Abstract
The political and social status of women in the Arab world has gone through major changes since the beginning of the last century until this day and has witnessed turning points that brought advancements to women’s efforts in some occasions but also ridiculed their efforts and curtailed their struggles in others. These changes occurred in the turbulent context of the Arab region where foreign colonization, civil wars, coups d’état, social renaissances and international social influences took place. The political status of Arab women is particularly worth studying following the most recent landmark events of the Arab uprisings, when several Arab states witnessed intense political alterations that raised the expectations of Women and Human Rights’ activists before the emergence of pushback forces from regimes and their security apparatuses. Women played an essential role in the eruption of these revolutions but, despite noted important gains, endured the consequences of patriarchal norms and values, regime crackdown and violence, and gender discrimination post-uprisings. Women, expecting to occupy a larger space in the political, social and economic fields, had to reestablish their roles to adapt to the new circumstances. This chapter presents an attempt to examine the path taken by women’s groups and movements in the context of the changes that occurred in the political fields and sheds light on the political participation of Arab women in different periods of the last century. It also records the advancements and the challenges women faced in the political domain and explores the effect of women-led movements on guiding their lives and countries to change. From their journey to assert equal rights to direct active involvement in the Arab uprisings, this chapter seeks to outline the history of women’s agency and struggles in the Arab world.
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Notes
- 1.
Wife, daughter, sister or mother.
- 2.
Al Hijra is a political move/ travel done by Muhammad and his followers from Mekkah to Medinah to demonstrate to Qurayshis, the political and ideological opponents of Muhammad that the new religion is establishing a geographical and political independence away from their areas of power. Muslims use the year when the Hijra occurred as a time of reference to numerate the Islamic years and major Islamic events that occurred later.
- 3.
Al Ahzab was the last battle between Muslims residing in Medinah and Quraysh before Muhammad conquered the Quraysh and entered Mekkah again.
- 4.
Islamic Feminism is a concept that was officially founded in the eighties. One of its main scholars was the Iranian lawyer Ziba Mir Hosseini. Mir Hosseini mentions that the concept of Islamic feminism responded to the theory that Islam and women’s rights (social, political and economic) are mutually exclusive. In her description of the Islamic feminist movement in the Middle East and of women’s pursuit of egalitarianism, Mir-Hosseini (2006) mentions that the Islamic feminist movement in the Islamic and Middle Eastern region is still under debate and in the stage of formation; to be able to understand it, there should be a systematic interpretation of the present opponents of this movement. According to Mir-Hosseini (2006), there is a particularity of what this movement specifically faces and what it has to resist and with which institutions it holds its main struggles, in comparison to other feminist movements in the world. Three groups faced the Islamic Feminist Movement: Muslim traditionalists, Islamic fundamentalists, and secular fundamentalists. Several reasons stand behind this struggle with these three entities, naming the resistance of the traditional Muslim groups who, according to Mir Hosseini, were resistant to any change occurring especially when it comes to rights of women and the relation between men and women. Their resistance for a long period of time was backed by their “own” explanation of sharia’. Islamic fundamentalists, constituting a large category, as they called for changing the current practices by returning to the raw, pure and clear version of the sharia with a complete rejection of any liberal form that comes based on western interpretations. As for the secular fundamentalists, who present the opposite mirroring group of the religious fundamentalists in being assertive and ideological; assume that religiously inspired social practices and laws will not lead to any kind of justice and equality.
- 5.
The Tunisian Annahda Party and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood made it to the presidency in the elections that followed the uprisings. Observers, justify this as the expected result as these type of political parties remain organized even under uncertain circumstances.
- 6.
According to Nadje El Ali (2002), for the first time in the history of Egypt, Egyptian women (veiled or wearing the modern costumes) participated in the streets’ protests calling for liberty, freedom and independence. Women were involved in preparing and printing opposing newspapers and in calling to boycott British goods and services. This was, as far as the history documents, the first significant political participation of women in Egypt, it was also the building stage for the Egyptian feminist movement.
- 7.
Egyptian women married to non Egyptian were granted the right to pass the nationality for their husband and their children in the era of Hosni Mubarak.
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Moussawi, F., Koujok, S. (2019). The Political Participation of Women in the Arab World: Mapping the Movement, Experiences and Challenges Facing Arab Women from the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Until the Post-Arab Uprisings Era: Expectations, Paths and Outcomes. In: Yassin, N., Hoppe, R. (eds) Women, Civil Society and Policy Change in the Arab World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02089-7_3
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