 | 2000 | 2014 | 33.5% |
| Primary school obligatory for girls | Khula procedure written into personal status laws | Law criminalising sexual harassment | Percentage of women over 10 years of age who were illiterate in 2017 |
| Source: CAPMAS | |||
1Women’s rights remain a subject of debate due to the continued existence of inegalitarian laws and discriminatory practices in both the private and public sphere.
2Demands for the equality of social and political rights for women began at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century within a context of vibrant intellectual life. At that time, they were linked to the right to education, work and the removal of the veil. Such ideas were discussed in the salons of aristocratic women and in the journalism and literary works of writers such as Nabawiyya Musa, the first woman to receive a high school graduation certificate, Malak Hifni Nasif, a lawyer, and Qasim Amin.
3The political events of 1919 were a turning point: the contribution of women to the national struggle through their participation in demonstrations won them political recognition. In 1920 the Wafd Party* established a Women’s Central Committee presided over by Huda Sharawi. However, Sharawi was disappointed by the way women were overlooked within the party itself and went on to found the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923.
4The feminist movement between the 1920s and 1952 was vocal on a number of issues from women’s political rights to the reform of the personal status law*. Women’s organisations and newspapers sprung up, including the National Feminist Party (1942), established by Fatma Rashid, and the magazine Bint al-Nil founded by Doria Shafik (1945): this was transformed into the Bint al-Nil Union in 1948. The fight for women’s political rights became increasingly public and culminated in 1951 when Shafik led more than 1,000 women in an occupation of parliament.
From “State feminism” under Nasser to the growth of the NGO
5Nasser’s regime embraced the principles of female emancipation and oversaw real progress for women in the areas of education, maternal health, access to work and political participation. Nonetheless, the record is mixed: the rights to vote and to stand in elections were only gained after pressure from the feminist movement and a hunger strike by Doria Shafik. The women’s cause was monopolised by the women’s organisation of the Arab Socialist Union, the single ruling party, which eliminated all independent forms of feminist grouping. Above all, the personal status law and the patriarchal system remained intact, keeping woman in a subordinate position within the family and in relations between the sexes. The decade of Sadat, which featured an alliance between central power and the Islamists, meant a step backwards for women, despite decrees reforming the personal status law and the establishment of a quota of seats for women in parliament and in regional councils. During the 1980s feminist movements engaged within voluntary sector associations and NGOs, developing Arab regional and international connections often through participation in UN conferences and the like. The principal victories were the criminalisation of female genital mutilation in 2008 and the amendment of the personal status law* in 2000, including the khula procedure and the recognition of customary marriage. The 1990s also witnessed a rise in “Islamic feminism” as embodied by Heba Raouf and distanced from the Western values that inspire a secularist and more elitist feminism.
The fight against sexual violence
6Changes in the feminist movement occurred before and during the uprising of 2011, and then in the post-revolutionary years, that were linked to the engagement of women in the public space, collective sexual assaults, the virginity tests imposed upon demonstrators, and to the redefining of female respectability in the political arena. Feminist initiatives multiplied across the country, signalling a decentralisation of the movement and an end to the taboo of mentioning sexist and sexual violence, whether verbal or physical, in the public space. In 2014, Article 306 of the penal code was modified to criminalise sexual harassment. The National Council for Women, which is close to the authorities, was commissioned in 2015 to draft a national strategy to combat violence against women, a problem that is now written into the political agenda. Nevertheless, the hardening of laws overseeing associations has dealt a blow to feminist groups, while a crackdown in 2017 on supporters of the LGBT cause points to deep-rooted stereotypes in gender matters.
2.9 The women’s position in Egypt: some important dates

2.10 A poster referencing the “Girl in the Blue Bra” incident, Cairo, December 2011

In December 2011, a young female demonstrator was brutally beaten by military police in Tahrir Square. Photographs and video showed the victim lying on the ground wearing jeans, her face covered by her black robe (abaya), and her torso partly naked.
© Filippo Monteforte / AFP
2.11 Interactive map from the web site HarassMap, December 2018

7The mapping and flagging system of HarassMap highlight the widespread phenomenon of sexual harassment in Egypt, while confronting existing prejudices regarding the subject and promoting zero tolerance for the crime.
Auteur
-
Salma Shash
Salma Shash, researcher in women’s studies
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Les chemins de la décolonisation de l’empire colonial français, 1936-1956
Colloque organisé par l’IHTP les 4 et 5 octobre 1984
Charles-Robert Ageron (dir.)
1986
Premières communautés paysannes en Méditerranée occidentale
Actes du Colloque International du CNRS (Montpellier, 26-29 avril 1983)
Jean Guilaine, Jean Courtin, Jean-Louis Roudil et al. (dir.)
1987
La formation de l’Irak contemporain
Le rôle politique des ulémas chiites à la fin de la domination ottomane et au moment de la création de l’état irakien
Pierre-Jean Luizard
2002
La télévision des Trente Glorieuses
Culture et politique
Évelyne Cohen et Marie-Françoise Lévy (dir.)
2007
L’homme et sa diversité
Perspectives en enjeux de l’anthropologie biologique
Anne-Marie Guihard-Costa, Gilles Boetsch et Alain Froment (dir.)
2007
