The opening scene of Egypt as a Woman describes the official unveiling of the sculpture Nahdat Misr, or "The Awakening of Egypt," inspired by the 1919 revolution in which diverse groups mobilized to protest the British and call for independence. The enormous figure depicts a peasant woman lifting her faceveil, her arm resting on a sphinx with raised forelegs. The image recalls Egypt's glorious pharaonic past, while symbolizing its "unveiling" or modern awakening. Despite the principal role of a woman in the sculpture, however, women were barred from attending the grand ceremony that unveiled the statue in 1928. Although women were central to the construction of the nation's image, their actual agency and activism were suppressed and marginalized. [End Page 254]
This scene illustrates the complex yet undeniable role of gender in nationalism and the state, the main theme of the two books reviewed here. In Women and Politics in Iran, gender and women's sexuality were critical to defining and redefining the priorities of the state from one regime to another. In Egypt as a Woman, gendered images held central roles in nationalist movements and the building of a modern Egypt. While in both cases political actors used gendered symbols to gain legitimacy, the authors argue that women's actual activism nevertheless contributed significantly to their country's social movements. Together, the books portray a multifaceted relationship between gender and the state, serving as an important warning against simplistic notions of women as either victims or heroines.
In Egypt as a Woman, Beth Baron examines the time period spanning the creation of the modern Egyptian state in the nineteenth century up to the political activism of the 1940s, exploring the relationship between the gendered images depicting the country and the political actions of women. Women played a key role within Egyptian nationalist movements, yet their activism was suppressed even as simplistic female images were elevated as national symbols. Baron's methodology includes a sociopolitical examination of literary and visual sources and draws from scholarship on collective memory and nationalist narratives, Egyptian nationalism, and women's movements. Focused on a time when "elites dominated nationalist politics" (3), the book concentrates primarily on the activities of elite women. Images of many of the nationalist cartoons, photographs, and other visuals that Baron examines are sprinkled throughout the book, providing a helpful visual reference to the text.
In Women and Politics in Iran, Hamideh Sedghi uses a gender lens to comprehensively examine Iran's transition through three distinct political and economic phases: The Qajar dynasty, Pahlavi dynasty, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In each phase, the state exploited gender and women's roles for political support, while women's activism simultaneously played a significant role in state-building. Focusing in particular on the impact of economic development and patriarchy, Sedghi is influenced by studies on gender and development, including the gendered division of labor and impacts of modernization and globalization. She also draws from studies on gender in the Middle East, although with limitations, noting that "despite women's centrality analytically and politically, Iranian Studies generally ignored them until recently" (14). Her methodology includes field research and interviews conducted over several years, as well as both English and Farsi secondary sources such as legal documents and quantitative studies that have never before been used for a study on gender in Iran. Her primary focus is urban woman, noting that a separate study on rural woman is needed.
According to Baron, "standard accounts of Egyptian nationalism paid little attention to women activists" (4). In contrast, her analysis finds that examining gender and women's roles is crucial to understanding national identities. Chapter [End Page 255] I begins by examining the changing roles of gender, ethnicity, and family in nineteenth-century Egypt. As the country transformed from its Ottoman roots to its desire for independence, the concept of family also transformed from ethnically heterogeneous harems to homogenous nuclear families. Intertwined with a growing sentiment of national honor, the new image of a united Egyptian family aimed to stand in the face of occupation and humiliation by foreign forces. Therefore, when a number of Egyptian women villagers were raped by British soldiers, as described in chapter 2, the incident became the rape of "our women" and, metaphorically, the "rape of the nation" (47-49), and the national family honor was disgraced. Nationalists used the incident to further mobilize public support for a united fight against the dishonorable British occupation.
