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Arab Feminism
For centuries, women had low status in Arab culture. Starting in
the second half of the nineteenth century, Western influence and
processes of modernization led to a change in the status of
women, and feminist ideas began to germinate. Women started
going out of their homes to study and became increasingly aware
of their liberation, both their own and that of others around them.
Thus the nineteenth century saw the birth of a feminist discourse
among Arab women on such topics as education, work, marriage,
suffrage, and breaking out of their isolation. The feminist discourse
continued to develop—at first, theoretically and literarily. Women
met and talked about their situation and their status and wrote
philosophy and literature about them. Then the discourse
developed in practical terms: Women became national and
feminist activists and founded associations that promoted women’s
rights. Women may have won the struggle for education in the
Arab world, but in other areas their progress is still impeded by
conservative elements, and the process of achieving equal rights
between the sexes is still incomplete.
In recent years, the study of Arab feminism has developed. The
studies examine the ways in which women cope with power
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structures that dictate the frameworks of their lives, how they
behave in light of these structures, and how they reshape the limits
of their liberty. Scholars like Layla Ahmed, Miriam Kook, Denise
Candiotti, Beth Baron, Iman Alkachi, Butheina Shaaban, Fatima
Mernissi, Layla Abu Lughod, Valentine Moghdem, Margot Badran,
and Nawal El Saadawi started delving into the issues and theories
concerning women’s writing in general and women’s writing in
Arabic in particular. In Hebrew, one can find studies and articles by
scholars like Mira Tzuref, Ofra Benjo, and Camilla Bader-Aref.
There are also translations of feminist philosophy into Hebrew—
for example, the translation of Nawal El Saadawi’s book Behind
the Veil.
The Arab Feminism Research Initiative, comprising Arab and
Jewish scholars of Arabic literature and culture who met for two
years at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, sought to discuss Arabic
philosophy, culture, and literature from the end of the nineteenth
century to our day and to understand the main ideas in Arab
feminist thought. The aim was to examine the main writers and
thinkers and the important phenomena representing the
foundations of Arab feminist thought in this period. Because the
group included participants from various disciplines, each
participant presented a text or a phenomenon representing a
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particular aspect of Arab feminism related to her area of expertise
and which she and the other participants considered important and
representative. Each presentation provided the basis for a through
critical discussion by the group. The discussions focused on three
main areas: feminist philosophy, feminism in the media, and
feminist literature and culture.
Feminist philosophy
Dr. Tal Meler, whose field is gender studies, led the discussion of
feminist philosophy, considering the outlines of Western feminist
discourse and of Arab feminism and the similarities and
differences between the two types of discourse. We learned about
the main arguments of contemporary feminist literature regarding
“women in the Middle East” or “women in Muslim society.” The
lecture included a brief survey of the prominent voices in the
feminist discourse, such as Margot Badran, Denise Candiotti,
Nawal El Saadawi, and Fatima Mernissi.
Dr. Janan Faraj Falah led the discussion of the philosophical
writing of the well-known theoretician Nazira Zain al-Din, her
personal commentary on the Quran—especially in relation to the
granting of rights to women—and the influence of writing on her
life. In another meeting, Lena Wahaba presented the book One
Hundred Years of the Arabic Novel, by the pioneering feminist
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scholar Butheina Shaaban. This book was the basis of the
statement that Arab women writers (as opposed to Arab men
writers) were the true pioneers of women’s writing in Arabic.
Another important scholar we discussed was Fatima Mernissi.
Salwa Alinat led the discussion in which she presented her work
on Mernissi, a feminist scholar from Morocco, who studied, among
other topics, the situation of Muslim women in North Africa and in
the Middle East. We discussed the special discourse that Mernissi
introduced, linking Islam, history, modernism, colonialism, and
gender. We discussed the way in which Mernissi portrays the
contemporary Muslim woman, her views on the Islamic culture that
she is studying, and whether she sees herself as part of it or as
standing outside it.
Feminism in the media
Dr. Inbal Tal introduced us to the world of women in the Islamic
movement in Israel, through study of the women’s monthly ASharqa, published by the northern faction of the Islamic movement
in Israel since July 2001. We discussed the content of this
monthly, the women’s voice in it, and its influence on the
movement’s activities.
Dr. Mary Totry discussed with us the struggle of the civil society
organizations in Egypt against sexual harassment. We watched a
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movie that documents the phenomenon of sexual harassment in
Egypt, and after the movie Dr. Totry analyzed the orientation and
discourse of the campaigns against such harassment. We
discussed such questions as whether there has been a change in
the orientation and the discourse of the women activists and of the
civil society organizations combating sexual harassment since the
January 25 revolution in Egypt and whether the revolution has
empowered women or weakened them.
