Recovering women’s voices: Gender, politics, and patriarchy in Egypt podcast

This episode of the Emerald Publishing Podcast delves into a critical examination of gender, politics, and the persistent influence of patriarchy in Egypt. Host Daniel Ridge is joined by Dr. Reham El Morally, Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo and a leading scholar in the gender politics of the Middle East. Dr. El Morally’s book, Recovering Women’s Voices: Islam, Citizenship, and Patriarchy in Egypt, takes a deep dive into Egypt’s social and legal frameworks that have shaped women’s experiences, exploring how religious interpretations and colonial legacies have influenced gender relations over the centuries. In this conversation, Dr. El Morally unpacks the complexities of women’s rights in Egypt, their historical standing, and how cultural, religious, and legal systems continue to impact gender dynamics.

The discussion begins by examining the lasting impact of European colonialism on Egypt, particularly on gender roles and legal structures. Dr. El Morally traces Egypt's early feminists to men like Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and Qasim Amin, who, under colonial influence, advocated for women's rights and education. She explores how colonial policies reinforced patriarchal norms, including laws on sexual violence that let British soldiers marry their victims to avoid punishment—a law in place until 1999. Dr. El Morally highlights how these legacies perpetuated inequality and patriarchal dominance, also discussing religion, the clash between modernity and tradition, and Egypt’s post-Arab Spring period. She emphasises that these patriarchal systems continue to limit women’s opportunities and oppress men as well. The episode provides a compelling look at how history, legal frameworks, and societal narratives shape gender politics in Egypt today.

Speaker profile

el-morallyDr. Reham El-Morally is a scholar and activist from the Global South, specialising in gender politics, international relations, and feminist theory. With a PhD in International and Rural Development from the University of Reading, an MSc in International Public Policy from University College London, and a BA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo, Dr. El-Morally’s academic foundation is deeply rooted in her commitment to decolonising narratives and amplifying marginalised voices.

As a passionate feminist scholar-activist, Dr. El-Morally has dedicated her career to challenging Eurocentric perspectives in both academia and public policy. Her teaching philosophy emphasises inclusive global perspectives and her courses push students to critically engage with issues such as gender dynamics, imperialism, and public policy from the lens of the Global South. She fosters a safe, interdisciplinary learning environment that encourages her students to question conventional wisdom and embrace critical thinking.

Podcast Host

Daniel-Ridge

Daniel Ridge, PhD, is a Books Commissioning Editor at Emerald Publishing and the DEI lead for the book's program. He works with authors across the social sciences and business fields with the goal of promoting underrepresented voices and scholarship. He is also the producer of the podcast series and enjoys speaking to authors and editors across the disciplinary spectrum.

In this episode:

  • How did European colonialism shape gender roles and legal structures in Egypt?
  • Who were Egypt’s first feminists, and what role did male figures like Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and Qasim Amin play?
  • How did colonial laws on sexual violence impact women's rights, and why did some of these laws remain until 1999?
  • What role do religion and tradition play in maintaining patriarchal norms in modern Egyptian society?
  • How has Egypt’s brief post-Arab Spring period influenced gender politics and opportunities for women today?

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Transcript

Recovering women’s voices: Gender, politics, and patriarchy in Egypt


Daniel Ridge (DR): Welcome to the Emerald Publishing Podcast Series. I'm your host, Daniel Ridge, a Commissioning Editor at Emerald Publishing. Today, I'm joined by Reham El Morally who is Assistant Professor in Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo. Professor El Morally is a Global South scholar in Gender and Politics of the Middle East, and has over a decade of experience in the field. She has joined me to discuss her new book, Recovering Women’s Voices: Islam, Citizenship and Patriarchy in Egypt. Her research in this book spans a wide range of topics, from the historical perspective of women's status in Egypt to the legal and societal frameworks that have shaped their experiences. She also offers a fascinating analysis of the hijab and how different interpretations of Islam, especially Sufi and Sunni, have influenced women’s roles. 

I began my discussion by asking her about the role European Colonialism has played in Egyptian history and the lasting effects it has had on gender relations.

