Feminist movements, pan-Arabism and universalism
Alongside these influential men noted for their publications in favour of women's rights, rose some prominent women. Arab feminism as an explicit stance and as a publicly organised Arab movement only actually started in the 20s. It expanded during the same period as European and American feminist movements – here, within the framework of colonisation. Thus this historical Arab feminism is deemed secular in that its discourse focused on rights, citizenship and nationalism. It was mainly spearheaded by cultured women with an aristocratic or middle-upper class background; those founding figures of Arab feminism were consistently connected to the national liberation parties.
Against the background of the Nhada, the treatises of the previous generation were disseminated and read notably in literary women's clubs. In her memoirs, Arab feminism's trailblazer Huda Sha‘arawi[1] from Egypt reports the intense discussions taking place, in the 1890s at the very heart of Cairo's salons and harems around the questions of women's seclusion, sexual segregation or the niqab. Her presence at the debates and key events of her age stretched her influence way beyond Egypt. Involved in the national liberation movement, she founded “The society of New Woman” the main purposes of which were literacy and the education of Cairo girls from the lower classes. The Wafdist Women's[2] central committee (1920) like the Egyptian Feminist Union, founded by Huda in 1923, brought Muslim and Coptic women together in the struggle for independence, on the one hand and on the other, in a collective liberation movement in favour of their right to gender equality under the banner of “feminism”.
The drive for the development of pan-Arab feminism answered universalist aspirations in that its leading actors took part in the international feminist conventions in the 20s and 30s. It is on the occasion of the international feminist Conference in Rome in 1923 that Huda Sha'arawi would roundly invite Mussolini to grant Italian women the vote. In 1925 the Egyptian Feminist Union launched a feminist magazine in French: L'Égyptienne (The Egyptian Woman) “politics, feminism, sociology, art” under the editorship of Saiza Nabarawi[3] . This publication would be followed in 1937 by its bimonthly counterpart in Arabic al-Misriyah, where feminist demands dovetailed with pan-Arabism-driven demands. In December 1944, the first international Arab feminist convention, called by Huda Sha'arawi, took place in Cairo; it closely associated the emancipation of women to the emancipation of “Arab peoples”. The following year, deeply disappointed by the founders of the League of Arab States (Arab League), which counted no female representative, Huda had this to say to them: “The League whose pact you signed yesterday is but half a league, a league of half the Arab people.”
After 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser[4] put paid to most democratic aspirations. Feminist organisations, among others, were banned and their organisers jailed or driven into exile.
