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Doria Shafik, Egyptian Feminist: A Woman Apart, by Cynthia Nelson. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. xxvi + 284 pages. Notes to p. 305. Bibl. to p. 310. Index to p. 322. $49.95.
The Mobilization of Muslim Women in Egypt, by Ghada Hashem Talhami. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. xii + 146 pages. Notes to p. 155. Bibl. to p. 161. Index to p. 177. $39.95.
The women of Egypt have earned a reputation throughout history as strong and independent participants in their society, willing to fight to maintain and/or better their position. This was true as early as Pharaonic times, as Barbara Lesko demonstrates in Women of Ancient Egypt. Recent works have dealt with women in Islam (Leila Ahmed's Women and Gender in Islam); with women and the law (Enid Hill's Mahkama); women in parliament (Earl Sullivan's Women in Egyptian Public Life; women in kin groups (Andrea Rugh's Family in Contemporary Egypt); women in economics (Evelyn Early's Baladi Women of Cairo); and women in the current religious revival (Arlene McLeod's Accommodating Protest). Early feminist organizations are covered by Margot Badran in Feminists, Islam and Nation.1
Given this wealth of published material on Egyptian women, one might wonder, at first glance, what more the two books under review have to contribute to the subject. Doria Shafik, Egyptian Feminist, by Cynthia Nelson, is a biography of a remarkable, upper-class woman who was a member of Huda Sha`rawi's Feminist Union. Ghada Hashem Talhami's The Mobilization of Muslim Women in Egypt examines, according to the dust-jacket blurb, "the deliberate intensification of Islamic identity and its ramifications both for Muslim women and for Egypt's Coptic Christian minority." A perusal of these works reminds the reader that first impressions are often wrong, for both books do contribute substantively to the existing literature. Nelson and Talhami both tell us much about the changing attitudes and positions of Egyptian women and the differences among them. One small example: Doria Shafik was a Muslim but certainly did not problematize her "Muslim identity" in the ways current Egyptian women are shown to do by Talhami.
Nelson's carefully, almost lovingly, detailed biography of Doria Shafik is based on private papers given to the author by Shafik's daughter. It is a portrait of what the...