Women in Egyptian society
2.1 The early champions of the women’s liberation movement
The beginning of the struggle of Egypt’s women for their emancipation
may be dated back to the following incident. In 1798, during Napoleon’s
conquest of Egypt, General Minou, the commander of the French troops,
married an Egyptian after converting to Islam. He treated her very politely
in public, according to French etiquette. This persuaded a group of other
Egyptian women who lived in seclusion in their harems to send a petition to
the ‘Great Sultan’ Napoleon, asking him to talk to their husbands and demand
that they be treated similarly. As the French reports have it, many Egyptian
women were later to suffer seriously for this audacity, after the French troops
had left the country.