Chapters 3 and 4 examine nationalist iconography, such as photographs and political cartoons. Baron finds that Egypt took a female form from the 1870s onward, although the characteristics of the images changed alongside of the shifting nationalist agenda. Until the 1920s, Egypt was often depicted as a pharaonic queen in order to tap into the sense of shared ancient heritage and strengthen a foundation among a disparate people. Female images were veiled, reflecting the still-nascent debate on veiling. Over the years, as nationalists faced different threats, the pharaonic image was replaced by a peasant woman, who was seen as culturally authentic and symbolic of the rural, agrarian roots of the emerging elite and nationalist base. This Egyptian woman, increasingly modern, soon shed her veil to symbolize a new, independent Egypt. Baron argues that a female Egypt tapped "notions of honor and instill[ed] into male viewers the sense that they had a duty to support, protect, and defend" their nation (78).
In contrast to 1940s Egypt, the national image of post-revolutionary Iran was of a pious, veiled woman who was an ardent supporter of her Islamic nation. According to Sedghi, the state's treatment of veiling, unveiling, and reveiling has been a key policy tool in its quest for political power and its evolving national image. Sedghi finds that at each point of significant political transition, "the depiction of women's bodies as uncovered or masked, exposed or concealed, and their designation as 'Western' or 'Islamic' contribute to a specific form of national identity" (277). Part 1 of Women and Politics in Iran describes how women were "primarily confined to the household and reproduction" during the Qajar dynasty (26). Yet, in the first half of the twentieth century, as described in part 2, their lives changed drastically. Reza Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty sought to transform Iran from traditional and agrarian to a modern, secular nation with a strong capitalist economy. Women's emancipation became one of Reza Shah's key weapons against the religious clerics, who traditionally carried significant authority over gender and family relations, and whom he turned against in order to further consolidate his power. In 1936, mandatory unveiling became an official state policy; often applied forcefully, it was resented by women throughout Iran, who considered sudden unveiling humiliating and sinful. [End Page 256]
Reza Shah's son, Mohammed Reza, took over rule of Iran during World War II and further prioritized gendered policies as a tool in steering Iran toward a path of modernization and development. Although he continued to regard women's primary roles as in the home, he encouraged them to take an additional public role to further support Iran's growing economy. As a result, despite a continued discriminatory gender division of labor in both the formal and informal economies, Sedghi finds that women eventually experienced a more prominent profile in various economic sectors, which would later help fuel their activism.
In part 3, veiling again took center stage during the 1979 Islamic revolution. In their attempt to Islamize Iran and promote anti-westernization, the new ruling clergy exploited gendered symbols and policies to consolidate their power and regain the legitimacy they lost under the shahs. Control over women's bodies and sexuality through forced veiling and laws that severely restrained women's rights played a dominant role in the Islamic regime's attempts to build a new Muslim nation.
In both Egypt and Iran, political actors often co-opted gendered images and women's roles to push their own agendas. Yet, according to both Baron and Sedghi, this did not prevent women's activism from making a significant impact on the state and its sense of nationalism. In fact, both authors identify the first public emergence of women's political activism alongside nationalist movements. As movements emerged that demanded rights and freedoms for the people, women took on key roles and used their new platforms to call for their own rights and freedoms.
Sedghi identifies the counterpart to the politics of veiling in Iran as the "the politics of resistance" (246). As each political and economic phase of the country shifted the stance on veiling and women's rights, women's activism took on new forms to respond and resist at each turn, continuously contesting the system of gender asymmetry. Part 1 identifies the Constitutional Revolution of the early 1900s as the first public emergence of women's political mobilization, in which large numbers of women participated in the various protests against foreign control over Iran's oil and economy. From their new public positions, they called for women's education, created women's organizations, and published influential journals that challenged traditional assumptions about women's rights and roles. In the 1930s, however, independent women's movements disappeared, as state-sponsored women's organizations emerged and attempted to consolidate and steer activism toward state priorities. By the end of World War II, the years of repression in Iran had dampened what Sedghi calls an "incipient Iranian feminism" (54). Yet the modernization policies that defined the following decades changed the environment for women's activism again, as women secured new economic and political roles and platforms for action.
