by Hoda ElsaddaOn March 8, 2011, Egyptian women took to the streets to celebrate International Women’s Day, in response to a call that was sent out on Facebook for a million women’s march. Since January 25, 2011, Egypt had witnessed a momentous transformation in protest culture and power, wherein millions of people took to the streets to demand their political rights. Million-person marches demonstrated people’s power in the face of a ruthless police state, and eventually succeeded in ousting President Husni Mubarak and ending his 30-year dictatorship. The March 8th call brought a few hundred women to the streets, nowhere near a million. This was not unexpected, as it was extremely unrealistic to imagine that the first sparks of a popular revolution would bring about overnight a radical transfor- mation in cultural attitudes towards women’s rights.
What came as a surprise and a real shock, however, was the marked hostility and violence unleashed against women protesters who were harassed and shouted at by groups of men who encircled them. They were accused of following western agendas that went against cultural values; ideas that have roots in the colonial period when feminist activism was associated with western interventionist policies in the region. The women protestors were called “followers of Suzanne”, Mubarak’s wife, making them accomplices to the decadent and corrupt regime. This day was a blow to women’s rights activists, particularly after the sense of euphoria and empowerment they experienced in Tahrir square where they worked side by side with men, where sexual harassment didn’t exist, and where their gender was superseded by their identity as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. Women activists are struggling to pinpoint the reasons behind the marked hostility. Explanations range from political naiveté of the current context, to conspiratorial theories about paid thugs, to lack of adequate mobilization.
One of the key obstacles women’s rights activists face in the coming months and years is the public perception of a link between the activities of women’s rights activists and those of the ex-First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, and her entourage, which colluded with imperialist agendas. This public perception has already been politically manipulated to rescind previous laws passed to improve women’s legal position from the last ten years, particularly the Personal Status Laws (PSL). These laws are deliberately being discredited as “Suzanne’s laws”, or pejoratively as “qawanin al-hanim” (which means laws of the madam or mistress in Turkish).
Some question whether these laws were politically moti- vated by a corrupt regime or whether they arose from the agenda and years of work of women’s rights activists? Can they rightly be described as “Suzanne’s Laws”? If not, how did the aspirations and work of rights activists become conflated with the agenda of an authoritarian regime?
In recent months, Islamist and liberal columnists and journalists have tried to undo the positive changes in the PSL by linking them to the Mubarak regime. Islamist lawyer and columnist Muntasir al-Zayyat argues that Mubarak’s reform policies were initially good, but were co-opted by three in- fluential members of the ruling National Democratic Party and his wife, Suzanne, known as al-hanim. Al-Zayyat argues that she played a central role in disrupting the “stability of the Muslim family” by going against Muslim family values, particularly in her endorsement of PSL law reform.
The liberal Wafd newspaper has also condemned the destructive impact of Suzanne on the family in her capacity as the head of the National Council for Women (NCW), which pushed the laws through parliament. The Wafd reporter points out that presidential decree number 90 in 2000 established the NCW, with the ex-First lady as president. He listed all the laws that were passed or modi- fied since 2000 (i.e., the divorce law, the citizenship law, and the guardianship law), as well as the quota that gave women 64 seats in parliament, as evidence of Suzanne’s political manipulation that destroyed both family and public spheres. The 64 seats for women in parliament, the paper argued, were intended to facilitate ruling elites plans for political expedience (transfer of rule from father to son), since all appointed women parliamentarians were part of the ruling National Democratic Party.
The centrality of women’s rights issues in political and ideological struggles in Egypt goes back to the early stages of nation-building in the nineteenth century, when women became icons of the imagined national community and subsequent proof of Egypt’s modernity. In 1899, Qasim Amin published a seminal text, Tahrir al-Mar’a (The Liberation of Women), wherein he put forward the argument that the backward status of women was a key reason and indicator of the backwardness of the country, and that the improvement of the status of women (i.e., making them more modern similar to their western sisters) was a prerequisite for the modernization and progress of the country. The link between women and the back- wardness of the country was a colonial argument, which propagated the idea that women in colonized countries were victims of their societies, and stood as proof that these societies were incapable of creating a system of fair self-governance. This, in turn, legitimated the continuation of colonial domination.
Many of the early reformers in Arab countries adopted this underlying logic that equated progress of the country with the modernity of its women. Modernity meant many things: access to modern education; relinquishing tradition- al customs perceived as irrational; embracing a way of life largely modeled on western values and culture; the refor- mation of religion; and last but not least, the liberation of women, symbolically performed in the act of unveiling. Women’s bodies became the arena for the struggle over the character and image of the nation, leading to the well- known ideological battles over the veiling and unveiling of women. In the 1920s and 30s, these battles were fought between two camps: the muhajjabun (pro veiling) and the sufuriyyun (pro unveiling). The first claimed that they were protecting cultural authenticity and Muslim family values, while the second advocated reform of obsolete traditions. Both fought over the cultural identity of the nation as projected via the bodies of women.
Throughout the twentieth century, women were on the frontline of the conflict between tradition and modernity. In 1956, women were granted economic and political rights, and encouraged to become active participants in the new welfare state. While they gained equal rights in the public sphere, women remained subservient to male authority in the private sphere, as the PSL that regulated their position within the family were left intact. This incongruousness created a bizarre anomaly: while women accessed top government positions and secured their economic independence, they remained under the control of male family members in legal guardianship of children, mobility, and access to divorce. In one famous incident, a woman minister who was traveling on official business was denied exit at the airport because her husband secured an injunction to stop her from leaving the country, a right he had as the legal head of the family.
From the early twentieth century to the present day, improving women’s position in the private sphere and modifying PSL have been a defining hallmark of women’s rights activism in Egypt. Early feminists, such as Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918) and Hoda Sha‘rawi (1879-1947), spoke up against legal discrimination against women. In 1956 a radical shift in women activists’ engagement with politics took place as the new modern state consolidated its power. At the same time that women were granted political and economic rights, the Egyptian Feminist Union—an activist forum founded in 1923 by Hoda Sha‘rawi— was dissolved, and law 384 was issued, establishing government control over all civil society institutions.
With law 384, independent women’s organizations were replaced by state-run ones that monopolized all political activism and minimized the role of independent civil society. The Egyptian Feminist Union transformed from a political entity into a service-oriented charity, operating under the supervision of the Ministry for Social Affairs, and regulated by Law 32/1964. In effect, the state national- ized civil society as it moved towards a one-party system of governance. Women continued to lobby for rights that were aligned with existing state policies and under the auspices of the ruling party. In 1963, for example, Hikmat Abu Zayd—Minister of Social Affairs under Nasser—or- ganized a conference to discuss the conditions of women in the labor market.
In the 1970s, as more and more women consolidated their status in public, the stark discrepancy between women’s rights in the public and private spheres led to several initiatives to modify PSL. This contradiction was brilliantly dramatized in a 1974 landmark film, Urid halan (I want a solution). Based on a true story, the film exposed the legal injustices codified in the PSL that discriminate against women and render them victims of unscrupulous spouses. The film was a resounding success, and foregrounded the issue of women’s subordinate legal status as a social prior- ity on the national agenda.
The 1970s was an era of initiatives to modify the PSL. Lo- cal initiatives coincided with international mobilization for women’s rights issues across the globe, marked by the first UN international women’s conference in Mexico in 1975. The first initiative was led by Aisha Ratib, Professor of Law at Cairo University, and Minister of Social Affairs (1971- 1977), and the second by the Family Planning Association in Cairo, headed by prominent women’s rights activist Aziza Husayn. Both proposals were drafted by committees 19 of experts, but did not find their way to parliament as both were subjected to ferocious campaigns claiming to protect authentic family values from destruction.
In 1979, Law 44 was passed which stipulated that hus- bands must confirm their social status upon contracting another marriage. The first wife would then have the right to ask for divorce within a year of her being informed of this second marriage, without having to prove harm. The wife was given the right to continue living in the family home upon divorce, so long as she had custody of her children. In 1984, Law 44 of 1979 was declared uncon- stitutional on procedural grounds since it was passed by presidential decree during parliament’s summer recess and was not of an urgent nature that warranted the president’s exceptional authority.
In 1985, Law 100 was passed, and unlike Law 44, it required the wife to prove that this second marriage caused her harm. Women activists were critical of these compromises and setbacks, but were equally critical of the abuse of executive authority. The 1979 Law has been marked in popular memory as “Jihan’s Law”, referring to Sadat’s wife, a reminder of the political manipulation exercised by the residing First Lady. It became clear that the legal battle could no longer be confined within the circles of experts, but had to be fought on the ground, supported by an awareness-raising campaign for women’s rights issues in society.
