Margot Badran

Dual Liberation."
Feminism and Nationalism
in Egypt, 18 70s-1925

In moments of danger when women emerge by

their side, men utter no protest. Yet women's
great acts and endless sacrifices do not change
men's views of women. Through their arrogance,
men refuse to see the capabilities of women . . . .
Women reflected on how they might elevate their
status and worth in the eyes of men. They de-
cided that the path lay in participation with men
in public affairs. When they saw the way blocked,
women rose up to demand their liberation,
claiming their social, economic, and political
rights. Their leap forward was greeted with
ridicule, but that did not weaken their will. Their
resolve led to a struggle that would have ended in
war, if men had not come to acknowledge the
rights of women.
--Huda Sha'rawi ~

Should national goals precede feminist goals in Third World countries

struggling for political and economic independence or development? This is
a question that has repeatedly been asked in the last few decades, and women
and men alike have mostly answered yes. Recently, however, there has been a
marked change. Those who have followed developments over the course of
the United Nations Decade of Women from 1975 to 1985 have noticed
women making a distinct shift away from subsuming women's liberation
under national liberation in a way that postpones the former until the latter
is achieved in order to strive for a simultaneous liberation of women and the
nation. This signals a shift to a feminist construct of nationalism away from a
16 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

patriarchal construct of nationalism. Women are also refusing to be de-

flected by the claim that feminism is a Western construct to be combated as a
form of cultural imperialism. 2
Formulating the question so as to ask if women should put feminism
over nationalism is, itself, a loaded patriarchal formulation. It forces an
either/or choice and places a patriotic/nationalist burden on women, tap-
ping into their long conditioning to put others before self, calling forth
sacrifice and endless postponement, and evoking guilt in those who might
put self or other women forward--in short, a host of conditioned reflexes
that have combined to keep women secondary and subservient. In our global
women's past--the heritage we are now reclaiming--there have been women
who refused to be maneuvered into an either/or position in countries strug-
gling against imperialism or neo-imperialism. These women generated a
construct of nationalism in which women's liberation was embedded and
fought concurrently as feminists and nationalists?
With the contemporary resurgence of this phenomenon, an investiga-
tion into Egyptian women's dual struggle as feminists and nationalists in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is particularly relevant. 4 In this
paper, following a brief historical background of nineteenth-century Egypt, I
shall examine the following: feminist consciousness and activism, and femi-
nists' nationalist consciousness and activism, both within a gender-segre-
gated system under colonialism; and then, feminist and nationalist activism
in an integrated gender system after independence.
Egyptian women first used the term feminism in public in 1923. The
term women's liberation or the liberation of the woman (tahrir al-mar'a)
made a controversial public appearance in Egypt in 1899 when Qasim Amin
used it as the title of a book we shall refer to presently. In this paper, I use
feminism as an analytical concept including within its range a nascent
awareness that women have been oppressed because of their sex, and extend-
ing to a more complex analysis of oppression and liberation of women and
an agenda of activism. Historically, some women in different parts of the
world have had a concept of feminism before they had a precise term for it,
including the earliest feminists of the second wave in America and Europe.
When I speak of feminist consciousness raising in the nineteenth-century
Egyptian harem, I refer to that phenomenon in terminology not used at that
historical moment. In fact, for nearly the entire period dealt with in this
paper the word feminism was not used in Egypt, although contemporary
visitors spoke of feminism underway in the country. 5 Historically in Egypt
the term nationalist was used both by women who as feminists generated a
feminist concept of nationalism and by men whose nationalism was essen-
Badran t7

tially patriarchal. In this paper I employ the single term nationalism to

convey both meanings. I do this assuming that the particular meaning will
be clear from the context and to stress that nationalism historically has not
been simply or exclusively constructed in a patriarchal mode.

The General Nineteenth-Century Historical Background to Rising

Feminism and Nationalism

Feminism and nationalism emerged in late nineteenth-century Egypt

several decades after the rise of a capitalist economy and the entry of the
country into the world market system dominated by Europe. During this
period vast social, economic, political, and technological transformation
occurred. Women's sources, as we shall discuss later in this paper, reveal that
some women in Egypt began to evolve a feminist consciousness as early as
the 1870s, before men started to articulate their own feminist ideology. In
1894 Murqus Fahmi privately published Al-mar'afi al-sharq (The Woman in
the East), the first male feminist book, which attracted scant contemporary
or subsequent attention. Qasim Amin's book, Tahrir al-mar'a (The Libera-
tion of the Woman), published in 1899, on the other hand triggered debate in
many quarters and has been widely--but incorrectly, as this paper demon-
strates--credited with the start of feminism. The nationalist consciousness
of women and men, however, seems to have emerged more or less simul-
taneously in the period following the British occupation of Egypt in 1882.
When the nineteenth century opened, the three-year Napoleonic oc-
cupation of Egypt (1798-1801) was about to be ended by an Ottoman officer,
Muhammad 'Ali, dispatched by the Sublime Porte to reestablish Ottoman
control in Egypt. However, he then went on to wrest independence for Egypt
from the Ottomans and start his own ruling dynasty. To secure this new-
found independence, he initiated an ambitious program of agricultural
transformation, industrialization, and technological and social change. The
introduction of cotton as a cash crop brought Egypt into the world market
system. During the century there was marked urbanization. Cairo, the cap-
ital and political center, and Alexandria, the commercial center, became
home to a new class of absentee agrarian capitalists and political elites, a
rising new professional class, an expanding commercial and trading sector,
and a new proletariat arriving from the countryside with the decline of
subsistence agriculture. Within the city and throughout the country, trans-
portation and communication networks increased dramatically, creating
new mobility and unprecedented possibilities for contact and interaction. In
18 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

