Hoda Shaarawy
Hoda Shaarawy (1879 –1947) was a
pioneering Egyptian feminist leader, nationalist, and founder of the Egyptian
Feminist Union.
Hoda was born in Upper Egypt to the famous Egyptian El-Shaarwi family. Hoda Shaarawy was born into a wealthy family in Minya, she was the daughter of Muhammad Sultan, the first president of the Egyptian Representative Council. She spent her childhood and early adulthood secluded in an upper-class Egyptian harem. At the age of thirteen, she was married to her cousin Ali Pasha Sha‘rawi. According to Margaret Badran, a "subsequent separation from her husband gave her time for an extended formal education, as well as an unexpected taste of independence." She was taught to read the Quran and received tutoring in Quranic Arabic and Islamic subjects by female teachers in Cairo. Shaarawy wrote poetry in both Arabic and French. She later recounted her early life in her memoir, Mudhakkirātī ("My Memoir") which was translated and abridged into the English version Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, 1879-1924.
At the time, women in Egypt were confined to the house or harem which she viewed as a very backward system brought by the Ottomans to MENA region. As seen in all of her pictures, Hoda is wearing a Hijab. Shaarawy resented such restrictions on women's movements, and consequently started organizing lectures for women on topics of interest to them. This brought many women out of their homes and into public places for the first time. Shaarawy even convinced them to help her establish a women's welfare society to raise money for the poor women of Egypt. In 1910, Shaarawy opened a school for girls where she focused on teaching academic subjects rather than practical skills such as midwifery.
After World War I, many women took part in political actions against the British rule. In 1919, Shaarawy helped organize the largest women's anti-British demonstration. In defiance of British authority orders to disperse, the women remained still for three hours in the hot sun. Shaarawy made a decision to stop wearing her veil in public after her husband's death in 1922. Within a decade of Hoda’s act of defiance, few women still chose to wear the veil. Her decision to unveil was part of a greater movement of women, and was influenced by French born Egyptian feminist named Eugénie Le Brun, but it contrasted with some feminist thinkers like Malak Hifni Nasif. After returning from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome, she removed her face veil in public for the first time, a signal event in the history of Egyptian feminism. Women who came to greet her were shocked at first then broke into applause and some of them removed their veils. In 1923, Shaarawy founded and became the first president of the Egyptian Feminist Union.
Even as a young woman, she showed
her independence by entering a department store in Alexandria to buy her own
clothes instead of having them brought to her home. She helped to organize
Mubarrat Muhammad Ali, a women's social service organization, in 1909 and the
Union of Educated Egyptian Women in 1914, the year in which she traveled to
Europe for the first time. She helped lead the first women's street
demonstration during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, and was elected president
of the Wafdist Women's Central Committee.
She led Egyptian women pickets at
the opening of Parliament in January 1924 and submitted a list of nationalist
and feminist demands, which were ignored by the Wafdist government, whereupon
she resigned from the Wafdist Women's Central Committee. She continued to lead
the Egyptian Feminist Union until her death, publishing the feminist magazine
l'Egyptienne (El-Masreyya), and representing Egypt at women's congresses in
Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Marseilles, Istanbul, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen,
Interlaken, and Geneva. She advocated peace and disarmament. Even if only some
of her demands were met during her lifetime, she laid the groundwork for later
gains by Egyptian women and remains the symbolic standard-bearer for their
liberation movement.
She began to hold regular meetings
for women at her home, and from this, the Egyptian Feminist Union was born. She
launched a fortnightly journal, L'Égyptienne in 1925, in order to publicise the
cause.
Hoda Shaarawy was involved in philanthropic projects throughout her life. In 1909, she created the first philanthropic society run by Egyptian women (Mabarrat Muhammad 'Ali), offering social services for poor women and children. She argued that women-run social service projects were important for two reasons. First, by engaging in such projects, women would widen their horizons, acquire practical knowledge and direct their focus outward. Second, such projects would challenge the view that all women are creatures of pleasure and beings in need of protection. To Shaarawy, problems of the poor were to be resolved through charitable activities of the rich, particularly through donations to education programs. Holding a somewhat romanticized view of poor women's lives, she viewed them as passive recipients of social services, not to be consulted about priorities or goals. The rich, in turn, were the "guardians and protectors of the nation."
Shaarwy is becoming a controversial figure. She is losing ground because of the social media. Facebook posts denote that she did not really support women. Critical thinking and controversy is useful as it leads many to discuss the idea of women's rights.
References
Zénié-Ziegler,
Wédad (1988), In Search of Shadows: Conversations with Egyptian Women, Zed
Books, p. 112, ISBN 0862328071, The Federation of Egyptian Women was founded by
a middle-class woman of Turkish origin, Huda Shaarawi. In 1923, she and two of
her fellow activists, Cesa Nabarawi and Nabawiya Moussa, also of Turkish origin...
Shaarawi,
Huda Post Colonial Studies. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
Shaarawi,
Huda. Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist. Translated and
introduced by
Margot Badran. New York: The Feminist Press, 1987.
Shaʻrāwī,
Hudá, and Margot Badran. Harem years: the memoirs of an Egyptian feminist
(1879-1924). New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1987.
Huda
Shaarawi, Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist (1879-1924), ed. and
trans. by Margot Badran (London: Virago, 1986(
Hudá
Shaʻrāwī (January 1987). Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist
(1879-1924). Feminist Press at CUNY.
Khaldi,
Boutheina (2008). Arab Women Going Public: Mayy Ziyadah and her Literary Salon
in a Comparative Context (Thesis). Indiana University. OCLC 471814336., p. 40;
Zeidan, Joseph T. (1995). Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond.
SUNY series in Middle Eastern Studies. Albany: State University of New York
Press. ISBN 0-7914-2172-4, p. 34.
Casting
off the Veil: The Life of Huda Shaarawi, Egypt's First Feminist (London: I.B.
Tauris, 2012).
Margot
Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt.
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 50.
Questions for Discussion:
In your opinion, are Egyptian
women still segregated? Why?
"Religion give women their
rights and society deprives them". Comment.