The 1980s witnessed the establishment of a new genera- tion of women’s organizations: the Arab Women’s Solidar- ity Association (1982); The Association for the Develop- ment and Enhancement of Women (1987); The Alliance of Arab Women (1987); and the New Woman (1991). In 1988, a group of women’s rights advocates published a short booklet entitled Legal rights of Egyptian women in theory and practice, which outlined women’s legal rights guaranteed under the PSL and recommendations, includ- ing a new marriage contract that would allow a woman to stipulate conditions regulating her relationship with her husband and facilitating litigation should a dispute arise. The marriage contract proposal did not entail a change of the PSL. It was procedural and not compulsory, and was left for couples entering into marriage to negotiate. From the outset, the proposal was conceptualized as a conscious- ness-raising tool, inviting men and women to consider their rights within marriage. The proposal was met with negative publicity, however, and was put on hold.
In preparation for the NGO forum at the 1994 UN Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the government appointed Aziza Husayn as head of the National Preparatory Committee for NGOs.1 Husayn seized this opportunity to mobilize women’s rights groups and activists to work collectively and lobby for women’s rights. The marriage contract proposal was revived and adopted by the Gender and Equality Committee. Legal, social, historical and economic studies were commissioned, and a media campaign was launched. The committee positioned itself within a liberal Islamic frame of reference, and presented evidence from Islamic history to support the idea that women can include conditions in their marriage contracts to guarantee their rights. The marriage contract of Sukayna bint al-Husayn—great grand-daughter of the prophet Muhammad and grand-daughter of Ali ibn Abi Talib—stated that her husband could not take a second wife and could not bar her participating in literary gather- ings. Khul‘ (right of a woman to a judicial no-fault divorce) was also argued for with reference to precedent at the time of the prophet.2 The rationale of using Islamic history was to counter arguments that positioned women’s rights activism as insensitive to cultural and religious traditions, and/or as representative of western-directed agendas.
The advent of the ICPD and focus on Egypt led to the re- vival of the National Commission for Women and Suzanne Mubarak’s interest in women’s issues. The Commission adopted the project for procedural changes in PSL, includ- ing the new marriage contract and the introduction of the khul‘. In 2000, Law No. 1 was passed: it sought to rectify a backlog of cases by reforming procedures; granted women the right to khul‘ provided they forfeit their financial rights; facilitated access to court in the case of ‘urfi (unregistered) marriages; and introduced the new marriage contract, with a list of conditions in an appendix. Further legal modifications followed in 2004 and 2005, introducing a new family court system, establishing a fund to ensure fair and prompt access to alimony and child maintenance, and giving women custody of their children until the age of 15. However, the point to remember here is that Law No. 1 of 2000 passed through parliament amidst resound- ing opposition, and only because members of the ruling National Democratic Party towed the party line as they were instructed to agree. Despite the consciousness-raising campaign enthusiastically embraced by women activists for legal reform, the outcome was still determined by the endorsement of the First Lady as she exercised her political leverage and power.3
Debates on women’s rights continue to be caught up in conflicts over representational power struggles involving cultural identity, the role of religion, and the image of the modern state. Mubarak sought to present himself as the sole guardian of Egypt’s modern values in the battle against the rising power of Islamists in the Arab region, and the ex-First Lady’s championship of women’s rights was foregrounded and celebrated. Gradually, what many activists feared when the National Council for Women was established came true: the NCW competed with existing women’s organizations, sought to appropriate women’s activism and work, and tried to monopolize speaking on behalf of all Egyptian women. NCW members were disproportionately represented in local, regional and international media and forums. Women’s rights activism became linked with the projects of the First Lady.
The majority of these projects was predominantly the work of activists, not necessarily supportive of state policies or tied to the interests of the ruling elite. Moreover, although the sum total of the legislative changes that have been passed since 2000 sought to redress serious flaws in PSL that led to immense social problems on the ground, they do not, by any stretch of the imagination, satisfy the demands of women’s rights activists for an equitable and just PSL. However, as women’s rights issues continue to be conflated with the political project of a corrupt and discredited regime, activists must recall this history that indeed, women activists did bring about change in Egypt, and prepare themselves for a protracted fight.