the last quarter of the century, at a time of peaking economic and political
pressures, Egypt came under British occupation. 6
State supremacy over the Islamic religious establishment centered on
the mosque university of AI-Azhar in Cairo was established by the new ruler
early in the nineteenth century, and a steady process of secularization ac-
companied the transformation of the political economy. Within the frame-
work of independence from the Ottomans and growing secularization,
allegiance and identity became increasingly focused on Egypt as a geograph-
ical and cultural area with its own distinct past and shape. Egypt remained
predominantly Muslim, but political loyalty shifted to the nation, the land,
or la patrie--in Arabic, al-watan--and away from the emphasis on commu-
nal loyalty which had existed under Ottoman aegis. Countering European
encroachment on Muslim lands, the peripatetic Near Eastern reformer,
Jamal'al-Din al-Afghani, called for a unified antiimperialist front under the
banner of pan-Islamic nationalism. However, secular state nationalisms were
to provide the rallying points against European imperialism. 7
Within Egypt, meanwhile, critical new social institutions and be-
havioral patterns were taking shape. A rising state-sponsored secular educa-
tional system drew younger generations of men away from the formerly
preeminent religious educational system. The twin processes of moderniza-
tion and secularization posed new everyday dilemmas for Egyptians, and the
role of Islam came to be questioned. The doctrine of Islamic modernism
formulated in the second half of the century by A1-Azhar-trained Shaikh
Muhammad 'Abduh was a response to the new plight of Egyptian Muslims,
enabling an enlightened and reinterpreted Islam to inform their changing
daily lives. The modernizing religious leader reinvoked the centuries-dor-
mant doctrine of independent inquiry, ijtihad, urging people to return to
Islamic sources for fresh inspiration and enlightenment. Within this frame-
work calling for readjustment and reform, Muhammad 'Abduh criticized
the tyrannies of men over women committed in the name of Islam, opening
the door to what would become a feminist approach within Islam. 8

Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A Focus on Women

In the course of the socioeconomic and political transformation out-

lined above the two sexes and different classes underwent disparate
experiences. It is instructive to review the inherited gender arrangements
and associated ideology controlling females, against which women as femi-
nists would have to struggle. In urban Egypt strict segregation of the sexes
was practiced by all classes, while seclusion was imposed on women of the
Badran 19

upper and middle classes. Urban women of all classes veiled their faces if and
when they left their houses. These practices were not ordained by the Islamic
religion but had been earlier custom. Moreover, Christian and Jewish
women as well as Muslim women observed these practices. 9 The imposition
of segregation and seclusion was distinctly conditioned by class. The strictest
segregation of the sexes and seclusion of women were observed by the upper
classes and in the early decades of the century remained marks of prestige
and status. In Egypt this system of sex segregation and female seclusion was
called the harem system. (The word harem itself refers to the wife or wives of
a man--Islam allows up to four--and the women's quarters in the house-
hold.) Only among the upper and middle classes, where the labor of women
outside the house was not economically necessary and the means existed to
impose confinement, could female seclusion be maintained. Lower-class
women were forced out of their houses by daily toil but wore the veil, which
afforded them a kind of mobile seclusion. In the countryside, peasant
women did not cover their faces, as it was incompatible with their work in
the fields. Out of economic necessity among the peasantry the sexes inter-
acted considerably; yet between them as well there was some segregation.
Sexual beliefs and an honor code transcending class and urban/rural
differences influenced gender institutions and practice. It was universally
held that women, possessing a powerful and active (as opposed to passive)
sexuality, were insatiable and uncontrollable and if not checked would un-
leash social chaos (fitna). ~ At the same time, the honor of men and the
family rested on the sexual purity of women (which meant sexuality con-
fined to marriage), further increasing the patriarchal urgency to control
women. The harem system based on the strict control of women by male
family members was designed to eliminate interaction of the sexes and re-
move all doubt. Among lower-class women in the city and peasant women,
observation of routine movements by the community (and severe penalties)
were restraining factors. These various gender arrangements--but not the
prevailing ideology of sexuality and honor--would be altered during the
nineteenth century, not so much by direct design of men, but in the course of
overall transformation and women's new initiatives. H
During the nineteenth century, upper- and middle-class women en-
joyed many gains, while lower-class and peasant women experienced signifi-
cant losses. With the decline in Egyptian crafts in the wake of the
importation of cheap European manufactures, lower-class urban household-
based family production units split up, transforming women into buyers tied
to never-ending, unremunerated household labor and new isolation, while
turning men into outside wage laborers. Meanwhile, as family-based subsis-
20 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

tence agriculture further declined in the countryside, women with or with-

out families migrated to the city or were left in dire straits as their men were
taken away by state corv6e labor or departed for seasonal employment. In
the cities these women found only the meanest jobs, such as street fruit
pedlars or servants in households, rendering them vulnerable to sexual ex-
ploitation, while some women were directly drawn into prostitution, t2
Middle- and upper-class urban women enjoyed some benefits con-
nected with class. Upper-class women began to receive expanded tuition at
home as European tutors (part of the growing influx of Westerners) were
imported into the harems. They started to move about the city in the newly
imported carriages, attended performances at the new opera house (opened
in 1869), and traveled on the new railway to visit their family homes in the
countryside or to summer in Alexandria. Journeys abroad to Turkey were
increasingly supplanted by holidays in Europe made more accessible by the
expanding Mediterranean steamer service, t3 Meanwhile, middle-class
women were the first to attend the new schools for girls (the first state school
for girls had been opened in 1873~ however, the first private religious mis-
sionary school for girls had opened in Egypt some thirty years earlier), but
the stricter seclusion of upper-class women--strengthening class segrega-
t i o n - d i d not permit them this opportunity. Middle-class women also pi-
oneered in the new professions of schoolteaching and journalism. ~4
The new opportunities open to the upper and middle classes were not,
however, equally distributed between the sexes within the same class. Educa-
tional and professional opportunities were extended earlier to men, and
their level and range could in no way compare with the limited opportunities
extended to women. While the state initially made efforts to open up new
educational and professional outlets for women (the state needed their la-
bor), these efforts were widely thwarted by men and senior women in both
upper- and middle-class families. Yet there was at the same time a certain
opening up of middle- and upper-class women's lives condoned by the pa-
triarchal family and some corroding of restraints that were unintended cor-
ollaries of technological and social change. Meanwhile, authority continued
to reside with men in families who exercised it with impunity.

Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Activism Within a Gender-

Segregated System During Colonialism

The 1870s, '80s, and '90s were salient decades for upper- and middle-
class women, as this was a time when a feminist consciousness became
articulated. Aisha Taimuriyya (1840-1902), who spent her entire life in an
Badran 21

upper-class harem in Cairo, was an aristocratic poet and writer bridling

under confinement, whose published works revealing a nascent feminism
influenced the first generation of women later to become feminist activists,
women such as Huda Sha'rawi? 5 Upper-class Huda Sha'rawi (1879-1947), a
pathbreaking feminist and nationalist, speaks in her memoirs about the
women's salon in the 1890s conducted by Eugenie Le Brun Rushdi (a
Frenchwoman turned Muslim, married to an Egyptian), where upper-class
women discussed their condition. Their investigations, occurring within a
framework of Islamic modernism, led them to the discovery that constraints
such as veiling and seclusion were imposed upon them falsely in the name of
Islam. They also concluded that Islam held out rights to women denied them
by male-imposed "customs and traditions." The annoyances and frustrations
that many cloistered women must have felt are revealed in Huda Sha'rawi's
reflections on her early life in a Cairo harem. 16
A rising feminist consciousness of middle-class women was manifested
at this time in books and journals. Through these means middle-class
women superseded the customary bounds of confinement, sharing their
views with wider circles of women. Middle-class women were writing books
and publishing articles in the male press by the 1800s, before starting their
own journals in the early 1890s. Zainab Fawwaz (1860-1914) wrote articles
and a book advocating women's education and work outside the house start-
ing around the 1880s, and in 1894 published a biographical dictionary of
Arab and European women? 7 Hind Nawfal (187?-?) founded the first
woman's journal, Al-Fatah (The Young Woman) in 1892, paving the way for
others founded soon afterwards. These women, both of whom had been born
in Greater Syria--the part that is now Lebanon--into educated families that
had emigrated to Egypt (like many of the other early middle-class women
writers, most of whom were Christian), promoted women's advancement,
particularly advocating education for women, arguing it was in accord with
religion, whether Christianity or Islam.
The women's salon and women's writings were pursuits that took place
within the harem. After the turn of the century, middle- and upper-class
women began to conduct feminist activities outside the harem. This activity
occurred in segregated public space and was conducted discreetly. The way
had been paved for respectable pursuits for women outside the harems by
middle-class women in the final decades of the nineteenth century, when
they began to become headmistresses and teachers in the new girls' schools.
Not long after the Egyptian University opened in 1908 (heavily endowed by a
woman, Princess Fatma, who made a lavish bequest), a number of women
students, including upper-class Egyptians and foreign residents, attended
22 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

classes in the women's section under the direction of a Frenchwoman, where

some courses were given by educated middle-class Egyptian women.
Around this time, Egyptian women began to hold their own privately
organized lectures, which became new arenas for the growth of feminist
awareness. They were organized by upper-class women and delivered by
middle-class women to all-women audiences, often at the new university on
the weekly day offor after hours in the offices of the male liberal, profeminist
paper, Al-Jarida, established in 1907. Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918), a for-
mer teacher and poet and writer under the pseudonym of Bahithat al-
Bad'iyya and one of the most influential speakers, encouraged women to
acquire more education and to pioneer in new professions, but, mindful of
hazards for women, counseled a gradual breakdown of segregation. Malak
Hifni NasiFs untimely death at the age of thirty-two in 1918 occasioned a
eulogy by Huda Sha'rawi, which became at the same time her own first
feminist speech. Is Women's lectures were later held under the auspices of the
Intellectual Association of Egyptian Women, established in 1914.
At the beginning of the century, about the same time the women's
lectures were occurring, upper-class women expanded their roles in public
space when they founded their first philanthropic society, the Mabarrat
Muhammad 'Ali, in 1909 to operate a medical dispensary for poor women
and children. They were spurred on in part by a government report of the
previous year disclosing alarming statistics on infant mortality. There was
also a nationalist motivation, as we shall note below. Huda Sha'rawi, one of
the founders, suggested at the same time creating a school to teach poor
women health care and home management to assist them in taking fuller
charge of the lives of themselves and their families and avoiding being
merely dependent recipients of curative care. (This part of the project was
only realized later by the new Egyptian Feminist Union.) The work of the
Mabarrat not only brought upper-class women out of their houses but took
them into the poor neighborhoods, directly exposing them to the everyday
realities of less fortunate women. Through the social service society women
gained new experience in organization, management, and finances that was
to stand them in good stead when they became nationalist activists a decade
later. '9 Women also acquired for the first time their own premises outside the
private world of the harem. This "bold" innovation was justified on human-
itarian and, as we shall see, nationalist grounds. Huda Sha'rawi's remark
concerning the Intellectual Association of Egyptian Women (founded five
years later) shows how what might now seem a small thing was a radical act
in its day: "I looked for a headquarters for our association that we had not
dared call a club [nadi], because our traditions would not allow it; moreover,
Badran 23

it was still not acceptable for women to have a place [outside the harem] to
congregate. ''20
The nascent feminist explorations of the women's debates in the
harems, women's lectures, and women's philanthropic work were invisible to
the outside world of men. The first public indication of emergent feminism
was the presentation of women's demands by Malak Hifni Nasif at the first
nationalist meeting--the (male) Egyptian Congress in Heliopolis in 1911.
She argued for more educational and professional opportunities for women
in areas of their own choice. Specific demands included, for example, open-
ing a medical school for women--which also tied into the demand for im-
proved health services for women. The state, trying in the nineteenth
century to promote new education and jobs for women, had run up against
family resistance. Now women were voicing concrete public demands on
their own behalf in a male forum. On another front there was a demand for
women's renewed access to mosques (as in early Islamic society). In voicing
this request women proclaimed that patriarchally imposed seclusion had
gone to the extreme of keeping women from congregational worship (a
religious act enjoined upon Muslims). The male nationalist congress con-
doned the public airing of these feminist demands, which could be seen as
fitting into their agenda for national development. However, more indepen-
dent feminist activism was not tolerated, as we shall see later.
Women's feminism arose out of women's own experience--a combina-
tion of enlightenment stemming from expanding education and exposure on
the one hand, and frustration and anger at being contained and held back on
the other. This feminism was grounded in both Islam, that is, Islamic mod-
ernism, and nationalism, as we shall elaborate below. During this early
period, women concentrated on preparing themselves and the next genera-
tion of women for new lives in society through self-education and formal
tuition. They began moving gradually and discreetly into public space while
maintaining the conventions of segregation to avoid loss of respect and
sexual exploitation. Malak Hifni Nasifand Nabawiyya Musa both cautioned
against unveiling early in the century so that women would not be harassed
by men unaccustomed to seeing respectable city women without veils. In
1910 Malak Hifni Nasif countered a speech by 'Abd al-Hamid Afandi ad-
vocating unveiling by saying, "I wonder how you can order us to unveil at a
time when we are still subjected to rude stares and remarks deeply embar-
rassing to us when we walk down the street. ''2j Women's feminism of this
period contrasted with the feminism propounded by male liberals calling for
an immediate end to the harem system and unveiling. Women insisted upon
setting their own agenda and priorities. In practice, they, not men, would
24 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

have to face a hostile patriarchal society, and they judged the time not yet
right. Moreover, the irony of women taking orders from men concerning
their own liberation could scarcely have been lost on them.

Feminists' Nationalist Consciousness and Activism Within a

Gender-Segregated System During Colonialism

There are two phases of feminists' nationalist consciousness and ac-

tivism within the segregated system. The first phase from the end of the
nineteenth century to 1919 was essentially a period of evolving nationalist
consciousness and social nationalism--a phase of invisibility and discreet
breakthrough. The second phase from 1919 to 1923 was a period of veiled
visibility as women moved further into the public domain, engaging in polit-
ical, economic, and social activitism while still covering their faces and
upholding segregation. It is important to remark that not all women na-
tionalists at that moment were feminists.
The rise of national consciousness among middle- and upper-class
women arose in the first decade of British occupation. A cursory look at the
women's press that emerged in the 1890s indicates that the middle-class
women editors and contributors had a distinct sense of nation and cast their
own development within the framework of national development. =
Philanthropy is not ordinarily perceived of as a function of na-
tionalism, but the creation of women's philanthropy in Egypt was precisely
that. When the British Lady Cromer Society endeavored to draw Egyptian
women into its social service work, some women refused for purely na-
tionalist reasons. Instead in 1909 they founded their own Egyptian women's
organization, the Mabarrat Muhammad 'Ali, taking charge of Egyptian so-
cial needs themselves. The nationalist dimension, along with the already
discussed humanitarian dimension, was important in legitimizing their un-
precedented foray into public space. 23
Egyptian women's earliest public nationalist demand was made in 1910
at the first male nationalist congress convened in Brussels by the National
Party, established in 1907. (We have previously noted women's first public
feminist demands made a year later.) Inshira Shawqi demanded an end to
British occupation of Egypt in a letter read by the congress chairman, who
announced that its author was unable to appear herself because traditions
forbade it. 24 Although National Party leaders, unlike the Wafdist men we
shall discuss below, were not profeminist, this kind of nationalist support
from women was welcomed.
Before 1919 women's nationalist acts had been undertaken unob-
Badran 25

trusively. That year women broke with the convention o f invisibility, making
their first public political demonstration. One week after the start o f the
national revolution, upper-class w o m e n in veils emerged from their harems
(estimates of their n u m b e r vary from 150 to 300) into the streets o f Cairo in
the first o f what would be m a n y women's protest marches against British
occupation. 25 W o m e n of the lower class demonstrated in the streets, not
segregated like upper-class women, but alongside their men, while some
saved their lives when troops fired into the crowds. 26 The revolution was
equally supported by women in the countryside, who u n d e r t o o k such mili-
tant acts as cutting rail lines. 27 At a m o m e n t when the nation had to be
defended, patriarchal control o f women was muted and women's activism
welcomed.
The colonial authorities under attack scorned all Egyptians, but dis-
played double c o n t e m p t towards women. The account o f the upper-class
women's demonstration of 16 March by the British C o m m a n d a n t of Police is
telling:

My next problem was a demonstration by the native ladies of Cairo. This

rather frightened me as if it came to pass it was bound to collect a big
crowd and my orders were to stop it. Stopping a procession means force
and any force you use to women puts you in the wrong . . . . I let them [the
women] get a little way and then blocked them in with police supported
by troops and there the dear things had to remain for an hour and a half
in the hot sun with nothing to sit on except the curb stone . . . . At a given
signal I closed the cordon and the ladies found their way opposed by a
formidable line of Egyptian conscript police, who had been previously
warned that they were not to use violence but to stand still . . . . Consid-
erable license was given them by their officers to practice their ready
peasant wit on the smart ladies who confronted them. 28

The record reveals sexist colonialist c o n t e m p t for "native" women,

surely m i r r o r i n g - - m i n u s the racist c o m p o n e n t implicit in the t e r m native--
c o n t e m p t for all women who "get out o f control" in the act o f asserting
themselves and challenging tyrannical authority. F u r t h e r m o r e , allowing po-
lice "to practice their ready peasant wit" on the w o m e n implies colonialist
e n c o u r a g e m e n t of the sexual taunt to harass women. Colonialist methods of
putting down protest likewise displayed class oppression. While it was con-
sidered inappropriate to use violence against upper-class women, it was wan-
tonly deployed against lower-class women, as we know from the lists o f
women shot and killed during street demonstrations.
26 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

