Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt

by Margot Badran

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400821433
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1996
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	804,136
File size:	783 KB

About the Author

Margot Badran is Professor of Women's Studies and History at Oberlin College. A specialist in the Middle East, she translated, edited, and introduced Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, Huda Shaarawi and is coeditor of Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing.

Table 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

Editorial Reviews

"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."

Choice

"Most accounts of modern Egyptian history focus on and are written by men. This one is different—and welcome. It traces the development of Egyptian nationalist sentiment by concentrating on the emergence of Egyptian feminism, [from] the rise of 'feminist consciousness' [to] the creation of explicitly political feminist organizations."

Foreign Affairs

"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."-- "Choice"

"Most accounts of modern Egyptian history focus on and are written by men. This one is different--and welcome. It traces the development of Egyptian nationalist sentiment by concentrating on the emergence of Egyptian feminism, [from] the rise of 'feminist consciousness' [to] the creation of explicitly political feminist organizations."-- "Foreign Affairs"

From the Publisher