EgyptWomen have played a prominent role in Egyp-
tian revolutionary movements over the last century.
The three major revolutionary movements have
mirrored the three broad, overlapping political
trends that have shaped Egyptian politics in the
twentieth century: nationalist, leftist, and Islamist.
The participation of women in the 1919 Revo-
lution has been enshrined in Egyptian nationalist
historiography as the beginning of Egyptian women’s
public participation in the nation. The events of
1919 were touched off in March by the deportation
of Sa≠d Zaghlùl, leader of the nationalist Wafd (del-
egation) party, by the British colonial authorities.
As news of the deportation spread, cities and towns
erupted in mass strikes and demonstrations against
British rule. Modes of women’s participation in
anti-colonial activism tended to be class specific.
Elite women formed the Wafdist Woman’s Central
Committee, participated in organized strikes and
provided support to the efforts of the Wafd’s Cen-
tral Committee. Lower-class women participated
in spontaneous street demonstrations; some were
killed by British troops and honored as martyrs to
the Egyptian nationalist cause. In the countryside,
rural women provided food and assistance to
activists charged with sabotaging the rail lines.
Although Egyptian nationalist accounts have
come to stress women’s militant participation in
demonstrations and their martyrdom at the hands
of British troops, the iconography of the revolution
itself relied heavily on familial imagery which
stressed the maternal roles women had to play in
revolution. Sa≠d Zaghlùl’s wife Íafiyya played a
prominent political role during the unrest of 1919,
making speeches to crowds who gathered in front
of her home, which was popularly known as Bayt
al-Umma (House of the nation), and writing arti-
cles in support of political action. Her actions,
however, were conceptualized as part of her duties
as Zaghlùl’s wife and her role as Umm al-Mißriyyìn
(Mother of the Egyptians) rather than as radical
political acts in their own right. Íafiyya’s role as a
symbol of the proper Egyptian woman, sacrificing
for nation and family, served to justify the new
sorts of political activities women were undertak-
ing even as it circumscribed more radical claims
that women could make on the basis of those activ-
Political-Social Movements: Revolutionary
ities. When Egypt was granted independence in
1922 and the 1923 constitution recognized the
principle of universal male suffrage, feminist de-
mands for the vote on the basis of revolutionary
participation were ignored.
The immediate post-Second World War period
witnessed a second wave of revolutionary activity
brought on by the political deadlock produced by
the struggle for control between the monarchy, the
Wafd, and the British and the emergence of new
social and political movements. Leftist organiza-
tions which rose to prominence during this period,
including communist, socialist, and labor groups
maintained a broad, ideological commitment to
women’s rights as part of their general programs
aimed at securing wider social, political, and eco-
nomic rights for the lower and middle classes and
included women in leadership positions. The stu-
dent movement in particular saw active women’s
participation and leadership, among them Sayza
Nabaràwì, La†ìfa Zayyàt, Widàd Mitrì, and Injì
Aflà†ùn. For the most part, however, the platforms
of such organizations de-emphasized specific femi-
nist struggle, subsuming the issue of women’s liber-
ation into the broader struggle for the liberation of
the Egyptian masses. Nonetheless, the general at-
mosphere of radical political activism encouraged
the formation of ad hoc groups and committees
(such as the League of Women Students and Grad-
uates of the University and Egyptian Institutes, the
Committee of Young Women, and the Women’s
Committee for Popular Resistance), which organized
specifically around women’s issues and mobiliza-
tion, providing a forum for new articulations of the
relationship between class, nation, and feminism.
The other major revolutionary movement during
the post-Second World War period was the Muslim
Brotherhood, which advocated the end of British
and Western influence in Egypt and the institution
of a government based upon Islamic principles. A
fundamental part of their program was the return
to what they argued as more Islamically “tradi-
tional” roles for women, valorizing women’s roles
as mothers and wives whose religiously ordained
place was in the home. The Muslim Brotherhood
was an exclusively male organization, but it often
coordinated activities with another Islamist group,
the Muslim Sisters, led by Zaynab al-Ghazàlì. Like
the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Sisters defined