Secularism, Gender and the State The Egyptian Women's Movement

Abstract

In Egypt, as in many other parts of the formerly-colonized world, numerous tensions and conflicts revolve around gender issues. Women are often caught between the pursuit of modernization, attempts at liberalization, a pervasive nationalist rhetoric of 'authenticity', processes related to Islamization and ongoing imperialist encroachments. Those women who are actively engaged in contesting existing gender relations and social injustice are particularly vulnerable to being stigmatized as anti-nationalist and antireligious. Indeed, contemporary women activists in Egypt have increasingly been accused, particularly by Islamist movements and conservative nationalist forces, of collaborating with Western imperialism by importing alien ideas and practices and disseminating them throughout society.