Reham El Morally (RE): It was actually quite interesting when I looked into that, because I wanted to start off by investigating. So, I cut off essentially my period of investigation to when the Brits entered Egypt, which was in 1882 and I wanted to see how that would have affected and has affected the Egyptian legal framework, social perception, political understandings and the socialisation of Egyptians themselves, and I have found that the first feminists recorded in modern Egyptian and Arab history were actually men. It was Rifa'a al-Tahtawi who, under British colonial rule, first argued that women should and should receive an education, at least a primary education, and it was Qasim Amin, later on, in the same century, who wrote a book called The Liberation of Women and The New Woman [Tahrir al-Mar’a]. And it was Murqus Fahmi [best known for his role in drafting the famous 1909 play "The Woman's Revolt" (Thaura al-Mar’a)]who was a Coptic Egyptian lawyer, who first defended a woman who was going to be executed for killing her husband who was abusive. So, I found out that actually it's not religion which may have affected this epoch. It's actually that idea that we are equal. We should receive the same treatment, the same type of information, the same skills, the same knowledge, the same awareness and the same opportunities later on in life as British citizens receive in our country. So with the with Ahmed Orabi and with the 1919 revolution of Saad Zaghloul, all of those things came together. And again, those revolutionary leaders needed a focal point, a common denominator, something to unite the people. And what was there to unite the people was the armed attack against the colonial forces. They were somewhat successful. So, in 1920 for instance, 22 excuse me, Egypt received became a mandate of or a mandate country of the United Kingdom, which was super interesting, yet later on, you had the incident of Denshawai, where four Egyptian men were executed and their families were forced to watch because a British officer died out of a heat stroke. Yet somehow they wanted to depict and send that message to Egyptians that your lives like four men who have four different families who own land, who are productive and have never hurt anyone, are being executed one British officer who dies out of a heat stroke. We're going to punish you guys for and that dehumanisation, I guess, is what riled them up further and further to strive for independence. And it took 20 something years, 30 something years for Egypt to actually gain independence from the Brits. But what we couldn't manage with the effect this was going to have on the society itself. So, what was going to unite the Egyptians, all of them, all stratus of society, elite, as well as the simplest and the most working person possible. It was the idea that we need to resist the Brits and the unity of religion, how God has promised that Egypt would always remain safe, that it would always be a safe haven for Egyptians and for those who follow Islam, because there are verses in the Quran that actually say that. So that belief system really fueled them that this is a godly cause. And in 1923 the Brits had actually. Agreed to allow Egyptians to create under a single party called the party, their own constitution, their own written constitution. And in that constitution, however, and its associated penal penal code and civil code, it was codified that, for instance, and trigger warning here for anyone who might be listening to us, that any British soldier who violates essays or R word an Egyptian woman and then marries her is automatically acquitted of all charges, so of all criminal charges, this law was actually appropriated later on, after Egypt gained independence from the British, and it then became a misdemeanor, essentially. So you just get a slap on the back of your hand for seeing a woman, as long as you marry her, as long as you protect her honor and rectify your mistake as if, as being a woman is a normal thing to happen and you're absolutely allowed to do it, as long as you're willing to pay the price of writing a legal document saying that you've married this person or this woman, and then maybe divorce them. And in that context, that law existed in Egypt until 1999 it's insane that it even existed. And even more problematically is that the fact that we also have a different court system, so we have what we call customary courts. So in customary courts, even if a law has become obsolete or has been removed, like that law that we had by presidential decree, which is what Suzanne Mubarak and Hosni Mubarak have done, you can still draw upon the spirit of that custom in customary courts, and should the person, should the victim, be a minor, you do not even go through the victim themselves. You have to go to the parent. And how that should culture of preserving a woman's virtue, all of that minefield just exploded out of knowing this one particular law that was instigated under British rule in the 1920s that survived all those years. I call laws like that colonial legacies, colonial legacies that have created certain hierarchies within and