How can the domestication of women facilitate understanding of their plight in Egypt?
This paper attempts to address an apparent contradiction relative to the condition of women in Egypt. Health and education indicators for women have shown continuous progress in past decades. Yet over the same period, their lived realities have been marked by a clear deterioration in terms of employ...
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| Publicado en: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ema, |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lenguaje: | Anglais |
| Publicado: |
Égypte/Monde arabe
2015
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Sumario: | This paper attempts to address an apparent contradiction relative to the condition of women in Egypt. Health and education indicators for women have shown continuous progress in past decades. Yet over the same period, their lived realities have been marked by a clear deterioration in terms of employment prospects, political representation and participation, as well as their right to be free from violence in both public and private spheres. This article sheds light on the causes of this paradox, which lie in the emphasis of values connected to the cult of domesticity for women in the post-colonial state of Egypt. I will retrace the roots of this domestication, fostered by the State and celebrated by society, to the Nasserist era. These values were maintained under the different political regimes that followed, and met with an ongoing struggle from feminists and activists who resist these values. This paper situates the relatively recent upsurge in sexual violence against women in the public sphere as a reflection and extension of the gender-based violence that takes place in the private sphere. It concludes with some prescriptive observations on how to resist that cult of domesticity in our work and activism. |
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