A longer version of this article was first published in Middle East Law and Governance ISBN 1876-3367, vol 3, 1-2, pp 84-93, 2011 (copyright permission granted).
Hoda Elsadda holds Chair in the Study of Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University and is Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. Hoda currently serves on the Board of the Global Fund for Women.
What came as a surprise and a real shock, however, was the marked hostility and violence unleashed against women protesters who were harassed and shouted at by groups of men who encircled them. They were accused of following western agendas that went against cultural values; ideas that have roots in the colonial period when feminist activism was associated with western interventionist policies in the region. The women protestors were called “followers of Suzanne”, Mubarak’s wife, making them accomplices to the decadent and corrupt regime. This day was a blow to women’s rights activists, particularly after the sense of euphoria and empowerment they experienced in Tahrir square where they worked side by side with men, where sexual harassment didn’t exist, and where their gender was superseded by their identity as citizens with equal rights and responsibilities. Women activists are struggling to pinpoint the reasons behind the marked hostility. Explanations range from political naiveté of the current context, to conspiratorial theories about paid thugs, to lack of adequate mobilization.
One of the key obstacles women’s rights activists face in the coming months and years is the public perception of a link between the activities of women’s rights activists and those of the ex-First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, and her entourage, which colluded with imperialist agendas. This public perception has already been politically manipulated to rescind previous laws passed to improve women’s legal position from the last ten years, particularly the Personal Status Laws (PSL). These laws are deliberately being discredited as “Suzanne’s laws”, or pejoratively as “qawanin al-hanim” (which means laws of the madam or mistress in Turkish).
Some question whether these laws were politically moti- vated by a corrupt regime or whether they arose from the agenda and years of work of women’s rights activists? Can they rightly be described as “Suzanne’s Laws”? If not, how did the aspirations and work of rights activists become conflated with the agenda of an authoritarian regime?
In recent months, Islamist and liberal columnists and journalists have tried to undo the positive changes in the PSL by linking them to the Mubarak regime. Islamist lawyer and columnist Muntasir al-Zayyat argues that Mubarak’s reform policies were initially good, but were co-opted by three in- fluential members of the ruling National Democratic Party and his wife, Suzanne, known as al-hanim. Al-Zayyat argues that she played a central role in disrupting the “stability of the Muslim family” by going against Muslim family values, particularly in her endorsement of PSL law reform.
The liberal Wafd newspaper has also condemned the destructive impact of Suzanne on the family in her capacity as the head of the National Council for Women (NCW), which pushed the laws through parliament. The Wafd reporter points out that presidential decree number 90 in 2000 established the NCW, with the ex-First lady as president. He listed all the laws that were passed or modi- fied since 2000 (i.e., the divorce law, the citizenship law, and the guardianship law), as well as the quota that gave women 64 seats in parliament, as evidence of Suzanne’s political manipulation that destroyed both family and public spheres. The 64 seats for women in parliament, the paper argued, were intended to facilitate ruling elites plans for political expedience (transfer of rule from father to son), since all appointed women parliamentarians were part of the ruling National Democratic Party.
The centrality of women’s rights issues in political and ideological struggles in Egypt goes back to the early stages of nation-building in the nineteenth century, when women became icons of the imagined national community and subsequent proof of Egypt’s modernity. In 1899, Qasim Amin published a seminal text, Tahrir al-Mar’a (The Liberation of Women), wherein he put forward the argument that the backward status of women was a key reason and indicator of the backwardness of the country, and that the improvement of the status of women (i.e., making them more modern similar to their western sisters) was a prerequisite for the modernization and progress of the country. The link between women and the back- wardness of the country was a colonial argument, which propagated the idea that women in colonized countries were victims of their societies, and stood as proof that these societies were incapable of creating a system of fair self-governance. This, in turn, legitimated the continuation of colonial domination.
Many of the early reformers in Arab countries adopted this underlying logic that equated progress of the country with the modernity of its women. Modernity meant many things: access to modern education; relinquishing tradition- al customs perceived as irrational; embracing a way of life largely modeled on western values and culture; the refor- mation of religion; and last but not least, the liberation of women, symbolically performed in the act of unveiling. Women’s bodies became the arena for the struggle over the character and image of the nation, leading to the well- known ideological battles over the veiling and unveiling of women. In the 1920s and 30s, these battles were fought between two camps: the muhajjabun (pro veiling) and the sufuriyyun (pro unveiling). The first claimed that they were protecting cultural authenticity and Muslim family values, while the second advocated reform of obsolete traditions. Both fought over the cultural identity of the nation as projected via the bodies of women.
Throughout the twentieth century, women were on the frontline of the conflict between tradition and modernity. In 1956, women were granted economic and political rights, and encouraged to become active participants in the new welfare state. While they gained equal rights in the public sphere, women remained subservient to male authority in the private sphere, as the PSL that regulated their position within the family were left intact. This incongruousness created a bizarre anomaly: while women accessed top government positions and secured their economic independence, they remained under the control of male family members in legal guardianship of children, mobility, and access to divorce. In one famous incident, a woman minister who was traveling on official business was denied exit at the airport because her husband secured an injunction to stop her from leaving the country, a right he had as the legal head of the family.
From the early twentieth century to the present day, improving women’s position in the private sphere and modifying PSL have been a defining hallmark of women’s rights activism in Egypt. Early feminists, such as Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918) and Hoda Sha‘rawi (1879-1947), spoke up against legal discrimination against women. In 1956 a radical shift in women activists’ engagement with politics took place as the new modern state consolidated its power. At the same time that women were granted political and economic rights, the Egyptian Feminist Union—an activist forum founded in 1923 by Hoda Sha‘rawi— was dissolved, and law 384 was issued, establishing government control over all civil society institutions.
With law 384, independent women’s organizations were replaced by state-run ones that monopolized all political activism and minimized the role of independent civil society. The Egyptian Feminist Union transformed from a political entity into a service-oriented charity, operating under the supervision of the Ministry for Social Affairs, and regulated by Law 32/1964. In effect, the state national- ized civil society as it moved towards a one-party system of governance. Women continued to lobby for rights that were aligned with existing state policies and under the auspices of the ruling party. In 1963, for example, Hikmat Abu Zayd—Minister of Social Affairs under Nasser—or- ganized a conference to discuss the conditions of women in the labor market.
In the 1970s, as more and more women consolidated their status in public, the stark discrepancy between women’s rights in the public and private spheres led to several initiatives to modify PSL. This contradiction was brilliantly dramatized in a 1974 landmark film, Urid halan (I want a solution). Based on a true story, the film exposed the legal injustices codified in the PSL that discriminate against women and render them victims of unscrupulous spouses. The film was a resounding success, and foregrounded the issue of women’s subordinate legal status as a social prior- ity on the national agenda.
The 1970s was an era of initiatives to modify the PSL. Lo- cal initiatives coincided with international mobilization for women’s rights issues across the globe, marked by the first UN international women’s conference in Mexico in 1975. The first initiative was led by Aisha Ratib, Professor of Law at Cairo University, and Minister of Social Affairs (1971- 1977), and the second by the Family Planning Association in Cairo, headed by prominent women’s rights activist Aziza Husayn. Both proposals were drafted by committees 19 of experts, but did not find their way to parliament as both were subjected to ferocious campaigns claiming to protect authentic family values from destruction.
In 1979, Law 44 was passed which stipulated that hus- bands must confirm their social status upon contracting another marriage. The first wife would then have the right to ask for divorce within a year of her being informed of this second marriage, without having to prove harm. The wife was given the right to continue living in the family home upon divorce, so long as she had custody of her children. In 1984, Law 44 of 1979 was declared uncon- stitutional on procedural grounds since it was passed by presidential decree during parliament’s summer recess and was not of an urgent nature that warranted the president’s exceptional authority.
In 1985, Law 100 was passed, and unlike Law 44, it required the wife to prove that this second marriage caused her harm. Women activists were critical of these compromises and setbacks, but were equally critical of the abuse of executive authority. The 1979 Law has been marked in popular memory as “Jihan’s Law”, referring to Sadat’s wife, a reminder of the political manipulation exercised by the residing First Lady. It became clear that the legal battle could no longer be confined within the circles of experts, but had to be fought on the ground, supported by an awareness-raising campaign for women’s rights issues in society.
