Women of Egypt
Yes but it’s worrying that there were so few women in Tahrir Square.
Cairo is notoriously hellish for women. That’s not a good sign for the future. They need to fix that. Women need to get out there and play their part (and that means half, not a bit part); men need to treat them like fellow citizens and equals, not like flowers or prostitutes. Women need to get out there and make sure this isn’t a revolution run by men.
Women need to grab and keep their share of the power and the conversation. If they have their share, it will be that much harder for clerics and Islamists to take over.
Update: a reader sent an optimistic article:
Egyptian women often shun crowded public places, fearing the pervasive sexual harassment that is the norm here. Simply walking down a Cairo street can be an ordeal of catcalls, pinching and unwanted propositions. But women attending the protests reported being treated with an unaccustomed respect.
Brilliant. That’s how it should work – people treat each other as equals united against the oppressive regime.
According to these articles, there were plenty of women in Tahrir Square – we just weren’t seeing very many images of them in the media.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14834006,00.html
http://www.pri.org/politics-society/women-in-the-egyptian-protests2614.html
Ah thanks Kelly.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Women of Egypt http://dlvr.it/GN70t […]
A few days ago BBC news 24 had a striking image: a young woman, in full burqa (albeit a lightweight burqa in a nice blue fabric), was bellowing into the camera that she and all the people would hold Tahrir Square until the regime was toppled and they were free. Self-confidence she was NOT short of.
It’s very positive to see that you really can have a secular revolution in a largely muslim country; lots of national flags and proud-to-be-an-Egyptian now. It was the elderly, defunct government that was putting In-the-name-of-God on all their statements. The protesters were being quite ostentatiously ecumenical- relations between the Muslim and Coptic communities have been ultra-positive throughout.
See here for some wonderful photos of women at the Egypt protests:
http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/what-we-do/the-issues/analysis/1862-standing-in-solidarity-with-the-people-of-egypt
One woman according to Al Jazeera English, was offering two of her sons to be martyrs for the revolution, yesterday.
I think there still needs to be a revolution in Egypt, but a revolution of the mind. Where people throw out the dictator in their head, because talk of physical freedom while being a slave in the mental sense achieves nothing.
To a certain degree pictures in media are influenced by how willing different subjects are to being photographed.
I wouldn’t worry about it. We’ve seen this script countless times: Predominantly Muslim country is ruled by a corrupt dictator, he is eventually forced out by a strong populist-driven movement including intellectuals with heady ambitions for freedom and democracy — and the state of women’s rights improves immediately.
Oh shit.
Women participated in the demonstrations leading up to the Iranian revolution of 1979 in an unprecedented scale… And we see how well that turned out…
Fingers crossed, but so far I cannot think of a single example of a predominantly Muslim country that overthrew a dictatorship to replace it with anything other than a theocracy. Turkey’s on a reasonable track, but note that they did not achieve it via popular revolt.
Maybe Egypt will be the first.. like I say, fingers crossed!
I am not so caught up in the euphoria over the so-called Egyptian revolution – I ‘d like to see what replaces the dictatorship. Let alone worry about how involved women are in the political process – dontcha think that they’d have to throw off the very heavy shackles of their religion first? To my mind the Iranian women are further along in this regard than Egyptian women- they have tasted the bitter reality of theocracy.
But James Sweet is wrong above. Indonesia threw off a dictator and has had a democratic and secular government for over a decade now.
Indonesia’s constitution is not by any means rational. It has five contradictory and unresolvable components: Monotheism, Humanism, Nationalism, Democracy, Socialism.
All these components were established to maintain the rule of a communist dictator.
Indonesia is simply doomed to repeat history until it become a rationally secular nation.
True Egbert, the secularism of the Pancasila is deeply flawed – there are only a handful of religions recognised and definitely no recognition of disbelief, so you are completely right. Indonesia is barely holding it together but it is not a theocracy by any definition of the word. It is a much freer place than Malaysia for example and certainly better than 90% of the muslim-majority countries around.
http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=12851
FGM in Egypt is down to 91%.
Grabbing and keeping power might take a while.
mirax, I had not really thought about Indonesia. Actually, truth be told, my Indonesian history is weak.
In any case, as Egbert points out, Indonesia isn’t quite there yet in terms of secular democracy. But you are absolutely right, my statement, as it stands, was incorrect. Mea culpa.
There’s not much precedent for booting out a dictator and refraining from installing a theocracy instead…but there’s not much precedent for booting out a dictator, either. Egypt is breaking new ground here. They could go the way of Iran – or they could do better.
Hmm. There was no internet in 1979. With this revolution – the rest of us get to kibbitz. I’ve been kibbitzing. I kibbitzed on Mona Eltahawy’s FB page yesterday, and made a new friend in Cairo in the process. Islamists can kibbitz too – so we’ll just have to kibbitz more!
The average Egyptian has absolutely no idea as to the basic tenets of liberal democracy.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/crisis-in-egypt/poll-shows-egyptians-favour-democracy-and-stoning-for-adultery/article1892414/
Free and fair elections in the ME would probably result in Islamic regimes throughout the region,which is why of course the US has only paid lip service to democracy while supporting dictators.
[…] Butterflies and Wheels, for pointing out this article:- Of all the astounding things that Rihab Assad has witnessed during […]
Where are the women of Egypt? Not all veiled or hidden by any means. Salma el Tarzi is the focus of an excellent piece of TV reporting by Mark Corcoran at http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2011/s3136526.htm
Should be downloadable soon; for those with the bandwidth & capacity – which sadly does not include me.
Women have been prominent in many revolutions – at least as far back as the Russian Revolution and before that the French.
But IMHO it’s rarely on terms of equality. Rather the committed involvement of women banded together, in a political or industrial struggle, is a sign that things have really got serious.