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Feminism, Class, and Islam In Turn-of-the-Century Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Juan Ricardo Cole
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Extract

The emergence of feminist thought in Egypt at the turn of the last century has often been remarked upon, but there has been little rigorous analysis of its social context and background. As keen an observer as Gabriel Baer has ventured to write that in nineteenth-century Egypt “evidently the traditional structure of the family and the status of women did not undergo any change at all.” On the face of it, however, it seems highly unlikely that the expansion of the urban and rural middle classes, the emergence of private property, the period of state capitalism, and the onset of colonial rule could have left women unaffected.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , November 1981 , pp. 387 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I would like to express my thanks to Nikki Keddie for suggesting the topic of this paper and for her helpful comments on an earlier draft. I am also grateful to the Gustave E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA for a grant which allowed me to undertake the research for this paper, and to Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot for her astute editorial suggestions.

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