Feminist literature and culture
We also considered Arabic literature. Dina Abid discussed the
novel of the well-known Palestinian writer Layla Halabi, who lives
in the United States. In this context we discussed the social and
cultural status of Palestinian women in the United States and how,
through their writing, they achieve female empowerment and a
higher status in a society that is foreign to them, on the one hand,
and patriarchal, on the other.
Another meeting was devoted to the writer Amana Al-Janidi, a
young contemporary feminist writer in the West Bank. Dr. Dorit
Gottesfeld pointed out a woman writer’s subversion of the
accepted literary norms of the West Bank. We saw how Al-Janidi
introduces the national-political reality of life in the West Bank into
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the fantasy world that she creates, weaving clearly feminist values
into her work.
Dr. Hila Peled took us to the other, male, side and spoke about the
writings of the Iraqi author Aib Taama Parman, who wrote the first
modern literary novel in Iraq. We talked about the image of women
and issues pertaining to women in his work, as part of the author’s
attempt to convey a social and political message and to reflect the
national-political reality in Iraq in the second half of the twentieth
century.
Finally, Adi Katz, who comes from the world of art, spoke about
gender and nationality in the work of Manar Zuabi, a PalestinianIsrael artist. We discussed Zuabi’s work in terms of the iconology
and iconography by analyzing the gender aspect and the dualism
in her work, in which the 'weight' of the Palestinian feminist
discourse is equated to the weight of the Palestinian national
struggle.
The group also met for two years with three Arabic women writers:
Raja Bakria, Misoun Asadi, and Ruya Barbara. These meetings
included discussions with the writers about their works, which the
group members read, and a question-and-answer period.
To summarize, this initiative provided the participants with an
opportunity and the ability to hold interdisciplinary discussions and
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thus to become familiar with insights and materials that were new
to them. These certainly will be expressed in the participants’
future research. This undertaking also created relationships, both
professional and personal, between the participants. Evidence of
this is their intention to continue meeting in the same type of
framework, outside the Institute. And perhaps most important are
the excellent conditions that the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute
provided, the constant cooperation, and the willingness to help
solve any problem.
Participants, in alphabetical order
Dina Abid: Doctoral candidate at Bar-Ilan University and lecturer at
al-Qasemi College of Education. Her doctoral thesis focuses on
the works of Palestinian women writers who have emigrated.
Effie Aharon: Doctoral candidate in the Gender Studies Program at
Bar-Ilan University. Her doctoral thesis deals with themes that
characterize the fiction written by women in Western countries who
are children of immigrants from Eastern countries.
Salwa Alinat: Doctoral candidate in the Middle Eastern Studies
Department of Bar-Ilan University and lecturer in the Sapir
Academic College and the Open University. Her thesis is on the
construction of religious identity among Muslim women activists in
the Islamic movement in Israel, from the 1980s to 2013.
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Dr. Janan Faraj-Falah: Head of the Gender Studies Department in
the Arab Academic College for Education, Haifa, and researcher at
the Jewish-Arab Center at the University of Haifa. She has
published many articles on language education, comparative
(Hebrew and Arabic) medieval poetry, and the status of women.
Her book The Druze Woman was published in 2005.
Dr. Dorit Gottesfeld: Lecturer in the Arabic department of Bar-Ilan
University. Her research focuses on contemporary women’s writing
in Arabic. Her book on Palestinian women’s fiction appeared
recently.
Adi Katz: Has a master’s degree in the history of art from Tel Aviv
University. Her thesis deals with gender and national aspects of
the work of Manar Zuabi.
Dr. Tel Meler: Lecturer in the Safed Academic College and the
Jezreel Valley Academic College. Her areas of expertise:
sociology of the family, gender and Islamic feminism, Palestinian
society in Israel, and particularly, Palestinian-Israeli women.
Dr. Hila Peled-Shapira: Researcher in Arabic literature at Bar-Ilan
University. Her research focuses on the link between poetics and
ideology, and the psychological, linguistic, and metaphoric aspects
of Iraqi Communist literature. She has published studies on the
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perception of time and the urban aspects of the poetry of exiled
poets, and rhetorical means and gender aspects of Iraqi novels.
Dr. Inbal Tal: Lecturer in the Communications Department at the
Jezreel Valley Academic College. Among her areas of expertise:
Islamic feminism, Islamic radicalism in the Palestinian sphere, and
neo-media in the Arab world. Her article “Women’s Activism in the
Islamic Movement in Israel: Influences and Characteristics”
appeared recently in the book The Muslim Brotherhood: Religious
Vision in a Changing Reality, edited by Meir Hatina and Uri
Cooperschmidt (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012).
Dr. Mary Totry: Head of the Civics Department at Oranim
Academic College and lecturer at the University of Haifa. Among
her areas of expertise: women in the Arab world, communications
in the Arab world, and the Arab minority in Israel.
Lena Wahaba: Doctoral candidate at Tel Aviv University. Her
doctoral thesis is on Syrian women’s fiction.
Keywords: Arabic literature, women writers, feminism