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The emergence and evolution of Egyptian feminism is an integral, but previously untold, part of the history of modern Egypt. Drawing upon a wide range of women's sources--memoirs, letters, essays, journalistic articles, fiction, treatises, and extensive oral histories--Margot Badran shows how Egyptian women assumed agency and in so doing subverted and refigured the conventional patriarchal order. Unsettling a common claim that "feminism is Western" and dismantling the alleged opposition between feminism and Islam, the book demonstrates how the Egyptian feminist movement in the first half of this century both advanced the nationalist cause and worked within the parameters of Islam.
List of contents
| Preface | |
| Note on Transliteration and Translation | |
| Abbreviations | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Pt. 1 | Rising Feminist Consciousness | 29 |
| Ch. 1 | Two Lives in Changing Worlds | 31 |
| Ch. 2 | Claiming Public Space | 47 |
| Ch. 3 | Thinking Gender | 61 |
| Ch. 4 | Egypt for Which Egyptians? | 74 |
| Pt. 2 | The Feminist Movement | 89 |
| Ch. 5 | The House of the Woman | 91 |
| Ch. 6 | City Sisters, Country Sisters | 111 |
| Ch. 7 | Recasting the Family | 124 |
| Ch. 8 | Educating the Nation | 142 |
| Ch. 9 | Women Have Always Worked | 165 |
| Ch. 10 | Traffic in Women | 192 |
| Ch. 11 | Suffrage and Citizenship | 207 |
| Pt. 3 | The Widening Circle | 221 |
| Ch. 12 | Arab Feminism | 223 |
| Notes | 251 |
| Bibliography | 317 |
| Index | 339 |
About the author
Margot Badran
Summary
The emergence and evolution of Egyptian feminism is an integral, but previously untold, part of the history of modern Egypt. Drawing upon a wide range of women's sources--memoirs, letters, essays, journalistic articles, fiction, treatises, and extensive oral histories--Margot Badran shows how Egyptian women assumed agency and in so doing subverted and refigured the conventional patriarchal order. Unsettling a common claim that "feminism is Western" and dismantling the alleged opposition between feminism and Islam, the book demonstrates how the Egyptian feminist movement in the first half of this century both advanced the nationalist cause and worked within the parameters of Islam.
Additional text
"Badran ... challenge[s] the notion that feminism is only a Western creation and that it is incompatible with Islam.... This new study will be respected for its high level of scholarship and its sophisticated analysis."
