Transnational feminist solidarity and lessons from the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square

Abstract

Transnational feminist solidarity can be and has been very effective at bringing about social change in local and regional contexts. Transnational feminist activists, however, must be attentive to cultural differences in the means and methods of protest employed to challenge unjust or oppressive social and political conditions. In this article, I offer a discussion of some of the key theoretical elements of a transnational feminist solidarity. I then use the protests in Tahrir Square in 2011 to problematize transnational feminist solidarity. This exercise reveals both the power of transnational alliances and some of the obstacles – cultural, political, and gender based – that must be addressed by feminist transnational solidarity efforts.

Keywords:

• feminism
• transnational feminist solidarity
• Egypt
• protest
• solidarity
• sexual violence

Notes

1. This notion of social responsibility for the well-being of members may also be seen in early Egyptian feminist discussions of women’s work. Beth Baron discusses the different attitude toward women working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Egypt. She notes that if women had to work outside the home for wages, then the family and state had failed to meet their responsibilities (Baron 1994, 147). Stating this differently, it means that a robust social solidarity would ensure that a Muslim woman could devote her time to her family because she had the support of her extended family and the state. Although some Western feminists might consider this a form of relegating women to the family, Baron reports that many Egyptian feminists considered it as endowing domestic work with significant status and social meaning.

2. Ferguson (2009) and Gould (2009) hold that solidarity is a form of shared social empathy which could be seen as thickening the bonds of political solidarity as Weir has articulated it or instead as a modification on social solidarity.

3. Weir (2013) offers an interesting analysis of the Islamic Piety movement that brings this blurring to light.

4. Arab Women’s Solidarity Association. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Org_Institutes/Arab_Women_19,657.html

5. Robin Wright offers a lively journalistic account of the events on that day which I am grossly oversimplifying here. See Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, pp. 21–26.

6. Egyptians are predominantly Muslim. For more on the history of feminism in Islam generally, see Wadud (1999, 2006) and DeLong-Bas (2014a).

7. Cobblestones which a few of the protesters did in fact use as weapons.

8. See also Naber (2011, 12). She lists the many ways women participated in the work of the revolution and early transition, including patrolling the streets, mobilizing demonstrators, and organizing professional services.

9. During the 18-day revolution, in contrast, there was very little sexual violence, although CBS correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted by a gang on the day Mubarak stepped down.

10. The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at Georgetown University on 19 December 2011 announcing the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security (2011), noted that ‘women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago. And this is part of a deeply troubling pattern’. ‘Women protesters have been rounded up and subjected to horrific abuse’, she continued. ‘Journalists have been sexually assaulted. And now, women are being attacked, stripped and beaten in the streets. This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people’ (Clinton 2011). The sexual violence might be interpreted as a threat to all women, indicating that they ought to resume their proper place in the home and away from politics. Clinton rued the fact that women were being ‘shut out of decision-making in the transition’.

11. Some of the problems and prospects of global political solidarity are discussed in Scholz (2008, chap. 7).