Women’s Culture and Feminist Politics
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Autonomy or Integration?
My initial response to the question of autonomy/integration regarding women's public institutions is definitely in favour of autonomy. Autonomy can be defined here in terms of women's conscious choice of establishing institutions separately from those of men. Women's public institutions can appear as enforcing gender segregation and reflective of the general socio-political context of discrimination against women. But it can also be understood as a form of women's resistance by establishing a women's space propagating women's culture within a male-dominated society.
I would like first to point out that apart from sporadic references to Egyptian women’s and feminist institutions, very little attention has been paid to the study of the various implications of women’s institution-building in Egypt at the turn of the twentieth century. This could be attributed to the very recent and still to a great extent clandestine emergence of women’s studies in Egypt.
 
Women’s Institutions in the West
Western women historians often underscore the role of commercial and industrial growth in widening the gap between the male (public) and female (domestic) spheres. A closer look, however, into the history of first wave feminism in the United States suggests the middle-class women’s attempts at bridging this gap by getting involved in addressing socio-political concerns of their time. Women’s activism seems clearly to have started from a very ambiguous position; emerging from within the predominantly male Abolitionist movement, calling for the abolition of slavery, and granting Afro-Americans the right to full citizenship. It was this particular activist experience that raised the women abolitionists’ consciousness to the gender (not only racial) discrimination practised against them, particularly when they (being women) were prevented from attending the International Anti-Slavery Convention. Additionally, while black men eventually crossed the borderline of race and were granted the suffrage, women were denied their right to active citizenship based on their gender. This is a direct example of situations where women are being denied access to the male-dominated public sphere; an incident that triggered the emergence of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Similarly, the history of the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century indicates the significant role played by French women in demanding the application of the revolution slogans of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”. Though working from within the Revolution, women were soon ignored in the 1789 “Declaration of the Rights of Man”, thus leading Olympe De Gouge to submit her “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen” to the National Assembly in 1791. French women then started organising and establishing women’s social and political clubs, such as “Les Amies de la verite” (Friends of the Truth) and “Les Citoyennes republicaines revolutionaries” (The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women), demanding the application of social justice and the promotion of revolutionary ideals. Although women’s political organisations were soon dissolved by the National Assembly, French women had managed to obtain significant rights: the legal right to marry without parental consent, to initiate divorce, to own property, and inheritance rights, among others.
 
Women’s Institutions in Modern Egypt
As a social movement, Egyptian first wave feminism of the turn of the twentieth century is marked by individual women activists and pioneers. Yet the most significant feature of the period, in addition to the general age of enlightenment and the rise of the nationalist movement, can be noticed in the multiple political, social and literary women’s institutions. According to historical sources, Egyptian women’s “awakening” can be illustrated by the emergence and development of the women’s press which started and soon mushroomed from as early as 1892 with Hend Nowfal’s magazine Al-Fatah. Women’s education also received a boost with the establishment and spread of schools for girls with Egyptian women teachers and educators, such as the noted Nabawiya Musa, acting as role models.
The early years of the century witnessed the establishment of numerous women’s organisations such as for instance Gam’iyat Tarqiyat al-Mar’a (1908), Mabarrat Muhammad Ali (1909), Al-Ittihad al-Nisa’i al-Tahthibi (1910), Ittihad al-Mar’a al Ta’limi (1914), and the Wafd Party Women’s Committee (1920), and the Egyptian Women’s Union (1923) among many others. In the context of a male-dominated and predominantly conservative society, women seem to have fought against their exclusion and continued seclusion, by crossing the boundaries of their domestic world into the public sphere. It is worth noting however that this crossing was made into a sphere that combined the domestic with the public and the personal with the political, through establishing a women’s public world.
 
Autonomy and Feminism
The creation of women’s institutions in modern Egypt was marked by integrating the domestic with the public. Charity institutions, such as Mabarrat Muhammad Ali which was initially established with the purpose of offering women information regarding childcare and health awareness, soon became sites of women’s social activism and decisionmaking. Second, the educational institutions such as Al-Saniya School and College for Girls offered educational opportunities, preparing women for their domestic roles as mothers and wives, in addition to the indirect creation of a new generation of independent young women equipped with general knowledge, skills and prospects among whom many followed educational careers. Third, the development of women’s press moved hand in hand with the emergence of the enlightenment project as well as the nationalist movement. At the same time, women’s magazines debated political interests as well as domestic concerns, and on the whole concentrated on women’s issues.
Women’s choice to join in and establish women’s organisations is to me an obvious act of resistance against the conservative attitudes prevalent within their society, without jeopardising their own determination to play effective public roles within that same society. Thus, creating a women’s public sphere becomes in itself a feminist strategy, and stands witness to women’s agency.
I wish to argue here that these institutions played multiple roles in women’s lives. First, they offered women socially acceptable public roles without directly aggravating the conservative attitudes. Second, these institutions also offered women the opportunity to exercise self-assertion and decision-making, thus taking their first lessons in political organising. Third, women were capable of establishing personal relationships and creating private bonds. This in turn is bound to have encouraged the exchange of shared experiences and hence the development of a feminist consciousness. Fourth, women found themselves in the company of like-minded women who took part together in forging networks, developing support systems and collective strategies of feminist activism. Fifth, these institutions gave women the opportunity to voice their perspectives, reflect on the multiple facets of their identity-formation, and to advocate for women's rights.
 
So... Autonomy or Integration?
Egyptian women’s history suggests that the feminist movement declined with the dismantling of women’s institutions following women’s achievement of the suffrage! On the one hand, gaining the right to vote together with the rhetoric of gender equality were used to underestimate the need to continue feminist organisation. Women themselves, on the other hand, having accepted assimilation into male-dominated institutions, seem to have been integrated into the male world. They consequently lost their support networks and some of the distinct features of women’s culture as manifested by their public institutions.
Although radical feminism calls for the establishment of women-only organisations, social feminists generally encourage the formation of feminist caucuses and interest groups within mainstream institutions. Ideally, women should be able to work for change from within as well as from without public institutions. Yet, autonomy seems sometimes indeed the most effective form to initiate women’s activism, and becomes a feminist strategy particularly where unbalanced power relations continue to thrive.
 
 
Hala Kamal*
* Assistant Lecturer at Cairo University. Founding member of the Women & Memory
Forum.

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