Introductory Lecture
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Gender, Identity, and Society
Because my training is primarily as a philologist, I want to talk about the significance, both linguistic and sociological, of the terms "feminist" or "feminism" as opposed to "women's" or simply "feminine." I think in English the distinction is fairly obvious; "feminine" implies having to do with women in the broadest possible sense; "feminist" implies a specific ideology concerned with political and social rights for women. The coining of these terms is important in itself; it is an acknowledgement after all of a specific consciousness, of a specific analytical tool, and a specific discourse. The Arabic term that would be used to translate "feminist" into Arabic is nisa'i, the corresponding noun "feminism" is nisa'iyya. The same terms, however, also have to do with women in general, therefore meaning both feminine and femininity.
Historically, a term connoting feminism first appeared in the Arab world in 1909 when Malak Hifni Nasif under the pen‑name, Bahithat al‑Badiya, a name meaning "Seeker in the Desert," published a collection of articles and speeches in a book entitled Al‑Nisa'iyyat. It was a perfectly innocuous title; nisa'iyyat after all simply means something by or about women. However, the content of Al‑Nisa'iyyat revealed its feminist orientation: it called for improvement in women's lives by providing more educational and work opportunities, and the granting of freedoms guaranteed by Islam but which were allowed to lapse by a male establishment. This work was published by the printing press of a liberal nationalist political party, the Umma party. Thus had important social consequences ‑‑ it helped the feminist voice reach a broader public of both women and men. Two years later, Bahithat al‑Badiya sent demands that she had spelled out in Al‑Nisa'iyyat to a nationalist congress. By 1923, the time of Huda al‑Sha`rawi, Egyptian women belonging to the Egyptian Feminist Union began to use the term nisa'i in a feminist vein. To this day, therefore, this term retains its dual meaning; the larger historical and social context helps us determine its specific meaning and application.
However, we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that just because we don't label something as such, it does not or did not exist. If we scrutinize the literature of Arab women starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, we discover that Arab women were producing a discourse that can today be identified as feminist, before therefore there was an explicit term for feminism.
Margot Badran for example has specifically worked on the history of feminism in Egypt and has made, in my opinion, the very important distinction between "invisible" and "visible" feminisms. By maintaining this distinction, she says, we save feminism from being understood as an exclusively public and explicit phenomenon. Rather, feminism is used as an analytical framework within which to locate and explain the comprehensive feminist historical experience.
There are historical moments when patriarchal authorities suppress public feminist movements, as was the case in Egypt from the middle 1950s until the early 1970s. There are private moments when authorities within the family, usually husbands, enforce silence. Feminism may be removed from sight, but it is not necessarily extinguished.
This, I think, is a very important observation and perspective. Such a perspective allows us to valorize, to consider as equally relevant, voices of Arab women who both did or did not call themselves feminists. Even after the term came into use and feminism was explicitly understood, there were women writing who did not call themselves feminists and who would not see their work as embodying an outlook which others could and did recognize as feminist.
Another important distinction to be pointed out is that between the feminism of women and feminism of men. The starting point of each was different. Men's pro‑feminist stands rose out of contact with European society in which women were generally visible. These men argued that Arab society was backward because women were backward and women were backward because of lack of education and because of social constraints, such as veiling and seclusion, practised in the middle and upper classes. They affirmed that these practices were not sanctioned by religion. One of the most important pro‑feminist male thinkers is the Egyptian lawyer Qasim Amin who wrote the very influential work Liberation of the Woman (Tahrir al‑mar'a) in 1899.
"Women's feminism," on the other hand, was initially an upper class phenomenon, and it grew out of expanded learning and observation of their own lives during times of great change. Muslim women argued that Islam guaranteed women rights of which they had been deprived because of certain customs and traditions imposed in the name of religion. These women stressed that through the correct understanding and practice of Islam, women could regain basic rights, and their families and their societies would also benefit.
The two starting points, as we can see, were therefore quite different. This helps us realize that feminine discourse was and is anything but monolithic; that the word "feminism" has been and is used by different people to connote often different things.
We should be particularly mindful of this fact when we talk about "Arab feminism," or for that matter, any kind of feminism.
