Feminism and feminist movements in the middle east, a preliminary exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen

Abstract

Feminism, including in particular such notions as women's right to equality and their right to control their own lives, is, with respect to the Middle East's current civilization at any rate, an idea that did not arise indigenously, but that came to the Middle Eastern societies from ‘outside’. To predict and direct the future of that idea, and therefore the future of women in the Middle East—if this is indeed at all possible—an understanding of the development of feminism in the Middle East is crucial, including its transformations transplanted to a Middle Eastern, predominantly Islamic environment, and its different interpretations in the locally different cultures of the Middle East. It swiftly becomes apparent, in considering the history of feminism in the Middle East, that two forces in particular within Middle Eastern societies modify—hampering or aiding—the progress of feminism. First there are attitudes within the particular society, and the culture's and the sub-culture's formulations, formal and informal, regarding women. Second and perhaps as important, are the society's attitudes and relationship to feminism's civilization of origin, the Western world. Since the late nineteenth century, when feminist ideas first began to gain currency in the Middle East, a Middle Eastern society's formal stand on the position of women has often been perhaps the most sensitive index of the society's attitude to the West—its openness to, or its rejection of Western civilization. Thus Turkey's attitude of openness to Western civilization at the beginning of this century (with which this study begins) was epitomized by the abolition of the veil. More recently, the veiling of women in Iran has constituted perhaps the chief index and deliberately chosen symbol of Iran's rejection of Western civilization. The present article is the first of a series in which I will be exploring aspects of feminism in the Middle East.