The Struggles for Women’s Suffrage in Lebanon

Abstract

In 1953, Lebanon became the first Arab nation-state to grant women suffrage. The story of that monumental moment begins in the 1910s with the rise of the Lebanese women’s movement. The Lebanese women’s movement has a long history of transformation and metamorphosis that responded to the needs of the state in power at the time. It began under the Ottoman Empire (1516–1918), bloomed in the Nahda Arab Renaissance of the late 1800s and early 1900s, was sustained through French colonial occupation (1920–1943), flourished with independence in 1943, and continues today (Kaedbey and Naber 2019).The early Lebanese women’s movement of the 1910s and 1920s primarily focused on women’s access to education and their role in charity organizations (Stephan 2014). The writers and readers of popular women’s magazines, and the leaders of women’s organizations, came from the middle and upper classes. Their focus on education and charity work for the poor reflected their bourgeois class position, but many in the Lebanese women’s movement sought to provide benefits for all women (Armstrong, pers. comm., September 24, 2019). In the years between World War I and World War II, during the French Mandate, the women’s movement gained a nationalist character. Women’s public support of an independent Lebanon was spurred by the Syrian revolt of 1925, and subsequent struggles for independence, as well as the changing political pressure of French occupation during World War II (Weber 2003: 91). Women leaders promoted nationalist curricula in schools, and increasingly addressed the French colonial state on social issues such as health, education, labor, and the reform of religious personal status laws concerning marriage, divorce, and inheritance (Weber 2003: 91).The movement leaders carried this agenda with them as they attended a series of conferences throughout the Middle East beginning with a conference in Beirut in 1928. The conference in Beirut was followed by additional “Arab” and “Eastern” women’s conferences in Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Tehran between 1929–1938 (Robinson 2015: 21). Lebanese independence in 1943 and the creation of an independent state ushered in a period of transformation for Lebanon. Women’s rights activists viewed independence as a perfect opportunity to shift their work away from education, charity, and a maternalist agenda, toward formal political participation, long considered a prerogative of men. Pioneers of the women’s movement, Najla Saab, Labibtha Thabit, and Labiba Saab and her daughter, Laure Moughaizel, spearheaded this transition. Najla and Labiba were members of the two premier women’s advocacy organizations of the time—the Lebanese Women Union, founded in 1920 to bring together Arab nationalists and leftists, and the Christian Women’s Solidarity Association, founded in 1947 and composed of elite women representatives from twenty Christian organizations throughout Lebanon (Stephan 2010: 536).In 1952, the two organizations came together to form a permanent organization known as the Lebanese Council of Women. A coalition of this kind may seem implausible today, but during this period Muslim, Druze, and Christian women came together across the political spectrum to champion women’s rights within Lebanon and in the region. This collaboration included humanitarian aid to Palestinian women in 1948, and vocal support for Palestinian liberation (Latif, pers. comm., September 30, 2019). Although Christian women from elite class backgrounds usually headed formal organizations like the Council of Women, significant work was simultaneously occurring among working-class women labor activists. The unity built among Muslim and Christian women is particularly important given the large Christian presence in Lebanon in comparison to its Muslim-majority neighbors. This presence, which thrived under the French Mandate, is an ongoing legacy of its colonialism (Traboulsi 2012: 91).The Lebanese Council of Women spearheaded the fight for women’s suffrage, and still exists today as a group of over 170 women’s organizations in consultation with the Lebanese Parliament (Stephan 2010: 536). In the 1950s, council members traveled throughout the country and region of West Asia and North Africa attending conferences and meeting with heads of state and community leaders to build solidarity among women. They used formal channels, the press, public education, and direct action to advocate for the rights of women. After a decade of sustained and united campaigning, on February 18, 1953, they succeeded in pressuring the government to grant all Lebanese women voting rights.The following In the Archives document, written by Najla Saab, outlines the political rights she, Labiba, Laure, and an entire generation of Lebanese women pursued. These women built on the work before them—the magazines of the 1910s, the charity work of the 1920s, the conferences, lobbying, and direct action of the 1930s and 1940s—to once again transform the struggle for women’s rights in Lebanon. All documents are from the Ruth Frances Woodsmall Papers, Sophia Smith NajlaCollection, Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts).