The Egyptian Women’s Rights Movement
Despite their immense contributions to the feminist movement, key Egyptian feminists and their legacy are often forgotten. The Egyptian women’s movement has a long history stretching back to the late 19th century. Our lesson plan – developed in collaboration with the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies – sheds light on these women and aims to introduce students to the history, context and influence of the Egyptian women's movement between 1907 and 1956. This article gives a short introduction to some of the main themes covered in the lesson plan to give you a small taste of what kind of classes you could be teaching.
The Egyptian Women’s Movement
The Egyptian women’s movement first emerged towards the end of the 19th century and was part of a wave of other intellectual movements across the region — namely Islamic modernism, nationalism and anti-colonialism. Buoyed up and fueled by these movements, women were empowered to demand greater autonomy, education and political participation.
Also, the late 19th century had seen an increase in publications written by and for women from across the Arab world. By 1914, there were 14 magazines devoted to women’s issues. Many of these journals were founded by or featured the work of women who were at the heart of their own domestic women’s movements. These journals created a vital intellectual space through which women were able to share their experiences and ideas while connecting with other women from across the region.
During the 1919 revolution, women were “active participants, alongside men, in the demands for the liberation of Egypt.” However, they were ultimately “sidelined by the nationalist Wafd party after Egypt was granted nominal independence in 1922.” Groups such as the Egyptian Feminist Union, Muslim Women’s Society and Daughters of the Nile Union were founded in response. These organizations were later “co-opted during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule, when legislation was passed to include all civil society organizations under state control, a period often referred to as “state-feminism”....’
Key Moments in the Egyptian Women’s Movement
1907 - Nabawiyya Musa becomes the first woman to sit for secondary school exams and obtain a certificate
1919 - Huda Sha’arawi leads Egyptian women protests against British colonial rule and this marks the first time that women had protested in public
1923 - Huda Sha’arawi founds the Egyptian Feminist Union
1942 - The founding of the Egyptian Feminist Party
1945 - Huda Sha’arawi founds the Arab Feminist Union
1951 - Doria Shafik storms the parliament with 1500 women from the Bint al Nil Union
1954 - Doria Shafik stages a hunger strike to demand women’s right to vote, which was granted two years later
1956 - Women gain the right to vote and run for election
Key Figures in the Egyptian Women’s Movement
Here’s a quick introduction to some of the women who greatly influenced the women’s movement in Egypt:
Huda Sha’arawi
A trailblazing Egyptian feminist leader, suffragette and nationalist, Sha’arawi was born in Cairo in 1879 to an elite Egyptian family. She grew up living in a harem, receiving a home-education before marrying her cousin at the age of 13. In 1908, Sharawi helped to establish the first secular philanthropic organization operated by Egyptian women which was a medical dispensary for underprivileged women and children. In 1923, she founded the Egyptian Feminist Union which advocated for women’s suffrage alongside reforms to personal status laws. She’s also remembered for removing her veil publicly at Cairo train station after attending a women’s suffrage conference in Rome. In 1945, she also headed up the Arab Feminist Union.
Nabawiyya Musa
Born into a middle-class family in Alexandria in 1886, Musa is often described as one of Egypt’s first feminists. She was a vocal advocate for girls and women’s education and rights and in 1907 became the first girl to sit and pass secondary school exams. She built a career pushing for women’s education, publishing a book entitled Woman and Work, which again presented her argument for women’s education and employment. Alongside Huda Sha’arawi, she founded the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923.
Doria Shafik
An Egyptian feminist, poet and editor who was a leading figure in the women’s movement in the 1940s. After attending French and Italian schools in Egypt, Shafik got a degree from the Sorbonne – the first Egyptian woman to do so – and then returned to her home country where she established Bint al-Nil, a magazine dedicated to sharing women’s issues. Three years later, in 1948, she established an organization by the same name: the Daughters of the Nile Union. The Union was highly active in the fight for women’s rights, interrupting a session of the Egyptian parliament and going on hunger strike. Many people directly correlate the group’s efforts with the eventual enfranchisement of women in 1956.
afikra Lesson Plan
If you’re a high school teacher looking to incorporate content about the Arab world into your lessons, then our free-to-use classroom resources are the perfect starting point. We developed them in conjunction with Chicago University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, to offer students a taste of a wide variety of topics from the histories and cultures of the region.
This particular lesson plan about the Women’s Movement in Egypt comprises a range of materials and resources that challenge students to counter their preconceptions and misunderstandings of women’s rights in the region. The lesson plan is structured to encourage critical thinking about these issues through a mix of informational slides, thought-provoking readings, student activities and discussion questions.
With a grant from the US Department of Education and support from the University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies, we’ve developed six lesson plans covering a variety of topics ranging from Baghdad’s House of Wisdom to the Mahjari Literary Movement and Palestinian Tatreez.