The 1980s witnessed the establishment of a new genera- tion of women’s organizations: the Arab Women’s Solidar- ity Association (1982); The Association for the Develop- ment and Enhancement of Women (1987); The Alliance of Arab Women (1987); and the New Woman (1991). In 1988, a group of women’s rights advocates published a short booklet entitled Legal rights of Egyptian women in theory and practice, which outlined women’s legal rights guaranteed under the PSL and recommendations, includ- ing a new marriage contract that would allow a woman to stipulate conditions regulating her relationship with her husband and facilitating litigation should a dispute arise. The marriage contract proposal did not entail a change of the PSL. It was procedural and not compulsory, and was left for couples entering into marriage to negotiate. From the outset, the proposal was conceptualized as a conscious- ness-raising tool, inviting men and women to consider their rights within marriage. The proposal was met with negative publicity, however, and was put on hold.
In preparation for the NGO forum at the 1994 UN Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the government appointed Aziza Husayn as head of the National Preparatory Committee for NGOs.1 Husayn seized this opportunity to mobilize women’s rights groups and activists to work collectively and lobby for women’s rights. The marriage contract proposal was revived and adopted by the Gender and Equality Committee. Legal, social, historical and economic studies were commissioned, and a media campaign was launched. The committee positioned itself within a liberal Islamic frame of reference, and presented evidence from Islamic history to support the idea that women can include conditions in their marriage contracts to guarantee their rights. The marriage contract of Sukayna bint al-Husayn—great grand-daughter of the prophet Muhammad and grand-daughter of Ali ibn Abi Talib—stated that her husband could not take a second wife and could not bar her participating in literary gather- ings. Khul‘ (right of a woman to a judicial no-fault divorce) was also argued for with reference to precedent at the time of the prophet.2 The rationale of using Islamic history was to counter arguments that positioned women’s rights activism as insensitive to cultural and religious traditions, and/or as representative of western-directed agendas.
The advent of the ICPD and focus on Egypt led to the re- vival of the National Commission for Women and Suzanne Mubarak’s interest in women’s issues. The Commission adopted the project for procedural changes in PSL, includ- ing the new marriage contract and the introduction of the khul‘. In 2000, Law No. 1 was passed: it sought to rectify a backlog of cases by reforming procedures; granted women the right to khul‘ provided they forfeit their financial rights; facilitated access to court in the case of ‘urfi (unregistered) marriages; and introduced the new marriage contract, with a list of conditions in an appendix. Further legal modifications followed in 2004 and 2005, introducing a new family court system, establishing a fund to ensure fair and prompt access to alimony and child maintenance, and giving women custody of their children until the age of 15. However, the point to remember here is that Law No. 1 of 2000 passed through parliament amidst resound- ing opposition, and only because members of the ruling National Democratic Party towed the party line as they were instructed to agree. Despite the consciousness-raising campaign enthusiastically embraced by women activists for legal reform, the outcome was still determined by the endorsement of the First Lady as she exercised her political leverage and power.3
Debates on women’s rights continue to be caught up in conflicts over representational power struggles involving cultural identity, the role of religion, and the image of the modern state. Mubarak sought to present himself as the sole guardian of Egypt’s modern values in the battle against the rising power of Islamists in the Arab region, and the ex-First Lady’s championship of women’s rights was foregrounded and celebrated. Gradually, what many activists feared when the National Council for Women was established came true: the NCW competed with existing women’s organizations, sought to appropriate women’s activism and work, and tried to monopolize speaking on behalf of all Egyptian women. NCW members were disproportionately represented in local, regional and international media and forums. Women’s rights activism became linked with the projects of the First Lady.
The majority of these projects was predominantly the work of activists, not necessarily supportive of state policies or tied to the interests of the ruling elite. Moreover, although the sum total of the legislative changes that have been passed since 2000 sought to redress serious flaws in PSL that led to immense social problems on the ground, they do not, by any stretch of the imagination, satisfy the demands of women’s rights activists for an equitable and just PSL. However, as women’s rights issues continue to be conflated with the political project of a corrupt and discredited regime, activists must recall this history that indeed, women activists did bring about change in Egypt, and prepare themselves for a protracted fight.
A longer version of this article was first published in Middle East Law and Governance ISBN 1876-3367, vol 3, 1-2, pp 84-93, 2011 (copyright permission granted).
Hoda Elsadda holds Chair in the Study of Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University and is Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. Hoda currently serves on the Board of the Global Fund for Women.