In 1920, during the early months of the revolution, middle- and upper-
class women formed their first formal political organization, a nationalist
organization, the Wafdist Women's Central Committee (WWCC), electing
Huda Sha'rawi president. It was a parallel organization to the all-male Wafd
nationalist organization, the separate nationalist organizations reflecting the
gender bifurcation of society. Wafdist women both worked with Wafdist men
and took over their roles in their absence.
The success of the Wafd has been in large measure attributed to the
wide support it commanded. Wafdist women played essential roles in
organizing, coordinating, and expanding support for the Wafd. Early in the
revolution, when male leaders were swiftly removed from the scene, Egyp-
tian women kept the movement alive and rallied national support by mobi-
lizing country-wide female networks. From 1919 to 1922 there were long
periods when Sa'd Zaghlul, the president of the male Wafd, and other male
leaders were in exile or locally interned. During these times Wafdist women
leaders took over key roles, including preserving popular morale, planning
protests, managing finances, and maintaining communications with the ab-
sent leaders, the occupation authorities, and the media abroad. 29
Nationalist women at the same time undertook bold economic actions
against the British. During workers' strikes women stationed themselves at
entries to government offices, bidding men not to return to work. Women
also organized anti-British economic boycotts. In 1922 they masterminded
their first massive boycott of British goods and services, calling for broad
support from women as buyers and household managers. Nationalist
women urged Egyptians to withdraw their money from British banks and
formed committees to sell shares in the new national bank. 3
During the nationalist struggle, men welcomed women's nationalist
activism and recognized a need for the liberation not only of the nation but
also of women. The head of the Wafd, Sa'd Zaghlul, noted in his diary in
1920 a conversation of Wafdist leaders, during which all agreed that women
should be incorporated into the life of the society and that they would work
for this after independence was won. 3~ Later, in 1922, when the Wafdist
women were at the height of their nationalist militancy, another male Waf-
dist told the women, '~, social movement cannot achieve its goals unless
women have a part in it: '32
Meanwhile, from the ranks of nationalist women Nabawiyya Musa, as
well as promoting work for women as a function of feminism, publicly
advocated women's entry into the labor force as a nationalist strategy. In her
book Al-mar'a wa al- 'amal (Woman and Work), published during that crit-
ical year, she said:
Badran 27

We neglect the education of [Egyptian] women so that they remain ill-

equipped to w o r k . . , and welcome foreign women into our homes, en-
trusting them with our basic needs . . . . Egyptian capital is lost to these
foreign women . . . . Had we spent money on educating Egyptian women,
they would have become skilled in performing these jobs, and we Egyp-
tians would be keeping Egyptian money in Egyptian hands. At a time
when we make a great effort to win our political independence, why do
we lag behind in fighting for our economic independence when the
means is in our hands? 33

While Wafdist w o m e n were prepared to cooperate with Wafdist men,

feminist nationalist w o m e n like H u d a Sha'rawi were not ready to be mere
surrogates or rubber stamps to male nationalist politics, even during the
height of battle. The Wafdist Women's Central C o m m i t t e e insisted upon
being full m e m b e r s o f the Wafd and voicing their own views, rejecting blind
obedience to male nationalists simply for the sake o f consensus during crisis.
At the end of 1920, when male Wafdist leaders solicited reactions to an
i n d e p e n d e n c e p r o p o s a l f r o m various g r o u p s a n d i g n o r e d the Wafdist
Women's Central Committee, the w o m e n published their views in the press
and publicly criticized the Wafdist leadership for neglecting them. The letter
that H u d a Sha'rawi as president o f the W W C C sent to Sa'd Zaghlul, presi-
dent of the (male) Wafd, displayed women's d e t e r m i n a t i o n to act simul-
taneously as Egyptian nationalists and feminists:

We are surprised and shocked by the way we have been treated recently.
.. You supported us when we created our Committee . . . . What makes
us all the more indignant is that by disregarding us the Wafd has caused
foreigners to disparage the renaissance of women . . . . At this moment
when the future of Egypt is about to be decided, it is unjust that the Wafd,
which stands for the rights of Egypt and struggles for its liberation,
should deny half the nation its role in that liberation. 34

In 1922 when Egypt gained f o r m a l independence, Wafdist w o m e n

openly criticized the terms o f independence, which left British troops in
Egypt and the question o f Egypt's relations to the Sudan uncertain. 35 The
nationalist stand of the Wafdist w o m e n then and during the next two decades
was more radical than that o f most male politicians.

Feminist and Nationalist Activism in an Integrated Gender System

After Independence
In 1923 women's feminism became openly public and activist, and in
1924 feminists began to c o n d u c t their nationalist politics within the frame-
28 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

