Women, Revolution, Politics and Power
Because current Arab revolutions are not led by a single party with a formal structure and ideology, the post-revolutionary struggle for power is often surprising, incomprehensible and nebulous.
Women, Revolution, Politics and Power
by Dalal al-Bizri – Gunda Werner Institute
Revolution is a broad church; it is a warm embrace, welcoming, lavish; it is a time of rapture, hope and dreams; it is the festival, the ‘carnival’ as some call it. So many of those who take part in it claim to be happy, to have been reborn, risen again from death. So many have wept for joy.
Revolution is an epic of beatification. Its participants and sympathisers imagine that their lives will be better after it has won out and tyranny has fallen— they will be able to succeed, to build, to achieve—for revolution is like an amnesty, like the month of Haram when no blood may be shed. It is a state of pure solidarity in which those who yesterday were strangers, of every stripe and type and creed, sing in harmony, their sensitivities, the jealousies and resentments that divided them, vanished in the wind. It is an unprecedented state that gives birth to unprecedented: martyrdom and sacrifice, the rise to prominence of those who were once alienated from politics, and at their head, women.
Before the current Arab revolutions women had little to do with politics. Those who reached positions of official power were possessed of a corrupt and authoritarian mentality or were taken by the superficial appeal of their offices. In civil society they were a little more fortunate, but in society at large women were allowed no political say or occupation. Roles were strictly apportioned along gender lines, a deficiency exacerbated by the comatose state of pre-revolutionary society in which all avenues for advancement remained shut off.
When the revolutions began, women took to the stage in unprecedented numbers. They entered politics through the demonstrations, the revolutionary activity par excellence, and though their presence and visibility in these positions varied considerably it was nonetheless genuine and undeniable. The revolutions are neither nationalistic nor class-based, but democratic, and as one of their guiding principles is the championing of human rights, it is only logical that women’s rights should be elevated with them. Women, after all, are humans, too.
This positive aspect of the revolution was not a consciously formulated position but was implicit in it. No less implicit was the revolution’s central aim— bringing down tyranny—and any attempt to highlight secondary aims, such as women’s rights was seen as a threat to the movement’s objectives. Yet this more negative corollary did not prevent women taking part with all the fervour of those who believe that they have been promised a greater role in a matter that is as important for them as it is for men, i.e.: the matter of their interest and engagement in the political life and issues of the countries where they live. Revolution is thus something that is by its very nature political and concerns everybody: it welcomes women’s participation.
Post-revolution, politics cedes to issues of power. Immediately that the central demand of the revolution has been granted the political arena shrinks and the battle for control begins. The agency of the individual is reduced to its lowest ebb. The framework within which a new legitimacy will be forged is yet to take shape and the movement for change loses its appeal. Between two worlds, it is a time in which the most organised assume control rather than the most dedicated or effective. And as long as the political struggle continues, so it remains: the preserve of the most organized and the best equipped to wield power.
If the majority of men are excluded by this process, then all of the women certainly are. Women have no experience of organised politics or of exercising power. In our current post-revolutionary, or ‘transitional’ state, the public mood changes. The Egyptian author Ezzedine Choukry Fishere describes Midan Tahrir a week after Mubarak’s resignation:
“It’s strange… The square is full of food containers and plastic bags. The youths who bustled about carrying rubbish bags have vanished. The demonstrators, with their open hearts, their organization, their music, their artistic exuberance and their clever, playful sings, have disappeared and in their place jostling crowds of unfeeling louts…’ (New Carmel Magazine, Summer 2011, p.155)
In the days that followed the mood will become more hostile. Women are not only excluded from politics, but also subjected to extreme violence, instances of which are documented by women’s and rights groups.
It’s the Algeria Syndrome. During Algeria’s revolutionary war in the late Fifties and early Sixties of the last century, Algeria’s women stood side by side with men, suffering hardship and making sacrifices. As soon as the revolution achieved its purpose, these women were sent home, gradually oppressed and marginalized and subjected to every kind of violence and discrimination. The syndrome this gave rise to is reflected in the country’s female revolutionary literature: the experience may have been a negative one, but the women accepted it.
Yet there is something else, as well. Because current Arab revolutions are not led by a single party with a formal structure and ideology, the post-revolutionary struggle for power is often surprising, incomprehensible and nebulous. The decreasing participation of women in politics, or the discrimination against them, does not manifest itself in familiar, traditional ways, though the two expressions of bigotry are linked. It takes time to understand the motives and mechanisms that lie behind this new form of bigotry. In both Tunisia and Egypt, women’s demonstrations have come under attack from individuals or small aggressive groups who scream in their faces for them to go home or get back to the kitchen, their ‘natural place’. We should also mention the wide range of activities through which Salafis express their views and positions on women. …more
