Egyptian Women Eye Revolutionary Role

Tuesday, 8 March, 2011

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Mohamed El Dahshan

It’s the height of the Egyptian revolution, and two women sitting in a tent on Tahrir Square laugh as I approach them with my notebook.

“Sorry, we’d rather not be interviewed,” one says to me. “Our husbands don’t know we’re here.”

That didn’t stop them being part of the events that would reshape their country. Nor did it stop thousands of other women from all sections of Egyptian society.

The Egyptian revolution was liberating and groundbreaking in many ways.

It saw a nation free itself from the shackles of dictatorship and brave the might of armed police, soldiers, and thugs in a true revolution involving all people, for it transcended boundaries of social class, age, religion, and most importantly, gender.

In the midst of the protests, I walked up to a group of women positioned at one of the entrances to Tahrir Square and asked them whether they wanted to share their thoughts on the role of women in the uprising.

A young woman, Khadija, immediately stepped up.

“Women’s participation has been very effective, and very organised,” she said. “There are thousands of us. And we sleep in the square, too. Many of us sleep in the mosque over there.”

I asked Khadija why she had decided to join the revolution, and she was eager to answer.

“For a ton of reasons,” she said. “To protest against the killing of our brothers by the police, the government’s complicity in the massacre of Gaza, the export of underpriced gas to Israel, the drugs that are sold on our streets, and the carcinogenic crops whose imports the government allowed.

Continuing her list of grievances, she pointed to “soaring unemployment”, and the low wages paid to “people like my father, a doctor who has worked in state hospitals for 29 years, and only gets paid 905 pounds [170 US dollars a month], even after a raise”.

I interrupted her passionate speech to ask her age.

“Nineteen,” she replied, looking at me with a smile which I couldn’t see but guessed from her eyes, above the line of her niqab.

“In the first few days, we got beaten just like everyone else,” she said. “The police are particularly vicious to women. They target us. I’ve had my veil pulled off by one of them. In my own town of Menoufeya, a certain police officer would tell women who got arrested, ‘You come in as virgins, and I’ll make sure you leave as real women.’”

Her eyes flickered at the memory, but she rapidly recovered her poise and smiled again.

“But that’s over now,” she said, walking back to her friends. “We won’t let that happen to any woman ever again.”

Fatma Emam, a researcher at the Nazra centre for feminist studies, believes the revolution will result in more rights for women.

“Oppression begets solidarity,” she said. “And all women in Egypt feel oppressed – whether they’re wearing a veil, a niqab, or not. I was blown away by the solidarity among women.”

And this, Emam believes, is bound to transform into a force for change.

“Women from all walks of life have come to agree that they have many unanswered demands,” she continued. “But those demands aren’t sectarian; they are the demands of half of society, which is exposed to discrimination because of its gender.”

Emam said her group was currently running a series of events where the issues discussed would include “why there are no women in the existing constitutional committee or in the council of ministers”.

She noted that during the protests in Cairo, some women took on traditional roles while others defied convention to lead the action.

“There were two trends. In one, women were being assigned traditional gender roles, and expected to ‘nurture and rear’, to provide food and clean, whereas men would be assigned the jobs of protecting and fighting. That did happen in certain places on the square,” she said.

“But in other places, things were different. Girls wearing hijab would be sitting on top of boys’ shoulders and leading the chants. When things got violent, there were women strategising and leading the way on how to escape the thugs who were chasing us. Traditional roles were no longer in place.”

Even the most religious women were spurred to step outside their usual roles, Emam added.

“The women of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are traditionally a silent group walking behind the chanting men, were joining with other people, discussing and exchanging with them – they were even up there, right at the front, leading cheers and chants – that is a radical shift.”

Lawyer and activist Ragia Omran is adamant that women played an equal part in the protests.

“On Tahrir Square, we had completely equal roles,” she said. “We were present from January 25 onwards, and throughout the toughest days. Women were there not only as protesters; we also helped guard the square, staff the clinic, and distribute food. We stayed up all night and slept there. We were equally active in the revolution.”

Omran concluded, “It makes no sense to ask what role women played. Women performed their role as Egyptians.”

Mohamed El Dahshan is a journalist and development economist based in Cairo.