work of their own independent feminist organization. This structure of inde-

pendence would characterize Egyptian feminism from then on.
On the fourth anniversary of the first women's public demonstration,
16 March 1923, upper- and middle-class women created the first formal,
explicitly feminist organization, the Egyptian Feminist Union, electing
Huda Sba'rawi president. At this moment, women who were already femi-
nists ideologically and actively without the label started to call themselves
feminists. The Egyptian Feminist Union was formed before women's more
immediate expectations for new roles in independent Egypt were crushed,
although it had become quite clear to women that a struggle lay ahead for
their own liberation.
The next month on 19 April, the new Egyptian constitution, the basis
of the new parliamentary republic, declared: "All Egyptians are equal before
the law. They enjoy equally civil and political rights and are equally charged
with public duties and responsibilities without distinction of race, language,
or religion." However, the political rights granted to women as Egyptians
were rescinded by the electoral law of 30 April restricting suffrage to males
only. This was a turning point for feminist nationalists, who felt betrayed
after their nationalist struggle. Faced with the choice of turning back or
fighting their own battle, they unhesitatingly elected to struggle for their own
liberation.
From the, start, the organized Egyptian feminist movement, thoroughly
indigenous, growing out of specific Egyptian experience, became part of the
international organized feminist movement. The Egyptian Feminist Union
sent a delegation comprised of Huda Sha'rawi, Nabawiyya Musa, and Saiza
Nabarawi (later to become editor of the EFU's L'Egyptienne) to a meeting of
the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in Rome in May. The
EFU at that time joined the IWSA, committing its members within the
international feminist arena to obtaining the political rights they had just
been denied as well as social and economic rights.
On their return from the feminist meeting, Huda Sha'rawi and Saiza
Nabarawi removed their veils in the Cairo station before stepping from the
train to a large crowd of cheering women. 36 With that act the feminists
publicly declared the end of the harem system--the end of the seclusion of
women and the segregation of the sexes--and the beginning of a public,
open, organized feminist movement in Egypt. That week, for the first time
ever, Egyptian women's faces appeared in the local papers (some half century
after their voices were first heard in the press), reconfirming women's new
public presence and the final ending of female invisibility and depersonaliza-
tion.
Badran 29

The women were still further politicized when they were prevented
from attending the opening ceremony of the new parliament in 1924, follow-
ing national elections that swept the Wafd into power and enabled Sa'd
Zaghlul--the nationalist leader whom the women nationalists had sup-
ported in struggle--to form a government. Only women as wives of minis-
ters and high officials--that is, women as dependent appendages and
reflections of male power--were permitted to attend the opening ceremony.
It was a truncated celebration--a celebration of patriarchal reassertion
rather than national triumph. Now women, instead of demonstrating against
foreign colonial occupation, demonstrated against the indigenous pa-
triarchal system. The Wafdist Women's Central Committee and the Egyptian
Feminist U n i o n - - a nationalist and a feminist organization--joined forces
to picket the opening of parliament, proclaiming thirty-two nationalist and
feminist demands, including the right to vote, more education, work oppor-
tunities, and better health care.
Two things were happening during this period. On the one hand, the
male Wafd leadership, with a return to "normalcy," no longer found the need
for strong, politically active women capable of standing on their own, as they
had during the height of national crisis, and now clearly resented women's
independent behavior and insistence on immediate full rights as citizens. On
the other hand, women's exclusion from the formal political system denied
them a legitimate forum within which communication and debate normal to
a parliamentary system could occur, forcing them to resort to political alter-
natives that further exacerbated gender antagonisms.
The inevitable formal break between feminist nationalists like Huda
Sha'rawi and the male Wafdist leadership occurred at the end of 1924 over a
nationalist issue, but the feminist undertones were unmistakable. Following
the assassination in Cairo of the British Sirdar of the Egyptian Army and
Governor General of the Sudan, Egypt was delivered a humiliating ul-
timatum. The Wafdist Women's Central Committee demanded a flat rejec-
tion, immediately organizing another anti-British boycott, but the Wafdist
government was conciliatory. When the government accepted the first four
points of the ultimatum, Huda Sha'rawi telegraphed her disapproval to Sa'd
Zaghlul and in an open letter to the newspaperAl-Akhbar, demanded that he
step down. 37 She, herself, resigned as president of the WWCC, quit the
organization, and with a nucleus of other feminist nationalists from that
time on conducted nationalist politics within the independent framework of
the Egyptian Feminist Union.
The tension between the (patriarchal) politics and ideology of govern-
ment leaders and the requirements of women's liberation is illustrated in an
30 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

incident of symbolic and practical importance. In the summer of 1923, when

the president of the Wafd, Sa'd Zaghlul and his wife, Safiyya Zaghlul, were
returning to Egypt on the same ship with Huda Sha'rawi, the Wafdist leader
observed Huda's veil drawn back from her face but covering her hair (in the
manner prescribed by Islam), and he asked her to help his wife arrange her
veil likewise. Safiyya Zaghlul stood ready to disembark in Alexandria un-
veiled, but when the Wafdist men saw this they sternly objected, insisting
that the people would not accept it. Safiyya Zaghlul, the wife of the president
of the Wafd, left the ship veiled. Huda Sha'rawi, president of the Wafdist
Women's Central Committee, left unveiled. 38

Conclusion

In this paper I have focused on the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries because this period includes the emergence of women's feminism
and nationalism, their dual struggle against patriarchy in the form of indige-
nous male-dominated institutions and dominating males and against colo-
nialism, and the birth of a tradition of Egyptian women's independent,
public, feminist-cure-nationalist activism still active today. 39
In the period reviewed there was dynamic interaction in Egypt between
women's feminism and women's nationalism. Women's evolution of a femi-
nist consciousness and ideology and their earliest activism preceded their
development of a nationalist ideology and their nationalist militancy. This
positioned women to generate their own construct of nationalism distinct
from men's nationalism. I characterize the former as "feminist nationalism"
and the latter as "patriarchal nationalism."
Sensitized upper- and middle-class Egyptian women had a double
sense of oppression--as women under a patriarchal system and as citizens
under colonialism. Women first sought to overcome patriarchal domination
through ending the harem system and gaining control over their lives. Their
strategy involved gradually corroding the system from within, while cau-
tiously moving forward step by step, strengthening themselves through self-
education, expanding female networks, and initiating new forms of
organized activity.
Women's nationalist actions had liberating consequences for them as
women. A nationalist impulse prompted women to inaugurate the tradition
of Egyptian women's philanthropy, legitimizing (as did the humanitarian
nature of the endeavor) their unprecedented collective foray into public
space. Secluded women first entered public space as visible political actors
(except for their faces) in nationalist street demonstrations. They first began
Badran 31

to interact publicly with men--Egyptian male nationalists and male colonial

authorities--as nationalist activists during the revolution of 1919.
Women participated as activists in the revolution as nationals--Egyp-
t i a n s - n o t as gendered persons. Male nationalists accepted women na-
tionalists' activism where it suited them--women's demonstrations and
economic boycotts, for example. Under duress--when they were imprisoned
or exiled--men welcomed women's multiple roles at the center, maintaining
nationalist morale, broadening the base of nationalist support, and handling
communications and finances. However, when male nationalists were on the
scene and more firmly in control, they neglected women's views and, follow-
ing independence, deprived women of the newly won citizens' political
rights. It had been becoming clear to feminists during the nationalist struggle
and certainly afterwards that men's nationalism had a patriarchal character.
A comparative look at women's participation in the Algerian war of
national liberation in the middle of the century shows that their nationalist
experience did not produce feminism in the aftermath. Iranian women,
following their activism in the more recent revolution, mounted a women's
liberation movement at home and abroad, where many had fled in the
reactionary aftermath, but they, like the Egyptians studied here, already had
a tradition of feminism behind them. a
During the period of colonial occupation and nationalist struggle, al-
though women were discreetly moving away from the segregation and seclu-
sion of the harem system, they still operated within this framework--that is,
they paid attention to the basic rules, refraining from openly challenging the
system. Soon after independence, however, women formed their first femi-
nist organization and shortly afterwards took offthe veil in a public, political
gesture unequivocally signalling their rejection of the harem system. Iron-
ically just at the moment women unveiled, declaring they were putting an
end to sex segregation and their seclusion, they found it politically imper-
ative to operate in public space within their own separate women's organiza-
tion to fight for women's liberation and national liberation for all Egyptians.
Independence from male political parties and the state has enabled Egyptian
women to articulate their own agenda for liberation and to win some of the
battles, most notably in education and work, and has been the distinguishing
mark of Egyptian women's feminism and feminists' nationalism ever since.
The Egyptian experience just recounted demonstrates that women
need n o t - - a n d in this case did not--subsume their feminism under na-
tionalism. I would here like to suggest that we theorize more broadly about
nationalism through gender categories. Where nationalism and feminism
coexist, it is instructive to investigate the nationalist dimension of feminism
32 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

and the feminist dimension of nationalism. There are numerous questions

to be considered. How useful is nationalism to feminist goals? Egyptian
feminism was (and is) indigenous--"national"--while feminism as such also
implies universality. Politically women have needed and benefited from con-
necting with global sisterhood; yet at the same time relevance--and suc-
cess-springs from being indigenous or "national." Does nationalism,
implicitly "local," ultimately challenge feminist goals, or is a positive dialec-
tical relationship possible? Clearly analysis of these issues and terms of de-
bate must be historicized. I hope this paper will stimulate such lines of
inquiry.

Notes

A version of this paper appeared in Dutch in Socialisties-Feministiese Teksten in 1987. I

would like to thank Petra de Vries of the editorial board of SFT and the University of Amsterdam
and Valentine Moghadam of New York University for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of
this paper.
1. Huda Shaarawi, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, translated and
introduced by Margot Badran (London: Virago, 1986; New York: Feminist Press, 1987), p. 131. (In
this paper I have spelled Sha'rawi in accordance with the standard method of transliteration from
Arabic into English used by scholars rather than the form adopted in Harem Years.)
2. See Nilufer Cagatay, Caren Grown, and Aida Santiago, "'The Nairobi Women's Con-
ference: Toward a Global Feminism?" Feminist Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 1986~:401-12. The
specter of cultural imperialism not only has serious implications for feminism inside the Third
World but fragments global feminism as well. See Azar Tabari, "~The Women's Movement in lran:
A Hopeful Prognosis," Feminist Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 1986):343-60.
3. Kumari Jayawardena's new book Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World
(London: Zed, 1986), which deals with experience in Oriental countries in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, shows the breadth of commonalities along with salient differences. The
author should be commended for taking on the task of examining this important but little-known
early period of Third World feminism and its nationalist connections. However, she has not
availed herself of some important research published in recent years. The chapter on Egypt is
highly flawed and should be approached with caution.
4. This paper is based on largely unused women's sources, both oral and written, obtained
over a long period in Egypt, during which I discussed feminism and nationalism with numerous
Egyptian women. It draws more widely upon research in Egypt for my doctoral dissertation,
"Huda Sha'rawi and the Liberation of the Egyptian Woman" (Oxford University, 1977), and
further work for my book in progress on the Egyptian feminist movement, 1923-1947.
5. Report of the Sixth Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, Budapest,
11-15 May 1913, p. 3.
6. For more on the historical and economic background see Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot,
Egypt in the Reign ofMuhammadAli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), and Roger
Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy (London: Methuen, 198 l).
7. For more on nationalism and secularism see Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the
LiberalAge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), and Jacques Berque, Egypt: Imperi-
alism and Revolution, trans. Jean Stewart (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).
8. On "Abduh see Hourani, Arabic Thought in the LiberalAge, and "Abd al-Razek, "UIn-
fluence de la femme dans la vie de Cheikh Mohamed Abdue," L'Egyptienne, August 1928, pp. 2-7.
Badran 33

