The Women and Memory Forum held its first

Gender Education Workshop

from October 17th to 30th, 2009. This intensive course was conducted in collaboration with the Social Research and Studies Center at the Faculty of Arts, in Cairo University, and 19 graduate and MA students from the Departments of Sociology, Psychology, and History enrolled and completed the course. Academic specialists introduced them to gender concepts and theories across the disciplines, feminist movements, and seminal theoretical and applied texts in the field.

Participants in the workshop
1- Ms. Zeinab Afifi (Egypt), Chairman of the General Social Services Association.
2- Dr. Mary Assad (Egypt), former professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo
3- Ms. Daad Mousa (Seria), lawyer specialized in family and personal status cases.
4- Ms. Nourulhoda Saad (Egypt), editor-in-chief of "Al Zohour" magazine.
5- Dr. Iyad Al-Barghouthy (Palestine), Director of the Ramallah Centre for Human Rights Studies.
6- Dr. Amal Mahmoud (Egypt), Chairman of Women's Development Organizations Forum.
7- Dr. Ibtissam El Attayat (Jordan), head of the Jordanian National Committee Programs for Women's Issues.
8- Dr. Nasser El-Din El Shair (Palestine),Dean of the Faculty of Sharia, Al Njah University, Naples- Palestine.
9- Dr. Amna Nusair (Egypt), professor of Islamic doctrine and philosophy at Al-Azhar University.
10- Dr. Amani Saleh (Egypt), Ph.D. in political science and a researcher of women's issues.
11- Ms. Nemat Koukou (Sudan), from the Gender Research and Studies Centre in Khartoum.
12- Dr. Salah El-Din El-Gourshi (Tunisia), writer and journalist; head of Al-Gahiz Forum.
13- Ms. Vira Haddad (Jordan), from the Society of Arab Women's Service Today.
14- Dr. Hadeel El-Qazzaz (Palestine), program coordinator at Heinrich Böll Foundation in Germany.
 

WMF organized a panel on Approaches to Women’s History at the CEDEJ in 2003. The panel was chaired by Sahar Sobhi. Three papers were presented for discussion: “Women and Discourses of Madness in Arab Culture” by Hoda El Saadi; “The Oral History of Egyptian Women: Questions Pertaining to the Present and the Future” by Hoda Elsadda; “A Reading of the History of Quranic Commentaries on Suras dealing with Gender Issues” by Omaima Abou-Bakr.

WMF organized a panel in the Berkshire Conference on The History of Women entitled “Revising Discourses in Arab Cultural History”. The panel aimed at presenting the issue of revising discourses especially in relation to women’s roles and the politics of the construction or representation of gender. Omaima Abou-Bakr and Hoda El Saadi’s research on women in medieval history unearthed historical material about the lives, careers and stories of women theologians and mystics. Sahar Sobhi looked at representations of Egyptian women by Western women within the context of imperial/colonial encounters. Rania Abdel Rahman examined women’s discourses on gender issues as presented in women’s journals at the end of the 19th century. Hoda Elsadda attempted a redefinition of the conceptual and cultural categories of nationalist, modernist and colonial discourses in the early 20th century.

The Women and Memory Forum co-organized the “Conference of Arab Women in the Twenties: Issues of Identity”, with the Lebanese Women Researchers (“Al-Bahithat”) in cooperation with the Center of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies in the American University of Beirut. The conference was held in Beirut, May 20 –23, 2001. WMF members participated in and held several panels in the conference. The conference’s main point of departure was a belief in the significance of the twenties of the last century to the Arab World, which went through drastic changes: politically, economically, and socially. The decade is also considered significant in the history of Arab modernity, which had a great impact on the conditions of women in Arab societies and on shaping women’s issues at the time and until now. Several Arab women researchers and academics from different Arab countries and from the U.S. participated in the conference, with papers that covered a variety of themes and that shed light on women’s history in Egypt, the Arab Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Tunisia, Algeria…etc. Most researchers focused on the path of modernization process and its consequences on discourses, writing, law, political activities, journalism, women’s movements, lifestyle.

Proceedings of the conferece were published as: