Preface
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Abbreviations
Introduction 3
Pt. 1 Rising Feminist Consciousness 29
Ch. 1 Two Lives in Changing Worlds 31
Ch. 2 Claiming Public Space 47
Ch. 3 Thinking Gender 61
Ch. 4 Egypt for Which Egyptians? 74
Pt. 2 The Feminist Movement 89
Ch. 5 The House of the Woman 91
Ch. 6 City Sisters, Country Sisters 111
Ch. 7 Recasting the Family 124
Ch. 8 Educating the Nation 142
Ch. 9 Women Have Always Worked 165
Ch. 10 Traffic in Women 192
Ch. 11 Suffrage and Citizenship 207
Pt. 3 The Widening Circle 221
Ch. 12 Arab Feminism 223
Notes 251
Bibliography 317
Index 339

The emergence and evolution of Egyptian feminism is an integral, but previously untold, part of the history of modern Egypt. Drawing upon a wide range of women's sources--memoirs, letters, essays, journalistic articles, fiction, treatises, and extensive oral histories--Margot Badran shows how Egyptian women assumed agency and in so doing subverted and refigured the conventional patriarchal order. Unsettling a common claim that "feminism is Western" and dismantling the alleged opposition between feminism and Islam, the book demonstrates how the Egyptian feminist movement in the first half of this century both advanced the nationalist cause and worked within the parameters of Islam.

Margot Badran is Professor of Women's Studies and History at Oberlin College. A specialist in the Middle East, she translated, edited, and introduced Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, Huda Shaarawi and is coeditor of Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing.