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Essay on Why The Women's Social Movements Fail After Colonialism, Focusing On Egypt, And Algeria
Egyptian women's participation in the 1919 nation-wide marches, strikes and protests against the British colonizers was a continuation and extension of the activities of women in previous decades. Qasim Amin, an Egyptian lawyer and jurist, has frequently been identified as the first Egyptian and Arab feminist. Leila Ahmed (1992) and Beth Baron (1994), who have re-examined Amin's writings, show that many of those women who were active in the cause of women's emancipation were pushed to the background or have been left out of the historical archives altogether. Baron's work, in particular, sheds light on the intellectual and creative output and diversity of women journalists and writers at the turn of the century.
Baron very strongly argues against the 'pattern of stressing male thinkers at the expense of female ones' (Baron, 1994). She quotes Leila Ahmed who concluded that Qasim Amin was not 'the father of feminism', as so many claim, but rather 'the son of Cromer and colonialism'. Ahmed suggests that many of Amin's ideas actually reproduced colonial thinking about women's status in Muslim society and contends that his work, Tahrir AlMar'a, 'merely called for the substitution of Islamic-style male dominance by Western-style male dominance' (Ahmed, 1994). What is much more at stake today is the issue of whether the intellectual roots have to be traced back to 'western' or 'indigenous' sources.
The charge of emulating 'western thought' and thereby betraying 'authentic culture' has constituted a continuous challenge to Egyptian feminists. From its very beginnings until the present day various constituencies opposed to the struggle for women's rights (Islamists as well as nationalist-leftists) have engaged in an evaluation of women activists with regard to their level of 'authenticity' or 'westernness'.Some scholars have used similar categories to those used by Islamists and conservative forces within Egypt to analyse the women's movement......
