affect the way gender issues are discussed in the
Iranian youth culture and movement.
Bibliography
F. Adelkhah, Being modern in Iran, New York 2000.
Statistical Centre of Iran, Iran statistical yearbook
1378/1999, Tehran 2001.
B. Yaghmaian, Social change in Iran. An eyewitness
account of dissent, defiance, and new movements for
rights, Albany, N.Y. 2002.
Farideh FarhiNorth Africa (including Egypt)The period extending from the 1940s to the
1980s witnessed a demographic explosion in greater
North Africa which had the significant side effect of
producing a large youth population between the
ages of 15 and 24 whose various needs (education,
health,leisure) demanded attention and heavy state
investment. The 2000 census in Egypt reported a
high percentage (20.5) of youth out of a population
of 67 million; Libya registered a significant 24.1
percent out of a population of little over 5 million;
Tunisia 20.9 percent out of 9 million; Algeria 21.7
percent out of 30 million; and finally Morocco 21.2
percent out of 29 million (United Nations 2002).
These percentages denote the extent to which
youth continues to be the center of gravity for all
these nation-states. While the historical legacy of
each country differs to varying degrees from its
neighbors concerning programs, political mobiliza-
tion, and other cultural activities involving youth,
this entry focuses on the underlying assumptions
that govern the youth movements and their main
commonalities.
Youth remains at the heart of the social and polit-
ical debate in all of the Arab world today as it did
during and following the achievement of political
independence in these countries. This is because of
the demographic weight of youth and because the
future of any nation-state rests on its shoulders.
Hence, there is an obligation to provide a well-
rounded education and grooming for various forms
of responsibility. The creation of youth organiza-
tions for education, culture, sports, and leisure
were important historical moments that were meant
to symbolize the overarching promise that youth
represent in general: the capacity of work, dedica-
tion, promise, and hope for a bright future. Though
the ideologies that nourished their activities dif-
fered widely, youth organizations as distinct as
scout movements or neighborhood local associa-
tions contributed to the preparation and the main-
streaming of their adherents into a normative
north africa (including egypt) 793ideology. Associations of course possessed varying
statuses: from those that were aligned with political
parties, as is the case with Nasserist Egypt or social-
ist Algeria and Libya, to others that claimed an
apolitical character and were more interested in
cultural activities such as theatre, painting, sports,
group-games, and similar activities. Despite these
differences there was, nevertheless, a current of
politization underlying cultural events such as pop-
ular theatre or anti-illiteracy programs. An exam-
ple of this ideological substratum is the Arab Scout
Conference; the first was held in Syria in 1954 at
the height of Arabic nationalism (qawmiyya) and it
continued its aim of pan-Arabism even as late as its
23rd meeting in 2001 in Saudi Arabia. Associations
were often used for ideological purposes, but they
were also seen and as a means for fostering respect
for difference and for learning the values of democ-
racy. Their educational role as models of demo-
cratic institutions, on the one hand, and as places
for talent and initiative to find their expression, on
the other, attracted all sorts of youth. More specif-
ically, in the case of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and
Libya, during the immediate post-independence
period and thanks to the euphoria of nationalistic
feelings, highly important projects were realized
thanks to the collective efforts of youth. Building
roads, constructing schools, or contributing to
large-scale afforestion were among such programs.
During the research for this entry, the notorious
and rather heartbreaking absence of specific pro-
grams or discussions concerning young women
in youth culture(s) became obvious. While young
women benefited from summer camps and con-
tributed largely to the making of the youth move-
ments in all their facets, it is more their age group,
their status as being young, that was of importance
rather than their gender. It seems from the scant
sources available that active realization and con-
sciousness of young women’s issues were either
lacking or considered secondary during the process
of nation-building throughout the mid-twentieth
century. While the socialist regimes espoused a
Marxist inspired model of economic exploitation
as the basis of injustice and therefore saw no need
to be gender specific, other regimes paid only lip
service to issues relating to women when they actu-
ally addressed them consciously. Following turbu-
lent decades in the contemporary history of the
Arab world in the wake of continuous wars with
Israel, the disillusionment with pan-Arabism, inter-
nal conflicts between Arab countries, especially the
three Gulf wars, the polarization of politics, and
the lessening of job opportunities for massive num-
bers of youth, the realities of the youth movement