Academics from around globe assess state of feminism in Arab world
Beirut conference notes divergence of opinion within region’s feminist movement
By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
BEIRUT: A groundbreaking three-day conference on Arab feminisms got under way at The American University of Beirut (AUB) on Monday, with dozens of academics discussing the contemporary schools of feminism in the region.
Organized by the Lebanese Association of Women Researchers (Bahithat) in collaboration with AUB’s Anis Makdisi Program in Literature and several other organizations and universities, the conference took three years to organize and brings together around 46 leading academics and researchers from around the world to debate the state, challenges, and future of the multiple discourses within Arab feminism.
The conference, entitled, “Arab Feminisms: A Critical Perspective,” is the first major event of its kind in Lebanon to address present-day feminist thought in the Arab region.
“We don’t expect and we don’t want there to be one kind of feminism,” organizer Jean Said Makdisi told The Daily Star Monday. “We wanted to look around and say, what’s going on in Arab feminism … is there such a thing?”
It was important that many of the non-Arab speakers and participants come from other countries in the South in an effort to move away from the dominance of Western feminist thought, she added.
At the conference’s opening ceremony on Sunday, Bahithat’s secretary general Noha Bayoumi stressed the divergence of opinions within the Arab feminist movement. “While some of us within Bahithat identify as feminist, others prefer not to, and we are in constant conversation among each other over what feminism is and isn’t. What is undeniable, however, is our collective realization that what drives us is feminist thought, always,” she said.
Makdisi said she hoped the conference would help answer such complex questions as how feminism plays a role in the tumultuous Arab world, secular and Muslim feminisms, feminism’s relationship to the state, and how feminism can be used to advance the rights of women in the region.
She also spoke of the efforts to silence women and feminist movements: “We are often told to wait for the right moment and that now is not our time,” Makdisi told a crowd over around 300 people. “We are told to be patient and that our moment will come when ‘this’ or ‘that’ crisis ends. We are also constantly told to stop copying the ‘West.’ We are accused of complicity with cultural imperialism or of undermining the family and its warmth. They – and sadly sometimes ‘they’ includes other women – address us feminists as if we were children with no mind of our own, no history or culture of our own.”
In her keynote address, Howard University professor Mervat Hatem reformulated Sigmund Freud’s question, “what do women want?” to ask rhetorically, “what do women want from feminism and from each other?” Hatem defined feminism as a set of analytical and critical tools that enhance understanding about women’s needs and strengthen their strategies for gender equality.
Hatem added that while Arab women and feminist movements had made great strides in recent years, the “journey is not over.”
Kicking off Monday’s proceedings, University of Manchester professor Dr. Hoda al-Sadda noted the lack of Arab university programs in feminism and called the contributions of Arab feminist researchers “very modest.” Sadda also pointed to the lack of consensus regarding terminology in Arab feminist theory – with several translations of the word “feminist” being employed to reflect
the focus and interests of different academics.
Suaad Zayed al-Oraimi of the United Arab Emirates University argued that the Arab feminist movement was concentrated among the region’s middle classes and had had little impact on state decision-making. “Most Arab women are not even aware about Arab feminism,” she said, adding that lack of rights for women reflected a general state of few civil rights in the region.
Zeina Zaatari, senior program officer for the MENA region at The Global Fund for Women, presented a paper assessing the possibility of creating an Arab feminist awakening as a vital tool to creating a “resistant” culture based on social justice. “While it is true that there are multiple feminisms, it is also true that the various iterations still have a basic understanding in common – one of absolute equality and the belief that women’s rights are in essence human rights,” she said. Zaatari also called for Arab women’s and feminism movements to incorporate the neglected issues of personal freedom, sexuality, violence, reproductive rights and the body into their programs.
Much debate abounds over the origins of modern Arab feminism, but some circles attribute the movement’s beginnings to Egyptian intellectual and jurist Qasim Amin, who in 1899 published the controversial book, “The Liberation of Women.”
In the book, Amin said women’s education was a vital tool in Egypt’s fight to shake off British colonial rule, arguing that men’s “imprisonment” and sidelining of women was detrimental to society at large. “Our present situation resembles that of a very wealthy man who locks up his gold in a chest,” Amin wrote. “This man unlocks his chest daily for the mere pleasure of seeing his treasure. If he knew better, he could invest his gold and double his wealth in a short period of time.”
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