From Fighting the Veil to Fighting for it: What Defines Feminism

By: Salma Abouelwafa
@salmaabouelwafa

 

Ask women from different regions of the world to define what feminism means to them and you’ll likely get a range of different answers.

While a feminist identity may appear to be easily defined by pop culture and tradition, when applied across different geographies, it becomes blurry and hard to integrate within different cultural and social beliefs.

For the better part of the past two centuries, women have struggled for this social equality — one that allows them to live not as second-class citizens but as essential and contributing members of society within and outside the walls of a household.

One such pioneer for women’s rights is Egypt’s Huda Shaarawi.

Standing in the middle of Cairo’s Train Station after returning from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Rome in September 1923, Shaarawi did the unthinkable at the time and removed her face veil in public to protest the harem system which kept women separated from men.

Shaarawi was not protesting against the physical walls of the harem, but the restrictions on women to move freely and take space in public. She was fighting for the freedom to exist without any shame.

“A major turning point was in 1923 when Huda Shaarawi, Saiza Nabarawi, and Nabawiyya Musa were invited as [members of] a delegation to participate in the women’s conference in Rome in Italy and that was a major step forward [be]cause this was the first time Egyptians managed to get into an international forum for women,” Hala Kamal, Professor of English and Gender Studies, told The Caravan.

This bold and transformative act took place in a time of a revolutionary zeal in Egypt and the region. The Egyptian Wafd Nationalist Party (Egyptian Delegation) was an essential instrument in fighting the British and gaining national independence. And although it was not the first nationalist party in Egypt, it had the most impact, particularly on the development of the feminist movement in the country.

“Many of the Wafd leaders encouraged the feminist sentiments among Egyptian women as part of the national movement,” said Kamal.

This made Egyptian feminists visible to the British and the West for the first time.

Critically, however, the Egyptian nascent feminist movement was inherently independent, focused on social and political reforms, and not onet to imitate Western calls for freedom.

“The beginning of the 20th Century witnessed the rise of women’s press and newspapers in Egypt and all of them were talking in terms of social reforms and little conscious awareness of imitating Europe,” said Kamal.

There was an intellectual connection, especially with the invitation of Western feminists to the women’s section in Cairo University to speak about women’s lives and history and also with the invitation of prominent Egyptian feminists to international conferences.

However, the focus was on the demands and needs of Egyptian women within their social and cultural spheres. Egyptian women at the time were also focused on their status under British rule while building on their feminist demands that were being articulated since the 19th century. So, it was not influenced by the West, rather  equal to, parallel to the movements going on in different European countries.

“The focus was constantly on Egyptian women, not raising the same demands or similar to those that were raised by Western women in the 1920s. Here [Egypt] there was talk about polygamy, there was talk about raising the age of marriage; these were all things connected to Egyptian society, culture, and Islamic law,” Kamal added.

Fast forward a century later, and the way women are viewed seems to have adversely shifted 180 degrees. In some circles, women of the Middle and Far East are seen as symbols of oppression.

That is not to overlook that much social and political reform is still needed in this part of the world. However, these reforms may not necessarily encompass the same struggles that Western feminists are facing.

However, social and traditional norms can sometimes mean that Western advocacies for freedom end up contradicting the belief of many Eastern women, and many may even find outside assistance as intrusive and offensive.

“Historically, when white women entered spaces in our part of the world, they were often colonizers and missionaries who believed that their view on the world was the ‘correct’ view and their approach to supporting other women was to help them become more like the Western ideal,” Maha Bali, Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching

One element of this is the obsession in the West with the hijab – headscarf.

“[Western powers] would enter a place like Afghanistan and focus on ‘liberating women’ from the headscarf,” Bali added.

But this approach – of liberating Afghani women and saving them from the headscarf – shifts focus away from other oppressions women in Afghanistan face at home, and also ignores the impact of such invasive actions on the local culture.

“They do not understand that wearing a hijab can be empowering, or that feminists can choose to wear it,” said Bali.

Contrary to some popular Western beliefs, some Eastern women do not wish to be “saved”. Many would rather choose to follow religious and cultural guidelines such as hair covering or gender separation and abide by certain cultural norms like being a house maker or a mother.

“I think that Western feminists think women in our part of the world need saving, because white women grew up with their own narrow worldview that sees Western ways of life as ‘ideal’ and they look at other ‘cultures’ that live differently and think they are ‘inferior’, and they have what is often called a ‘white savior complex’, which is different from allyship,” said Bali.

What Eastern women need is to be heard and supported in the way they want in their own battles and fights.

These fights do not have to contradict their beliefs, but rather break outdated and enforced cultural misconceptions and abuse of women. And that is what defines feminism, the ability to live a life that is guided by a person’s definition of equalty and freedom.

This was Shaarawi’s vision all along from that fateful day at the Cairo train station in 1923. Not only did she stand against social oppression of women in Egypt, but she also opposed the occupation of her country by imperialist forces. To that end, she argued against Western misconceptions blaming Islam for the status of women in her part of the world.

“I decided to attack the problem of the backwardness of Egyptian women, demonstrating it arose from the persistence of certain social customs, but not from Islam, as many Europeans believe,” she once wrote.

She firmly believed that women should express in their loudest voices for their rights to be acknowledged and enshrined, based on those granted to them in the Islamic sharia and “dictated by the demands of the present”.

Until her death in 1947, Shaarawi campaigned against the cultural norms which excluded women to the point of insult and degradation.

“If it means facing prosecution and rejection to highlight these difficult truths, I intend to vocalize my pain and start a revolution for the silent women who faced centuries of oppression,” she said.

Nearly a century later, new generations of women are still looking to Shaarawi for inspiration as they pave their way into the world they are increasingly choosing how to define.