Alternative Egyptian feminist journalism: the case of Wlaha Wogoh Okhra

Abstract

This paper deals with the development of Egyptian feminist media in relation to the 2011 Revolution. The study is limited, however, to a discussion of one form of feminist alternative media as represented by the Egyptian online platform Wlaha Wogoh Okhra launched in March 2013. This study seeks to answer a two-fold central question: How does Wlaha Wogoh Okhra express a feminist position, and how does it present an extension of Egyptian feminist journalism? In an attempt to answer this question, the paper is divided, in addition to the introduction and conclusion, into four main parts dealing with feminism, feminist journalism, as well as offering a description and content analysis of Wlaha Wogoh Okhra as an example of Egyptian feminist journalism. The paper is structured around an overview of the history of Egyptian women’s journalism, followed by an analysis of Wlaha Wogoh Okhra as a case-study. The paper argues that, as a feminist magazine, Wlaha Wogoh Okhra marks a stage in the history of Egyptian feminist journalism, which, through its feminist content and innovative form, emerges as an alternative model that not only establishes a feminist journalistic continuum, but also creates indirect alliances among women across time and place.

Keywords:

• alternative media
• Egypt
• feminism
• journalism
• 2011 Revolution

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Notes

1 To visit the website of the electronic platform of Wlaha Wogoh Okhra (She Has Other Faces), go to: https://wlahawogohokhra.com/

2 All translations from Arabic into English are carried out by the author of this paper. For more, check (https://wlahawogohokhra.com//من-نحن)

3 For a historical overview, see for example: Hala Kamal, “A Century of Egyptian Women’s Demands: The Four Waves of the Egyptian Feminist Movement.”

4 I am using the IJMES Transliteration System for Arabic: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/information/author-resources/ijmes-translation-and-transliteration-guide

5 “The Personal Is Political” goes back to Carol Hanische’s article published under this title in 1969, and was the motto of the student and feminist movement of the 1960s in the United States of America.

6 Media Report to Women is a publication which started in 1972 as a newsletter, and has developed along the years into a quarterly journal concerned with “providing information on all types of media — television, cable, film, radio, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, the Internet and other emerging media — and the way in which they depict women and issues of interest to women” (http://www.communication-research.org/media-report-to-women/).

7 The Women Institute for the Freedom of the Press is a non-government organization, founded in 1972, and is concerned with “research, education and publishing organization” whose mission is “to increase communication among women and reach the public with our experience, perspectives, and opinions” (http://www.wifp.org/about/mission/).

8 “The Three Principles of Feminist Journalism”, The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (http://www.wifp.org/philosophy/3-principles-of-feminist-journalism/).

9 I am concerned here with publications in Arabic, which addressed a wider and more traditional readership than the ones published in foreign languages.

10 For a biography of Doria Shafik, see: Cynthia Nelson, Doria Shafik: Egyptian Feminist: A Woman Apart (1996).

11 For more about women in the Egyptian constitution, see: Hala Kamal, “Inserting Women’s Rights in the Egyptian Constitution.”

12 For more on Egyptian women’s blogs in the past two decades, see for example: Hoda Elsadda, “Arab Women Bloggers: The Emergence of Literary Counterpublics” (2010) and Teresa Pepe, Blogging from Egypt (2019).

13 For more about these organisations, visit: The New Woman Research Foundation (http://nwrcegypt.org/en/) The Women and Memory Forum (http://www.wmf.org.eg/en/) and Nazra for Feminist Studies (https://nazra.org/en).

14 Although it is not fully developed in its English version, some information is available in the following link: (https://wlahawogohokhra.com/).

15 https://wlahawogohokhra.com//من-نحن

16 The Best of Times (2004) at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419422/

17 Iraqi communist and feminist, Naziha al-Dailami, is given as an example of the first Arab woman to be appointed minister in Iraq in 1959. She is compared to Aleksandra Kolontai, the first Russian activist to become minister in the Lenin’s Bolshevik government in 1917. The other non-Egyptian and non-Arab woman pioneer included in the series is Marie Curie, presented as the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize – not once but twice.

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Notes on contributors

Hala Kamal

Hala Kamal is a Professor of Gender Studies at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. She studied in the University of Leeds (UK), Smith College (USA) and Cairo University (Egypt). Her research interests and publications, in both Arabic and English, are in the areas of feminist literary criticism, autobiography theory, and the history of the Egyptian feminist movement. Her latest publications include “Scholactivism: Feminist Translation as Knowledge Production for Social Change”, Bounded Knowledge, ed. Daniele Cantini (American University in Cairo Press 2021); “Virginia Woolf in Arabic”, The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Global Literature, ed. Jeanne Dubino et al. (Edinburgh University Press 2021); The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender, eds. Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal. (Routledge 2020); “Towards Arab Feminist Literary Criticism: Western Frameworks and Arab Paradigms” in Kobieta w Oczach Kobiet: Kobiece (Auto)Narracje w Perspektywie Transkulturowej [Women in Women’s Eyes: Women’s (Auto)Narrations from a Transcultural Perspective], ed. Joanna Frużyńska. Warsaw University Press 2019); “A Century of Egyptian Women’s Demands: The Four Waves of the Egyptian Feminist Movement", Gender and Race Matter: Global Perspectives on Being a Woman, (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 21), ed. Shaminder Takhar (Emerald Publishing 2016).