8 - 14 November 2001
Issue No.559
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559 |
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Whose daughters?
Daughters of the Nile: Photographs of Egyptian Women's Movements, 1900-1960, Hind Wassef and Nadia Wassef eds., Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001. pp176
It is very telling that the editors of this new collection of photographs, Hind Wassef and Nadia Wassef, chose to sub-title the book Photographs of Egyptian Women's "Movements." In that they have admitted the existence of multiple narratives and discourses even within the broad feminist tradition of Egypt. It also signifies that this is not simply a celebration of Egyptian women, but of women in movements. As such the collection limits itself (wisely) to a particular aspect of women's experience in the first half of the twentieth century. There are hardly any unknowns in this collection. Most of the names are familiar to anyone initiated into feminism, even as many of the photographs are not.
The quality of most of those photographs isn't high or artistic. The editors have, however, obviously expended a lot of effort in compiling this collection; from newspapers and magazine as well as from private family albums. The result is a roster of sorts, a gallery of feminist icons. Historically and socially many of the photographs speak to us, and tell us things their owners consciously wanted to convey and some they convey unconsciously. After all, many of these were staged posed photos, where the women often manipulated the captured images.
In their introduction the editors write of the early photographs taken by Orientalists of native women: "The power of the photographer (active male) to capture his subject (passive female) was also gendered. The very idea of 'capturing' suggests physical conquest and entrapment. Men photographed women, bestowed their gaze upon them, and represented them in the ways they wished." But as they also write, "during the first half of the twentieth century, women appropriated the very technology that fixed them in a web of power relations in which they lacked agency. The photograph, in their hands, was their testimony of emancipation and control. When Huda Sha'rawi and Seza Nabarawi publicly unveiled, they provided the press with their photographs for wider circulation. Women began courting the press for its power to disseminate images."
Clockwise from top left:Princess Fatma Ismail, the founder of the Egyptian University; Munira Thabet weighing after a hunger strike; Aziza Hussein, the first Egyptian woman delegate to the UN; Zeinab El-Ghazali in prison; Shahinda Maqlad demonstrating; pioneering women tram conductors between shifts
The book is divided thematically into several sections. The first deals with those they term pioneering women, women who did not label themselves feminist but who were pioneers in many fields charting paths for other generations of women to follow. This section includes unfamiliar photos of Safiya Zaghlul, Huda Sha'rawi, Rose El-Youssef, Umm Kalthoum and others. The second sections deals with the women who did identify with feminism such as Malak Hefni Nassef and Seza Nabarawi. And interestingly enough, even Zeinab El-Ghazali, probably the only female icon in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, is included in this section of "Feminists Making History." There is a photograph of her while in prison in the 1960s. In many ways the photos of the first two sections are confined to women in the upper and upper middle classes.
The third section is entitled "In the Service of the Nation" and includes women who participated in the public sphere through social and charitable institutions. The following section includes sample of covers of various women-oriented magazines. These in themselves would make the subject of another yet unwritten study. The section of "Collective Initiatives" also includes other public activities of women but these conferences and seminars related to collective action on women's issues. The struggle for equal political rights is the subject of a separate chapter followed by another on women's activism. This latter section includes precious photographs of women in demonstrations: images systematically excluded from popular consciousness. Here we see images of women demonstrating against British occupation as well as Shahinda Maqlad leading a demonstration calling for the trial of the murderers of her husband Salah Husayn at the village of Kamshish in 1966.
That the editors chose to limit their collection to 1900-1960 is not quite obvious. Are they arguing there are no "movements" after 1960? Are they planning a volume two? They explain this decision by arguing it was because "[1960s] was a time when opposition parties and organizations of a political nature were shut down by the Nasserist regime, signifying a ruptured momentum. This era represented the gradual absence of the collective in favor of individuals subsumed under the state and its discourses ... We also wanted to end on a high note: in the 1950s women had just won the right to vote and the post-revolutionary government was preaching gender equity by encouraging women to obtain an education and seek employment. This was a time of great optimism that perhaps increased the harshness of the decades to come." One would hope, however, that the decades to come would also one day have their own icons sought out and acknowledged.
Reviewed by Amina Elbendary
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