ARAB FEMINIST UNION

Pan-Arab women's organization committed to Arab nationalism as well as to women's rights.

Huda al-Shaʿrawi (1882–1947) was an early leader in Arab women's rights in Egypt. Her husband, Ali al-Shaʿrawi, was the treasurer of the Wafd Party, and during his exile and after his death her interest in the nationalist cause continued. Frustrated with the Wafdist lack of commitment to the feminist cause, she and other women who had worked diligently in the nationalist struggle left the Wafdist Women's Central Committee to form the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU; al-ittihad al-nisaʾi al-misri). While women's rights had been a key component of nationalist and modernist rhetoric prior to independence from Britain, feminist issues were not a part of the Wafdists concern after they officially took office. Feminist groups certainly helped shape reform in Egypt, but their victories were hard fought and their activities sometimes seen as being contrary to national concerns. Efforts to improve the lives of women that had at first been rooted in the struggle against Britain now became a separate endeavor as the major focus shifted toward changing local Egyptian social conventions regarding the status of women.

After its establishment, the EFU sponsored schools, workshops, women's clubs, and training for women. Its goals were to make education available to girls, raise the minimum age of marriage to sixteen, ensure equal employment opportunities, abolish prostitution, and establish orphanages, women's centers, and workshops where unemployed women could earn a living. To familiarize women with the goals of the union, the EFU disseminated a magazine, Egyptian Woman (al-Misriyya), which was published in French and Arabic.

The EFU formed ties with the International Alliance of Women (IAW) while its goals were universal women's suffrage. The EFU eventually had difficulty justifying ties with the IAW, whose leadership bore traces of British imperialism. The IAW's refusal to take a stand for the women of Palestine against Zionism marked the end of the EFU–IAW collaboration. In 1944, the EFU was instrumental in establishing the All-Arab Federation of Women, which set an example for the Arab League, developed two years later.

Palestinian women nationalists called upon the EFU to help them in their struggle and in 1944, Shaʿrawi and EFU members traveled to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Trans-Jordon, discussing a confederation of Arab feminist unions, and the Arab Feminist Conference convened in Cairo later that year. The goal of consolidating Arab women's struggles led to the formation of the Arab Feminist Union in 1945. In addition to propounding nationalist causes, women from Arab countries challenged patriarchal values, practices, and institutions, and demanded the reform of personal status laws throughout the region.

see also gender: gender and the economy; gender: gender and education; gender: gender and law; league of arab states; shaʿrawi, huda al-.

Bibliography

Badran, Margot. Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock, and Bezirgan, Basima Qattan, eds. "Huda Shaʿrawi, Founder of the Egyptian Women's Movement: Biographical Sketch." In Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak, edited by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea and Basima Qattan Bezirgan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.

Hatem, Mervat. "Egyptian Upper- and Middle-Class Women's Early Nationalist Discourses on National Liberation and Peace in Palestine (1922–1944)." Women and Politics 9 no. 3 (1989): 49–69.

Kader, Soha Abdel. Egyptian Women in a Changing Society, 1899–1987. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner: 1987.

Shaarawi, Huda. Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, translated by Margot Badran. New York: Feminist Press, 1987.

Maria F. Curtis