without societies that dictate things like white people are more superior. And it created things like cultural cringe, where the elites of given societies try to emulate what they perceive to be civilised behavior. And it caused phenomena that was dubbed Gharbzadegi/Westoxification [Occidentosis] later on, when reflecting on the Iranian society stated, becomes with toxic so people themselves start losing or creating this hybrid identity and lose touch more and more with their what's supposed to be their origin, identity or native identity. And Ali Shariati made the argument that that dissociation from tradition, that dissociation from young and the youth of any community, not knowing their history and not living by their history, is going to cause complacency in societies, and that complacency essentially will lead to that entire community being subordinate on the international system and subordinate to their government, more susceptible to having authoritarian regimes, more susceptible to being exploited by their governments, being abused by the governments. It was so overwhelming to see how laws like that and values that dehumanised entire populations were later on still exploited by the same people to isolate and marginalised one though half the society, but that entire sector of society, and then they armed us with this, what I have found to be a right that so many people are deprived of, which is how to think and in order to think, in order to evaluate, in order to understand that you are have internalised your own inferiority and are reproducing it, and aren't actually destroying the system from within, but are actively contributing and benefiting from the existing status quo. This is is by design. You're designed to be that way. You're designed to be ignorant. You’re designed, or the institutions are designed to deny you access to that skill, to information so you can make proper evaluations. You can have informed consent and informed knowledge. And in my analyses, I have found that it's it could be and I might be in trouble here, but in Egypt, particularly, especially after the Arab Spring, especially after what happened in 2011 and with the Muslim Brotherhood coming into force, and then the military stepping back in in 2014 after we've had one year of civil elections and a taste, let's call it a taste of democracy. And then they brought back SCAF and military rule. And I guess the idea was not to put the country in a position again where we would experience this level of extreme insecurity national as well as security failures in general, and I even one of my students, actually, last week and during class, asked me, Did your generation? She made me feel so old. She's like, was your generation as, I don't know, careless as we are, as okay, we're all just gonna die in a ball of fire as desperate experiencing that extreme level of apathy. And I was like, No, I don't know we weren’t, I have to say, my generation, we're not as apathetic as Gen Z right now, at least the ones that are internet classrooms. And when we were discussing that, it became so obvious, and during my research, it became so obvious that this is a design, this is a matrix that was put into place so people would not engage their critical faculties and the people, it's easier to control half the society and tell that half to control the remaining 50 than to try and control 100% of it. So there was this, what I call emancipation of paternalistic and patriarchal values, where men in society became empowered through repeated exposure to the legal system and the political system and the political discourse and social discourse of how they have all the rights in the world and none of the responsibilities. And convolute that with religion, and convolute that with the experience of Egyptians under the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 and the mess that happened of the legal system during that one year where they were in power allowed people to want to revert back to a more authoritarian system, to a more traditional system where they themselves experienced security, economic security, political security, Social Security. And there's this common phrase that we say in Egypt, "El Jin el te'rafoh a7san men elly Jin el ma te'rafosh" which translates to the poltergeist that you know is better than the poltergeist you don't know. So the they chose that familiarity. It shows to go back to a time where the government made all the decisions, including, who are we as a nation, what is our identity? And during the early 2000s there was this phenomena that academics had called the Amr Khaled Phenomena, so the commercialisation and the weaponisation of religion through Da’eya or sponsored religious clergy like the televangelists, the only closest thing I could come up with that would relate this to my audience is they're very, very similar to televangelists, and their entire purpose was to perpetuate and reproduce and convince society of the state’s narrative of who are we, what is our identity, and who belongs where? Who belongs in the private sphere, who belongs in the political sphere, who should participate in politics.

