Feminism

 A History of Arab Feminism (a 2015 documentary)

A liberal perspective.

A whole essay could be written as a critique of the documentary. Here some of my thoughts on it:

Very informative, although I disagree with the approach and the omissions. “Feminism” is not one. But it is obvious in this documentary that “liberal” feminism, i.e. the feminism of the “free market” Western capitalism, is the reference and criteria. “Liberal feminism” includes sexualisation of the body and commodification of women, exploitation of women as cheap labour, although that has a contradictory aspect, for it helps women join the labour force and gain some rights.

It is also obvious in the documentary that the “liberation” of Tunisian women did originally and mostly came from above, not through a radical movement. But the documentary wanted to say that it came through both.

The documentary has some inaccuracies in the English translation. Example: تونس دولة مدنية must be translated “Tunisia is a civic state,” not “a secular state. 

Arguing that “modernity” failed or stalled in the Arab country as a whole because of the 1967 war, as Ghassan Salamé stated, is inaccurate from a socio-economic perspective. It is the failure of state capitalism that had been initiated by the revolutions of the 1950s. A state capitalism that was unable to industrialise and therefore, as it happened in the West, to make all men and women free labourers. That failure also boosted the Islamist movements. Again, if Western modernity is our reference then one should interconnect women’s movement with the development of capitalism in the Western countries. One cannot speak of capitalist modernity outside the capitalist socio-economic formation.

Today, with the exception of the Gulf countries, the informal sector of the economy is so large compared with the advanced capitalist countries. From a capitalist perspective, the middle classes’ bourgeois ‘way of life’ in these countries has not acquired the size and the power to affect the majority. It is in fact half bourgeois and the individual’s character is full of contradictions in matters of sexuality, religion, gender equality, etc.  Within the middle class, there is a number of section of conservatives. 

The role of the middle class is omitted. Let’s not forget that in Egypt it is the same class that led the uprising and it was the same one, or sections of it, that supported the military coup.

Another omission is that the structures of the regimes have been installed or supported by Western regimes to maintain dictatorial status quo. Before that Western powers had supported Islamist movements to counter Arab nationalist regimes, especially those regimes that nationalised some sectors of the economy or aligned themselves with Moscow. Hypocrisy and geopolitical interests should be highlight and a bigger context should be stressed. After all, we see today the oppression of women in the so-called secular France or in the 40% gender pay gap in the HSBC bank in England, or in the treatment of refugees women, etc.