Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/30780
Brazil’s Amazons Ghana’s Beauties 3Woman protester leads chanting in front of Cairo police. So it’s crucial to document the vital role women play in these uprisings, and how they’re planning to ensure that in post-revolutionary and transi- tional periods they (and democracy) won’t be double-crossed again. Each country’s situation is volatile and different, and Ms.will stay with the ongoing story. But while the Ms. Blog (www.msmagazine.com/blog) can best keep up with fast-breaking news, this report will focus on Tunisia and Egypt, the two “post-revolutionary” states as of this writing. Tunisia, where the ferment began and the “Jasmine Revolution” top- pled President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, demolishes stereotypes. In the country’s (relatively) progressive, sec- ular society, women have had access to contraception since 1962 and abortion since 1965—eight years be- fore Roe v. Wade. After independence from France in 1956, the government abolished polygamy and legislated women’s equality in marriage, di- vorce and child custody. Later, a min- imum marriage age of 18 was established, as were penalties for do- mestic violence. Still, daughters could inherit only half of what sons could, and a husband could hold property a wife acquired during marriage. So Tunisian women, their demo- cratic yearnings deepened by their feminist ones, were ready to rebel. Blogger Lina Ben Mhenni was proba- bly first to alert the world to Tunisian protests, in December 2010. (Despite threats and censorship, she persists at www.atunisiangirl.blogspot.com.) And women flocked to rallies— wearing veils, jeans and miniskirts— young girls, grandmothers, female judges in their court robes. They ousted a despot and inspired a region. www.msmagazine.com highlights 25 26 But building a new society is a dif- ferent challenge. Feminist Raja bin Salama, a vocal critic of fundamental- ist subjugation of women, called for Tunisia’s new laws to be based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She was denounced by Rashid al-Ghannouchi, exiled head of the Islamist party Ennahda, who vowed to hang her in Tunis’ Basij Square. He has now returned to Tunisia. Still, Khadija Cherif, former head of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, guarantees women will con- tinue to defend separation of mosque and state, saying, “The force of the Tunisian feminist movement is that we’ve never separated it from the fight for democracy and a secular society.” The revolution Tunisia pioneered, Egypt made a trend, and one facilitat- ed by women. Despite decades of dic- tatorship, a long-established feminist movement has survived there. Women had been key to the 1919 revolution against the British, but after independ- ence were ignored by the ruling Wafd Party. The feminist movement erupt- ed in 1923 when Huda Sha’rawi pub- licly stripped off her veil. Remaining as active as possible in an autocracy, the movement em- braces many NGOs and activists, re- flected in the women at Tahrir Square who represented “all genera- tions and social classes,” according to Amal Abdel Hady of the New Woman Foundation. At Tahrir Square’s checkpoints, men frisked men; women, women; and while there were several men’s lines to each one for women, that’s because in the past men—protesters as well as police— sexually harassed women so severely during protests that few women demonstrated. But Hady also noticed that the media paid much less atten- tion to the women, fostering a per- ception that only menwere in charge. Yet, the action had been precipitat- ed by a 26-year-old woman whom Egyptians now call “Leader of the Revolution.” On January 18, Asmaa Mahfouz uploaded a short video to YouTube and Facebook in which she announced, “Whoever says women shouldn’t go to protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me on January 25.” The video went viral. The planned one-day demon- stration became a popular revolution. Soon, unsung protest coordinator Amal Sharaf—a 36-year-old English teacher, single mother and member of the organizers’ April 6 Youth Movement—was spending days and nights in the movement’s tiny office, smoking furiously and overseeing a crew of men. Google employee Wael Ghonim, who privately administered one of the Facebook pages that were the movement’s virtual headquarters, would later become an icon—but af- ter he was arrested, young Nadine Wahab, an Egyptian American expert on new-media advocacy, took over, strengthening the online presence. While Women of Egypt, a Face- book group, assembled a photo gallery of women’s role in the protests, neigh- borhood women wielding clubs pa- trolled their streets for security once the police vanished. “We see women, Islamist or not Islamist, veiled or not veiled, coming together and leading what’s happening on the ground,” said Magda Adly of the El Nadim Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence to Inter Press Service. “We’ll never go back to square one.” Nonetheless, Nawla Darwish of the New Woman Foundation fears that because women weren’t pushing their own rights during the demon- strations, they’ll be ignored. “We are living in a patriarchal society,” she SPRING 2011 | 21 TV3