DR: And so within that system that they’re presenting, this is supporting the patriarchal system and the subordination of women?

RE: Exactly. And it's not that students don't have access where the youth do not have access to the internet and information they do. It's just that it's so hard to fight the system when the system is designed for you to fail. So a lot of the female students that I've encountered have simply were like, Oh, I'm after uni. Maybe I'm just going to leave the country. Or I saw some students who started citing the 4B movement, for instance, that is happening in South Korea. The we're not going to date men. We're not going. A marry. We're not going to have children, and we're going to be career focused. So essentially, we're boy cutting the entire biologically male species. And that's all a result of how unfair the system is, how no matter how hard you try, you're just not meant to succeed because there is no space for you. So with that book, I'm not only trying to say that I tell tell women that I see you and I hear you and you're not struggling on your own, that what you are facing, the abuse of me, that be verbal or physical, the fact that 97% of us have experienced sexual harassment, that cannot be a coincidence. We have so many shared experiences that within that narrative, I have found a huge issue, which is also that we're so intersectional. We're so diverse as as a group that I would be doing myself and the people who volunteered their time and their stories injustice by essentialising their experiences and trying to generalise it to all of womankind, or even all of Egyptian women, because it's not true. Not only does the patriarchal system oppress women, it also oppresses men.

DR: That's what I wanted to ask you. I think this is a natural point to go into this where you you spoke to both men and women to understand their views on gender roles, and so were there things about the responses that surprised you? 

RE: Honestly, it was just how aware men were of the fact that they are benefactors of the patriarchal system. But also, again, that apathy made an appearance, where, because they're benefiting from the system, they do not want to change it. Because why would you change something that's working for you, essentially. But the interesting thing is that I found the difference between men who are family oriented or have families, and specifically men who have daughters and no sons or single brothers. It's a term we use here in Egypt, and it means essentially a brother who has only sisters, their narratives are much more supportive and much more active in I want to change this for my mother, for my sister, for my wife, for my daughter, however, single men who grew up in in male dominant households and have been predominantly exposed to male environments because, mind You, our schools, many of our public schools are segregated by sex, so you don't get that exposure and that idea that you have hegemony within society. You are the dominant sex. You are the one in control. You have the right to occupy public space. This is your space. It's no one else's. Those are the ones that took the most offense in everything and anything I said, yet it also showed the extreme other side of it. And with the same group of men, or single men, that I found, I found also single women, so a sister who has exclusively brothers or has not received an education, so was not even exposed to other women besides women in her family, they share the same opinions about where women belong. What is your role in society? Should women receive an education? Is a male figure, a male relative, brother, father, husband, son? Are they allowed to discipline you, to enforce morality? Those are things that also emerged out of this that I really explored, and how many women in Egypt have actually internalised their own patriarchy, and believe it, it became so entrenched in society that it became a meme. It became a meme to forego your dignity. It became a joke, a humorous thing to make fun of the fact that your husband beats you, or that you went to work with extra and you see that on Tiktok, specifically with extra concealer because you have two blue eyes, or how, because you were abused by your brother last night that now you get they joke about it. They actually do, and now,

DR: So tell me, what does this mean to you? What is this showing you? I mean, I'm finding this pretty shocking. 

RE: Honestly, it is, it is very shocking, and it’s telling me that the only way to move forward is not to reform the system, because the system is so broken it cannot be repaired, and anything that repairs it is going to be like putting a band aid on your chin to cure cancer.

DR: So, so the problem is cultural and traditional. 

RE: It is, and it's particularly the mixing of both. So in my book, I made sure to separate between what the texts actually say, so what Scripture says, and for Muslims, at least you have three sources for religious interpretation and understanding, and that is the Hadith. So the sayings of the Prophet and what has been reported were things that the Prophet did or observed, and you try to emulate the prophet the best way possible, and the Quran, which under that you have all those different variations of Muslims, so that you have the Sunnis, have the Sufis, you have the Shiites, the Druze and so many other sects within Islam. And Sukh is essentially the interpretation of Hadith and the Quran. So the interpretation of religious scripture in general, and you're only allowed to do that if you are a certified male member of Al Azhar. Al Azhar is sort of the Vatican for Muslims. So everything that Al Azhar says is essentially considered to be factually true and based in Islamic scholarship. However, in Egypt, what you have is that Al Azhar has become a state run institution, so religion has been co opted by the political apparatus for political ends. So how can you actually trust what the grand muftis or the shiyuk from Azhar are telling you, or from Doral Estonia, if it itself is a branch of government or an extension of government, ideals and ideologies, and this is where you have the machine reproducing itself by essentially employing or coopting and appropriating institutions that ought to be independent and making them part of the state. We've seen that happen with feminist movements during the first socialist president we had in Gamal Abdel Nasser, and we're seeing it right now under the current administration, being recycled and given lift plastic surgery to seem different, but it's actually the same. It’s cooptation of institution that are used to control society and control the discourses and the narratives and what people believe.