9. On pre-Islamic sex segregation, female seclusion, and veiling see Germaine Tillion, The
Republic of Cousins: Women ls" Oppression in Mediterranean Society, trans. Quintin Hoare
(London: AI-Saqi, 1983). For observation of veiling by non-Muslim women in nineteenth-century
Egypt see Lucie Duff Gordon, Letters from Egypt (London: Virago, 1983: originally published in
1865).
10. See Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-b~,male Dynamics in Modern Muslim
Society, rev. ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), and Fatna A. Sabbah, 14bman in
the Muslim Unconscious, trans. Mary Jo Lakeland (Elmsford, N.Y.: Pergamon Press, 1984).
11. For an analysis of different class manifestations of patriarchy see Mervat Harem, "'The
Politics of Sexuality and Gender in Segregated Patriarchal Systems: The Case of Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Egypt," Feminist Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 1986):251-74.
12. On lower-class urban women and peasant women see Judith Tucker, Women in Nine-
teenth Centuo' Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, t985). Concerning sexual exploi-
tation of women in menial jobs, see Nabawiyya Musa, Al-mar'a wa al-'amal (Woman and Work)
(Alexandria: The National Press. 1922).
13. On everyday life of upper-class women see Shaarawi, Harem Years, and Emine Tugay
Foat, Three Centuries: Family Chronicles ~f Turkey and Egypt (London: Oxford University Press,
1963).
14. These women include, for example, Rose Najjar, headmistress of the Siuifiyya School,
established in 1873; Cecile Najjar, headmistress of the Qirabiyya School, established in 1874; Hind
Nawfal, who started the first women's journal, ALFatah (The Young Woman) in 1892; Zainab
Fawwaz, author ofAl-rasa'il al-Zainabi)9'a (Zainab's Writings), published in Cairo in 1897; Malak
Hifni Nasif~ teacher and author of Nisa 'iyyat (Feminist Texts) (Cairo: AI-Jarida Press, 1909); and
Nabawiyya Musa, teacher, author, and founder of a girls' school.
15. Her publications include Hilyat at-tiraz (a collection of poems) in 1887, Nata'ij al-
ahwalfi al-aqwal wa a/'al (The Consequences of Circumstances in Words and Deeds) in 1887, and
Mirat al-ta'ammulfi al-umur (Mirror of Actions) sometime between 1892 and 1902.
16. See Shaarawi, Harem Years.
17. The books are respectively: Al-rasa'il al-Zainabiyya (Zainab's Writings) and Al-durr al-
manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur (Women's Biographical Dictionary).
18. Some of Malak Hifni Nasit's speeches were published under her pseudonym, Bahithat
al-Bad'iyya, in Nisa '(~:vat. On the eulogy see Huda Sha'rawi, "Dhikra Bahithat al-Bad'iyya,'" Al-
Misriyya, 1 November 1937, p. 20.
19. See Shaarawi, Harem Years, pp. 94-98, and Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, "The Revolu-
tionary Gentlewomen in Egypt," in Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie, eds., Women in the Muslim
World (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 277-94.
20. Huda Sha'rawi, "Kalima al-Sayyida al-Jalila Huda Hanim Sha'rawi, AI-Misriy.va, 15
February 1937, p. 13.
21. Nasif, Al-Nisa 'iyyat, pp. 7-13.
22. Huda Sha'rawi displayed an early sense of nationalism. Many of the early middle-class
women journalists were Syrian Christians from Arab nationalist families fleeing Ottoman-con-
trolled Arab provinces to make their home in Egypt. They had a strong sense of watan (national
home) and felt that it should be socially constituted to the advantage of both sexes.
23. Shaarawi, Harem Years, pp. 94-97.
24. Little is known about Inshira Shawqi and whether she was a feminist (her father was a
lawyer and member of the National Party), but her niece, Fatma Ni'mat Rashid, was a feminist
activist in the 1930s and '40s and founder of the Woman's Party.
25. See Shaarawi, Harem Years, pp. 112-16.
26. Ibid.. p. 118. The author has seen lists of female victims' names collected by women
nationalists.
27. Personal communication from Amina Sa'id, Cairo, who recalled the actions of her
mother, Zainab Talat, and other women in Asyut in Upper Egypt.
34 Feminist Issues~Spring 1988

28. See letter from Thomas Russell to his father (estimated date, 1 April 1919), Russell
Papers, Middle East Centre, St. Anthony's College, Oxford University; and Thomas Russell,
Egyptian Service (London: Murray, 1949), p. 208.
29. Shaarawi, Harem Years, pp. 112-27.
30. Ibid., pp. 125-26.
31. Sa'd Zaghlul, Mudhakirrat (Memoirs), National Archives, The Citadel, Cairo, note-
book 39 (9 June 1920-7 June 1921), entry for 24 November 1920, p. 2380 (reference provided by
'Abd al-Khaliq Lashin).
32. Letter from WasifGhali on behalf of the Egyptian Wafd to Huda Sha'rawi, president of
the Wafdist Women's Central Committee, in Majmu'a al-khutab alati ulqiyat fi intima' al-
sayyidat al-Misriyyat bi dar al-marhum Husain Basha Abu "Usba"(Collection of Speeches Given
at the Meeting of Egyptian Women at the House of the Late Husain Pasha Abu 'Usba') from the
private papers of Saiza Nabarawi.
33. Musa, Al-mar'a wa al-'amal.
34. Shaarawi, Harem Years, p. 122.
35. Ibid., pp. 126-27.
36. This event was described to me by Saiza Nabarawi in Cairo.
37. AI-Akhbar, 24 November 1924.
38. This event was described to me by Saiza Nabarawi in Cairo. Safiyya Zaghlul, an ardent
nationalist, sometimes played surrogate for her husband and never took an independent stand.
She was called Umm abMasriyyin (mother of the Egyptians).
39. See Margot Badran, "Independent Women: A Century of Feminism in Egypt" (Paper
presented at the Eleventh Annual Symposium, "Women and Arab Society: Old Boundaries, New
Frontiers," Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 10-11 April 1986).
40. For the most comprehensive historical account of Iranian women's liberation move-
ments, see Eliz Sanasarian, The Women's Rights Movement in Iran (New York: Praeger, 1982);
and for various analyses of feminist attempts following the revolution, see Azar Tabari and Nahid
Yeganeh, comps., In the Shadow of lslam: The Women's Movement in Iran (London: Zed, 1982);
Eliz Sanasarian, "Islamic Identity and Political Activism," in Ruth Ross and Lynn Iglitzin, eds.,
ICbmen in the World. 1975-1985: The Women's Decade, 2nd ed. rev. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC
Clio, 1986); and Tabari, "The Women's Movement in Iran: A Hopeful Prognosis."