Ancient Egypt was relatively gender equal. Women enjoyed legal equality, could act as witnesses, own property, receive an equal inheritance, initiate divorce and keep their assets. Today, Egypt is extremely patriarchal. Only 16% of women are in the labour force.
Grateful to have had the opportunity to come across this today. I was just discussing with my fiancé how we, at least Americans, tend to have this view that progress is linear and always moving forward. But in reality, a closer look at history shows us that this is not the case, and thus we should not remain so silent and passive in the face of eroding rights, regulations, policies, and norms that we are experiencing.
Every time I read about culture and history, I am reminded by how restrictive, limited, and at times wrong my k-12 history education was. If our general education had more lessons like this, I wonder how different our society would be. Would we be more civically engaged? How would people respond to attempts to have more religious influence/involvement in government? Would we be able to recognize and stop the rise strong-man/authoritarian types? Would we respond any differently to marketing, advertisements, or propaganda?
There is so much knowledge and potential to have and maintain better societies, but we continue to struggle with many of the same issues that have plagued those before us.
Wow. This is fascinating. I think a key way these countries suppress dissent is by arguing things were never different, you’ve disproved this. Was the modernisation entirely driven by Western influence or other factors?
Under Nasser Egypt pursued Arab socialism not westernization. Between his coup and the Yom Kippur War Egypt was friendly with the Soviet Union and the Eastern block. That period was the peak of egyptian women rights. The return to islamic mores started after Egypt became close with the US, a major recipient of military aid and signed the Camp David Agreement with Israel. That's not a coincidence. American foreign policy has supported islamism from the Cold War to the Syrian Civil War.
Sans the politics, nice post and the picture timeline and some of the narrative interesting.
As an aside though, I found this a little incredulous though I get it's from another source "53% of Egyptian men think a woman may deserve to be beaten". Blows my mind it's so low, I'd wager in absolute terms 100% of men in any culture sans absolute pacifists can fathom some scenario where a woman may deserve to be beaten. Maybe she's molesting her child. Maybe she's attempting to assault her husband.
I mean generally all men can fathom a scenario where the usage of violence against someone to prevent further harm or as corporal punishment is warranted. The question itself is bad TBH. It's also quite telling they didn't ask the inverse about men getting beaten given the prevalence, even in Egypt, of female initiated violence against family members including their husbands.
This is a great thread. And beuatiful images and Ads that you unearth.
I just want to take issue with the underlying assumption throughout that female nudity or acceptance of female nudity in art is somehow a proxy for the condition of women (level of equality or lack thereof, or level of patriarchy etc).
It is not a direct proxy for female liberation and equality and should not be portrayed as one. You can have female nudity with no equality and vice versa
I don't see how the economic or military defeat stories work. The military defeat was in 1967 --- well before the 1980s (the 1973 war was seen as a victory). And the economy was also at its worst in the 1960s - the Nasser socialist years in which women liberation was at its 20th century peak. The years from 1980 to the financial crisis, when elite society became much more conservative, were economically much better, with consistent growth in GDP per capita.
> Additionally, there is no literature written by women from late Medieval Cairo, Damascus or Jerusalem in the Mamluk period (1250-1517).
Was there literature written by Egyptian women before then?
> Egyptian women learning how to resist a rifle
The link has "use a rifle", with "resist" being applied to the invading troops.
> This 1959 Egyptian advert for pain-killer features a green-eyed blonde. This aesthetic signals aspirational Westernisation.
Could they have simply copied the image from another country, and changed the text? I'm not familiar with the "Rivo" brand name, but it doesn't sound like a word from a semitic language like Arabic. The text showing that name is even in the Latin alphabet, in contrast to the script of the rest of the ad.
The Galal Amin quote attributes the rise of Islamism to falling oil prices and a lack of work opportunities in the Gulf. Overall you're suggesting the opposite cause of rising religious influence & seclusion. Yes, opposite cause can have the same effect depending on other factors, but how in this case?
The common explanation I've heard is the failure of Arab secular nationalism. Nasser was a hero to Arabs when he was victorious in the Suez Crisis. His intervention in North Yemen's civil war and his defeat by Israel in the Six Day War reduced his standing.
I'm not sure that this quantity of data is 'big' in the way that data is big in the large-scale work of (say) physicists.
A minor point: Saudi Arabia's oil, and the oil wealth of the other hydrocarbon states in the region, is a matter of geography, which is hardly luck—it's less contingent than many of the other factors discussed here. The presence of the particular state that's there, and the religious centrality of Mecca, those are easier to imagine counterfactually. But the oil was in the ground, and a sufficiently advanced technology base would detect it. So Egypt was always likely to feel the economic pull of wealthier nation-states in the region.
Grateful to have had the opportunity to come across this today. I was just discussing with my fiancé how we, at least Americans, tend to have this view that progress is linear and always moving forward. But in reality, a closer look at history shows us that this is not the case, and thus we should not remain so silent and passive in the face of eroding rights, regulations, policies, and norms that we are experiencing.
Every time I read about culture and history, I am reminded by how restrictive, limited, and at times wrong my k-12 history education was. If our general education had more lessons like this, I wonder how different our society would be. Would we be more civically engaged? How would people respond to attempts to have more religious influence/involvement in government? Would we be able to recognize and stop the rise strong-man/authoritarian types? Would we respond any differently to marketing, advertisements, or propaganda?
There is so much knowledge and potential to have and maintain better societies, but we continue to struggle with many of the same issues that have plagued those before us.
It would kind of funny if Tesla and BYD do more for the rights of Muslim women than any of the pro feminist NGOs of the last twenty years.
On a side note wasn't there also a conservative backlash in relatively more affluent Muslim countries like Malaysia in the 1980s.
What is BYD?
Chinese car manufacturer. World's first or second largest EV producers
Wow. This is fascinating. I think a key way these countries suppress dissent is by arguing things were never different, you’ve disproved this. Was the modernisation entirely driven by Western influence or other factors?
Vesta is a roman goddess, not greek.
Under Nasser Egypt pursued Arab socialism not westernization. Between his coup and the Yom Kippur War Egypt was friendly with the Soviet Union and the Eastern block. That period was the peak of egyptian women rights. The return to islamic mores started after Egypt became close with the US, a major recipient of military aid and signed the Camp David Agreement with Israel. That's not a coincidence. American foreign policy has supported islamism from the Cold War to the Syrian Civil War.
Sans the politics, nice post and the picture timeline and some of the narrative interesting.
As an aside though, I found this a little incredulous though I get it's from another source "53% of Egyptian men think a woman may deserve to be beaten". Blows my mind it's so low, I'd wager in absolute terms 100% of men in any culture sans absolute pacifists can fathom some scenario where a woman may deserve to be beaten. Maybe she's molesting her child. Maybe she's attempting to assault her husband.
I mean generally all men can fathom a scenario where the usage of violence against someone to prevent further harm or as corporal punishment is warranted. The question itself is bad TBH. It's also quite telling they didn't ask the inverse about men getting beaten given the prevalence, even in Egypt, of female initiated violence against family members including their husbands.
This is a great thread. And beuatiful images and Ads that you unearth.
I just want to take issue with the underlying assumption throughout that female nudity or acceptance of female nudity in art is somehow a proxy for the condition of women (level of equality or lack thereof, or level of patriarchy etc).
It is not a direct proxy for female liberation and equality and should not be portrayed as one. You can have female nudity with no equality and vice versa
Chad chad chad chad
Huge Egyptian W
I don't see how the economic or military defeat stories work. The military defeat was in 1967 --- well before the 1980s (the 1973 war was seen as a victory). And the economy was also at its worst in the 1960s - the Nasser socialist years in which women liberation was at its 20th century peak. The years from 1980 to the financial crisis, when elite society became much more conservative, were economically much better, with consistent growth in GDP per capita.
> Additionally, there is no literature written by women from late Medieval Cairo, Damascus or Jerusalem in the Mamluk period (1250-1517).
Was there literature written by Egyptian women before then?
> Egyptian women learning how to resist a rifle
The link has "use a rifle", with "resist" being applied to the invading troops.
> This 1959 Egyptian advert for pain-killer features a green-eyed blonde. This aesthetic signals aspirational Westernisation.
Could they have simply copied the image from another country, and changed the text? I'm not familiar with the "Rivo" brand name, but it doesn't sound like a word from a semitic language like Arabic. The text showing that name is even in the Latin alphabet, in contrast to the script of the rest of the ad.
> Companions marketed
That should be "Companies marketed".
The Galal Amin quote attributes the rise of Islamism to falling oil prices and a lack of work opportunities in the Gulf. Overall you're suggesting the opposite cause of rising religious influence & seclusion. Yes, opposite cause can have the same effect depending on other factors, but how in this case?
Well, it's both (1) Egypt's economic mismanagement; (2) Saudi's comparative wealth.
The common explanation I've heard is the failure of Arab secular nationalism. Nasser was a hero to Arabs when he was victorious in the Suez Crisis. His intervention in North Yemen's civil war and his defeat by Israel in the Six Day War reduced his standing.
I'm not sure that this quantity of data is 'big' in the way that data is big in the large-scale work of (say) physicists.
A minor point: Saudi Arabia's oil, and the oil wealth of the other hydrocarbon states in the region, is a matter of geography, which is hardly luck—it's less contingent than many of the other factors discussed here. The presence of the particular state that's there, and the religious centrality of Mecca, those are easier to imagine counterfactually. But the oil was in the ground, and a sufficiently advanced technology base would detect it. So Egypt was always likely to feel the economic pull of wealthier nation-states in the region.
These comments are both incorrect.
Google arts and culture has 200,000 images from the MET alone. That is big data.
Further, it’s a geographical coincidence that oil is in the gulf. That was not inevitable.