News Center - In 1922, Egypt gained independence from Britain and established the Egyptian kingdom.

Royal period

The family of Muhammad Ali Pasha had ruled modern Egypt since the declaration of independence, and Fuad I and then his son Faruq I ruled Egypt. The monarchy ended during the reign of Fuad II after the revolution of the free officers overthrew the rule of the family.

In 1923, the Constitution of Egypt honored the participation of women in the mass movement calling for the independence of the country, stipulated equality between men and women, and did not stipulate the deprivation of women from their political rights. In those years, the first women's assembly was established in Egypt and represented by the women's union that succeeded and could enactment of laws such as setting the age of marriage for girls at 16 and equality in education.

The male mentality did not accept that great openness to women, so they were governed by the political rights of women through the drafting of an electoral law that excludes women and their presence was dim in the deputation Party established in 1918.

The women’s union fought for many arguments; one of those pretexts was the presence of women without wearing a hijab, like what Huda Shaarawi did when she returned from the International Women’s Conference in Rome and removed her hijab when she arrived at the port of Alexandria. Egyptian women retained several advantages, the most important was the labor law that recognized women and provided for their protection.

During that period, the feminist activist Huda Shaarawi was one of the most powerful feminist figures on the Egyptian scene, and she was the pioneer of the Arab feminist movement. Huda took the women's liberation issue upon herself, and formed a women’s union, established schools for girls at her own expense, dispatched women's missions to European universities created an Al-Ahbisin magazine in both Arabic and French, and was interested in fine arts.

Al-mowaledat school was transformed into a school for nurses, and then it sent women’s missions to developed countries for specialization in medicine and nursing, the Sioufiyya School which was established by Khedive Ismail was transformed into a group of primary schools.

The first girls of the high school graduated in 1930, but those girls faced new obstacles to prevent them from enrolling in the university, so the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein stood beside them to complete their education at the university.

The number of girls who enrolled in university education was 13 students; eight of them were in the medical faculty, four in the faculty of culture, and one in the law faculty.

The female graduates were also fought at work by some men, who couldn't see a woman working as an employee in the offices; they were convinced that women’s place was in the home, but the women refused that, and finally, the graduate girls were appointed from the first batch in hospitals, schools, and the judiciary.

In that period, women’s associations were established, the first one was the New Woman’s Association, which was established before independence in 1919 to support girls in general, raise their educational and cultural level, and strengthen their skills in learning some professions such as sewing, embroidery, nursing, and others through the recruitment of female teachers from abroad.

In 1939, the Red Crescent Women Committee was established, and it had a great role in treating more than 150,000 displaced people from Alexandria when it was bombed during the Second World War, and another an important role was also in addressing the people of Al-Saed region when the recurrent fevers spread among them.

The period of monarchy ended with a very important event, which was the storming of female members of Bint El Nile, headed by Durya Shafiq the parliament building, to demand the participation of women, so that that parliament truly represented all segments of the Egyptian people.

The members of Bint El Nile mobilized hundreds of women and supporters of women's issues, and they wrote slogans on the banners affirming their demands for freedom, equality, election, and the protection of women, but those calls did not yield anything.

Nasserite rule

The war that broke out in 1948 between the Arabs and Israel produced great popular discontent in the Arab countries over the ruling authorities, in 1952 the royal constitution was abolished in Egypt, through the organization of the Free Officers, who were a number of army officers carried out a military coup against the monarchy.

The Arab Republic of Egypt was announced after a year and abolished the royal constitution, and the country started a transitional period for three years, one year later, a new era began for the Republic of Egypt to join the civilized countries, and thus began talking boldly about the rights of women in a constitution.

The period of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rule was articulated for all Egyptian people, the country took its true form as a sovereign state and got rid of the direct occupation and foreign guardianship, started a civil life, and drafted a new constitution for the country and formed civil and military institutions and departments, but the issue of granting women the right to vote in elections was a matter of great controversy between conservatives, libertarians, and feminists.

Hope began to grow up more real achievements towards women's rights after many demands not only for voting but also for many rights in society.

Although Gamal Abdel Nasser received the ruling under several slogans supporting women, he did not endorse the political rights of women to vote, after the strike for food by Derya Shafiq.

The constitution prepared in 1956 stipulated that women had equal rights with men in political rights, including voting and nomination, so the first woman entered parliament in 1957, and accordingly, the new government considered that the issue of women's rights was ended.

The National Action Charter stipulated that women should be considered as those who diminished rights in the Egyptian society and thus affirmed their equality with men in order to be able to participate in making life.

In 1962, the first female Minister of Social Affairs was appointed, she was Hikmat Abu Zed, and in 1957, Rawiya Attiya was appointed as the first female deputy in Parliament, and in 1970 a formed women's delegation represented Egyptian women to draft the International Women Convention.

A major and fundamental dispute arose between Jamal Abdel Nasser and the Muslim Brothers for several reasons, including the issue of the emancipation of women and the Brotherhood’s request that a compulsory hijab should be imposed in Egypt as happening in Iran.

The era of Anwar Sadat

After the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, Anwar Sadat received the rule and he made peace with the Muslim Brotherhoods, and a new constitution was also approved for the country.

No women were represented in the 80-member committee to draft the constitution, and that excluded women from the army, police, and judiciary because the committee mentioned the word men for each of those specializations and thus was linked to men without women.

The law was distinguished as the first to explicitly stipulate women in Article 43, which states, "The law regulates work for women and juveniles and the state is concerned with establishing organizations that facilitate women to reconcile work with their duties in the family."

 The Constitution preserved the principle of equal opportunities for all citizens and Article 11 affirms the equality of women with men in various fields, and women weren’t inconsistent with the provisions of Islamic Sharia.

In Egypt, the constitution stipulated that Egyptian women give the right to pass their nationality to their children according to what was stated in Article Six, “Nationality is a right for anyone born to an Egyptian father or an Egyptian mother, legal recognition of it and granting him official papers proving his personal data is a right guaranteed and regulated by law.”  But the law restricted granting citizenship with several conditions, which were if the father was unknown.

The signing of the CEDAW convention

During the era of Sadat, Egypt signed the Convention on the elimination of all forms of Discrimination against women known as CEDAW in 1980 and ratified it a year later with reservations on four articles, three of which were directly related to women's rights, the second article provides for the inclusion of the principle of equality in the constitution, including abolishing the criminal provisions that constitute discrimination against women, so the men couldn’t kill women under the pretext of honor if men kill women, they would face severe punishment.

It also reserved the third paragraph of the 9th  Article, which provides for granting citizenship, and Article 16, which gives women full equality with men in matters related to the family and marriage.

In general, the laws remained the same and there is a clear distinction between Egyptian men and women despite the signing of this agreement.

Tomorrow:  Violence - circumcision - harassment - revealing virginity - honor crimes