Scholars, it should be pointed out, have recently started using the term "feminisms" instead of "feminism" to indicate this diversity within feminism. This allows us to appreciate both the universality of feminism and its regional and local expressions. This has led to an increased awareness of feminist movements in diverse forms not only in the Third World, including the Middle East, but also has led to a more refined understanding of western feminisms. For example, Karen Offen's work on European feminism notes essential differences between Anglo‑Saxon and French feminisms. She characterizes Anglo‑Saxon feminism as being more individual while French feminism is more relational or family based. Black feminist theorists in this country like Barbara Christian and Barbara Smith demonstrate differences between black and white feminisms in America. This new scholarship challenges the notion of a monolithic feminism, whether western or eastern, but rather seeks to understand feminisms as products of particular times, places, classes, and races.
PERIODIZATION OF WOMEN'S ACTIVISM AND FEMINISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
We may for convenience and future reference divide the major periods of women's activism and feminism in the Middle East into three. I am not suggesting that this is the only way to catalogue women's movements but it is a convenient way to demarcate three broad trends that may be observed.
1. First, 1860's to early 1920's: We could describe this as a period of "invisible" feminism. We find expression of an increased awareness among women and questioning of gendered social roles, for example in books and articles produced by middle and upper class women. These works were distributed among women privately or published in women's journals such as Fatat al‑sharq ("young woman of the east") or in men's periodicals such as al‑Jarida. Women's activism of this nature was primarily centered in Egypt.
2. The second period from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s witnessed the rise of women's public organized movements. There were active movements in Egypt between the 1920s and mid‑1950s in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the 1930s and 1940s and Sudan in the 1950s. In the 1950s and 1960s, states started to coopt independent feminist movements, repressing but not totally eliminating women's independent, public feminist voices. States for their own purposes articulated their own agendas for women's advance.
3. The third period from the 1970s to the present witnessed a resurgence of feminist expression in some countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. However, during this same period many other Arab countries experienced their first wave of feminism. This period was fuelled to some extent by the United Nations Decade of Women (1975‑1985). Outside stimulus encouraged Arab states to support limited public debate on the woman question. However, the rise of right‑wing Islamic movements has seriously affected the scope of women's activism in some cases, as for example, we may currently see in Algeria and in Iran, and recently in Afghanistan. On the other hand, Islamic revivalism has also made possible the emergence of what may be termed Islamic feminism; practised by Islamist women and men who claim that Islam itself provides a platform for effecting changes in women's lives and securing them greater social participation. We see this occurring among Palestinian women, for example, and in Egypt, particularly in the urban areas.
In the article that you will be reading from the course packet by Fatma Muge Gocek and Shiva Balaghi, they talk about gendered social realities being constructed in terms of tradition, identity, and power. First of all, they define gender as “the social organization of sexual difference.” This is a definition they borrow from the historian Joan Scott. Gender is therefore a social construct; a result of power relations within a given society. It therefore needs to be deconstructed so we may understand the social and historical forces that give this concept meaning.
So to start with Tradition: We must first realize that tradition is not frozen and immutable, as some outsiders looking in might assume. Tradition can be a vibrant force, an instrument for change; but it can also be restricting. What makes a difference is the woman’s agency and experience which allows her to manipulate tradition as a positive force which empowers her, as we will see in Harem Years, the memoirs of the Egyptian feminist, Huda al-Sharawi.
Identity: (p. 6) Identity is a complex thing. We are not only defined by our gender; we are also defined by our social class and ethnic identities. Our authors point out that “unlike the West, third-world gender identity includes strong nationalist and anti-colonial elements. We cannot talk about gender identity therefore in such societies without talking about specific historical and political contexts.
Power: Simone de Beauvoir once said that the personal was political: that the most intimate, most private social relations had a huge impact on how gender relations were defined vis-a-vis the larger society. The concept of power points to the significance of daily relations and life and family processes which create a structure of domination. Feminist historians have questioned the traditional division of private and public spheres: can they really be so neatly demarcated? For women in particular, what they do in private can have enormous public consequences. This division is a modern, bourgeois one which privileges the public space, regarded as masculine space, as more important, particularly in an economic sense. We will talk more about this in a later class.
So, how do we get around some of these more conventional ways of regarding gender? First of all, we privilege women’s voices, their experiences, so as to retrieve their agency in shaping their lives, in manipulating tradition. By studying the works composed by women themselves, we become aware of the complexities of their lives, the sophistication of their thought; we discover their originality.
