Product Description: To date, most constructivist international relations studies have characterized the influence of transnationalism on domestic forms of activism as uniformly positive. In particular, transnational interactions are viewed as positive factors for the development and daily impact of gender activism...read more

Born into a wealthy and powerful Egyptian family, Huda Shaarawi was destined to lead a leisurely life in luxurious settings. She decided instead to acquire an education and to participate in the liberation of Egypt from the British occupation. Huda became famous overnight when she led a peaceful walk of veiled women across Cairo in 1919 to free the leaders of the Egyptian resistance who were detained by the British forces. She was then invited by the members of the Bureau of the IAWS (International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage) to participate in the international conference in Rome in 1923. Huda became the lifelong friend of Western and other feminist leaders at that conference. It was after this conference in Cairo when she and her two traveling companions removed their face veil upon leaving the train at the railway station and were spontaneously imitated by all the other women in what became a landmark gesture in Egyptian history. In 1923, Huda founded the Egyptian Feminist Union affiliated to the IAWS, and began publishing a French magazine, L’Egyptienne, to circulate information about Egypt’s plight and achievements under the occupation, and to promote peace between Eastern and Western countries. She soon became - and remained for many years - one of the Vice-Presidents of the International Organization of Women.  Huda Shaarawi alternated political advocacy with social and cultural projects. She spoke on behalf of the Arab and African peoples in International Fora, founding two magazines in Arabic to circulate information in her area of the world. Huda founded schools, supported artists, medical dispensaries and cottage industries, and participated in funding the establishment of the first entirely Egyptian Bank and its many affiliated projects. A promoter of progress, Huda stubbornly and tirelessly advocated peace, justice, and equality in an increasingly violent world.

Product Description: The bestselling author of he Yacaoubian Building and hicago turns his attention to current affairs in Egypt.In the novels and short stories of Alaa Al Aswany, characters struggle with class differences, police brutality, poverty, sexual harassment, and political corruption; now, in a new collection of the weekly newspaper columns previously published in Arabic, Al Aswany considers these same issues that torment modern Egyptian society...read more

Product Description: This volume offers new research on an essential but often controversial aspect of life in Dynastic Egypt. Its originality lies in combining research which uses Egyptologys traditional strengths, philological and iconographic, with reflections on material culture and on the discipline of Egyptology itself...read more

Presents information on how women lived in ancient Egypt, discussing their education, family life, and fashion.

Product Description: A "New Woman" was announced in Egypt at the turn of the nineteenth century. With a new genre of prescriptive literature, new products, a new education, and a physically changed home, she increasingly emerged in public life. This book discusses and debates the place of Egyptian women, while focusing on consumerism and education...read more

The nineteenth century in Egypt was a period of rapid social and economic change, brought about by the country's developing ties with the European economy. Focusing on lower-class women, this study traces changes in the work role and family life of peasant women in the countryside and craftswomen and traders in Cairo, and explores the world of the slave woman. The effects of capitalist transformation on women are studied in detail, using material from the Islamic court records. The effects of the Egyptian process of state formation and colonial rule are discussed: the growth of the state apparatus, its social services and repressive means, brought new kinds of intervention into women's lives. The book provides a unique account of the very active economic, social and political roles of nineteenth-century women, from the peasant and street pedlar to the slave of the harem. (view table of contents)

Examines the conditions of women in ancient Egyptian society, discussing their positions in the home, in religion, as workers, and as members of royal families

This book explores the concept of citizenship in Egypt and identifies the forces that have institutionally controlled women since the turn of the twentieth century. How is citizenship defined in Egypt and by whom? Selma Botman seeks to understand how political culture in Egypt has developed, how women have asserted themselves in public life, and how they have been limited and sometimes excluded from the political process. Botman demonstrates that women's social inferiority derives from law and custom, but points out that slow industrialization contributes to inequality in the workplace. She considers three areas of interaction in Egypt: the social organization of power, the ideological and institutional means of controlling women sexually, and the sexual division of labor. These topics highlight the complexity and interdependence of men's and women's activities and offer insight into the nature of political organization, the sources of political power, and the implications of hierarchical domination. In this decade-by-decade survey beginning with Egypt's independence from British rule, Botman shows how women's identity was constrained by social and political patriarchal structures. Even during Egypt's period of nation-building, when women won the right to vote, the responsibilities of housekeeping and child-rearing were still the strict province of women. Tracing an entrenched system of male hegemony-in the household and in the state-this study illustrates the changing yet ever restricted role of women in Egyptian society. Up to the present rise of Islamic fundamentalism, where gender inequality continues, Botman looks to the movement for Egyptian democratization as the best hope for gender equality in Egypt.

Between 1892 and 1920 nearly thirty Arabic periodicals by, for, and about women were produced in Egypt for circulation throughout the Arab world. This flourishing women's press provided a forum for debating such topics as the rights of woman, marriage and divorce, and veiling and seclusion, and also offered a mechanism for disseminating new ideologies and domestic instruction. In this book, Beth Baron presents the first sustained study of this remarkable material, exploring the connections between literary culture and social transformation. Starting with profiles of the female intellectuals who pioneered the women's press in Egypt - the first generation of Arab women to write and publish extensively - Baron traces the women's literary output from production to consumption. She draws on new approaches in cultural history to examine the making of periodicals and to reconstruct their audience, and she suggests that it is impossible to assess the influence of the Arabic press without comprehending the circumstances under which it operated. Turning to specific issues argued in the pages of the women's press, Baron finds that women's views ranged across a wide spectrum. The debates are set in historical context, with elaborations on the conditions of women's education and work. Together with other sources the journals show significant changes in the activities of urban middle- and upper-class Egyptian women in the decades before the 1919 revolution and underscore the sense that real improvement in women's lives - the women's awakening - was at hand. Baron's discussion of this extraordinary trove of materials highlights the voices of the female intellectuals who championed this awakening andbroadens our understanding of the social and cultural history of the period.

Featuring a foreword by Gloria Steinem, the autobiography of an Egyptian woman who resisted the traditional role of women in Egypt's male-dominated society provides a contemporary perspective on women and politics in the Arab world. Original.

Product Description: Although "The Liberation of Women" was published near the turn of the century, it continues to be a source of controversy and debate in the Arab world, and is still a key work for understanding the feminist movement there. Starting from the premise that the liberation of women is an essential prerequisite for the liberation of Egyptian society from foreign domination, Qasim Amin uses arguments based on Islam to call for an improvement in the status of women...read more