The concept of the liberation of women was indeed brought to Egypt from
outside. Before the turn of the twentieth century awareness had been growing
among women of the educated classes that theirs was an underprivileged role
and that they did not receive an equal share of the blessings of modernity,
since their own lives were mostly confined to the domestic sphere. They
raised the issue of equal education for girls at all levels and formed secular
philanthropic societies to help poor women and children. Gradually the first
Egyptian women activists entered the public sphere and raised their voices,
legitimizing their demands within the nationalist movement. However, when
in October 1999 numerous distinguished guests from Egypt and abroad con-
vened in Cairo to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the ‘Arab Woman’s
Emancipation’ under the auspices of the country’s First Lady, it was not to
commemorate what the early defenders of women’s rights had achieved but
rather to commemorate the publication of a man’s work considered the most
important milestone on the way to women’s emancipation, the classic of
feminist literature The Liberation of Women by Qasim Amin (1863–1908). In
this book the author, who was a judge at the Supreme Court of Justice at
the time, offered a comprehensive concept of the emancipation of Egyptian
women. His ideas about the ‘New Woman’ were vehemently criticized by
some of his prominent contemporaries for potentially leading to immorality
and decadence in Egyptian society. When women took up the cause a few
years later, addressing the Egyptian Congress with a set of fairly modest
demands, these were refused by that all-male institution