DR: Yeah. Well, given your research and given the fact that you work with students, so young women coming into adulthood, I'm wondering how your feelings are about the future, speaking to your students, seeing what's out there. Are you optimistic that things can change? What are your feelings?

RE: I'm not sure things can change, because in order for things to actually change in Egypt, we need mass mobilisation. And given the current political framework, that's simply not possible. People cannot mass mobilise, but they can create smaller communities where people support one another through civil societies, for instance, advocating for things like open access and open sources to information, pressuring, even if it's on as small of a scale as within your own family, pressuring critical engagement with social norms in general. Why is it that men cannot cry? Why is it that if I'm late, or if I if I lose my virginity, I'm the worst human possible, and my male relative is legally allowed to kill me to cleanse their honor. It's honor killings, essentially. However, when men do it, it's not the same. Why is it that when men get married, they get to say, Oh, I'm only going to marry a virgin, yet when women say, Oh, I only I want the same thing in a man, they're called crazy or maniacs, and made to feel stupid for wanting a man with no experience. Well, if you're going to counter experience, then everyone should get experience, not just a select few, and then they rely on selective scripture to reinforce and selective understanding of science in order to reinforce that narrative. Oh, well, biologically, women are different, okay, it's fine, but psychologically they're not. We get periods. You guys don't. Well, it's because men are stronger, and therefore they are the ones in control. Well, traditional warfare, where we're holding swords and fighting one another, is over, literally over. It doesn't happen anymore. We're in Modern Warfare, and I can operate. A computer screen and missiles as good as you can, and if I train hard enough, I can enter fencing tournaments. And here, I just want to give a special tribute to my cousin Nada Hafez. People may have heard of her. She is the pregnant fencer, who is seven, who competed in the Paris Olympics while seven months pregnant. And this just goes to show you that if you do not make me feel small, if you do not make me invalidate me and dismiss me and make me feel like I'm not strong enough, I'm not good enough. I'm not engaged enough. I don't have the capacity. In Egypt, they talk a lot about women not having a capacity. It's so infantilising, and it's so humiliating, and it's it's really detrimental for women, especially mothers, who are perpetuating this. But what are women supposed to do when 87% are of us are mutilated, when we're between the ages of zero and 15, we're made to believe that only through mutilation do we become proper women, do become decent women, do we become modest women? So when they physically traumatise you like that, it affects your psychology. So I don't know where we should start. I'm a proponent of more grassroot approaches, of engaging the communities, finding out why superstition? Well, superstition controls narratives. When you have ignorance, when you have high levels of poverty and illiteracy, when you're told, Oh, if you just don't send your children to receive an education, or you shouldn't send your children to receive an education because it's haram. You are going to believe it because you don't know any better. You don't know how to read, you don't know how where to look for information credible sources. Even so when someone from the mosque during Friday prayers, or the khutbah, which is like a sermon that happens after prayer, when someone tells you that you shouldn't educate your daughter because the purpose of a woman is to reproduce, then you're going to believe them, because you don't know any better. So to me, the root cause of all of this is lack of access to education. And I don't mean formal education. I don't mean going to school. I exclusively that is I also mean awareness, literal access to information on the internet, via books, somehow, telecommunication towers. I have visited towns and cities and have talked to people who think that Egypt is a kingdom and that we still have a king in charge. This. This ended. This system was abolished in 1952 that they're so isolated from the knowledge sphere, the information sphere, they don't have access to it, and no idea how to even start looking there, they're just reproducing what they think is true, and then everyone it's a joke in Egypt, where we're very we have a lot of dark humor to cope with the realities of existence. But a lot of people joke about that and joke about the fact that, well, why not do that? Why not just reproduce and allow some other person to go to a nine to five job? Why not just stay home, passively, lie there, look pretty and do absolutely nothing, and it's just it's become this easier way forward, because everyone is so sick of how things are and their lack of power and lack of ability and framework to try and affect change, it's very desperate here in Egypt.

DR: Wow, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for joining me today.

RE: Thank you.

DR: Thank you for listening to today's episode. For more information about my guest and for transcript of the show, please visit our website. I'd like to thank Professor El Morally and the studio This is distorted.

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