By the time of the 1979 revolution described in part 3, women's activism was central to the country's politics. Their participation in the activities leading to the revolution—which Sedghi explains included women from various [End Page 257] religious beliefs, classes, and political leanings—was critical to the revolution's legitimacy. After the shah's government was toppled, however, demands for gender equality were quickly cast aside for other concerns. It is within this context that Iranian women's movements work today, shaped over the years by shifts and turns in the political priorities of different state actors. In chapter 8, Sedghi categorizes different contemporary groups of women and their political priorities vis-à-vis the state, including revolutionaries, rebels, reformers, devout women, and trespassers. Inclusive of different religious affiliations, professions, and political persuasions, each group provides different responses to the state and its gendered policies.
Nationalist iconography featured women as the representation of a new Egypt, yet they did little to demonstrate women's roles as actual agents of change. Baron challenges this omission of women's activism by examining some of the leading elite women's rights activists of the early 1900s in part 2 of Egypt as a Woman. Included are those women whose images were used by nationalists to symbolize the movement, even as their actions were downplayed. Similar to the case of Iran, Baron identifies the emergence of Egyptian women's activism alongside of the nationalist movements and anticolonial activities. Chapter 5 examines the "Ladies Demonstrations" of 1919, which demanded independence and delivered petitions to foreign legations. They were led primarily by elite women, yet they claimed to speak for the entire "female half of the political community" (111). According to Baron, these demonstrations became an important part of the collective national memory. Interestingly, however, their remembrance differs along gendered lines: while male accounts often portray the demonstrations as symbolic, noting, for instance, that "even the women" were against the British (116), female accounts are more descriptive and consider the demonstrations as important contributions to the nationalist cause.
Baron also examines the activities of the Women's Wafd, part of the Wafd political party that was largely behind the nationalist movement; Labiba Ahmad, who "spearheaded a movement that conceptualized women's rights in Islamic terms" (189); and Safiyya Zaghlul, wife of the nationalist leader Sa'd Zaghlul. Known as the "Mother of the Egyptians," Zaghlul served as a powerful maternal symbol—Baron notes that no woman appeared in more public photos at that time—yet historians of Egyptian nationalism often ignore her actual role in the movement, preferring to focus on male figures with institutionalized sources of power. Yet, Baron finds that Zaghlul manipulated the very maternal symbolism with which she was defined in order to play a central role in politics, even causing British officials to keep a thick dossier on her activities. Carefully staged photographs depicted her as a powerful motherly figure, sometimes surrounded by men and women flocking to her side. With the legitimacy her image lent her, she took on a previously unmatched position of political power as a woman, ultimately enabling other women to take on more public political roles. Baron argues that scholars must pay greater attention to such alternative [End Page 258] political cultures developed by women; in doing so, "a dynamic picture emerges as women alternated between and among partisan, feminist, Islamist, social and other politics in the name of nation-building" (9).
Similarly, Sedghi argues that the various forms of activism by women in contemporary Iran challenge Orientalist notions that cast Muslim women as victims, especially veiled women. Specifically, she points to the 1997 presidential victory of a reformist, Mohammad Khatami, which was largely attributed to women. Women's overwhelming participation and leadership in this instance, as well as numerous other forms of resistance that are not as visible, rejects two-dimensional, homogenous depictions of women within the Islamic republic.
Baron and Sedghi provide critical examinations of the gendered imagery and policies that aimed to deny women's roles as agents of social change, instead of taking the images and policies as unproblematic. In doing so, the authors help reveal the varied forms of women's resistance and activism at key moments in their countries' histories, including their active roles in constraining and modifying state behavior. As a result, both books make significant contributions to the small yet growing body of literature on the relationship between gender and the state, as well as on nationalism, social movements, women's history, and feminist activism. To be sure, by focusing only on elite women in Egypt and urban women in Iran, they can provide only a partial account of the role of gender and women's activism in both cases. Still, they demonstrate that a gender perspective is necessary to better understand nationalism and the state; in fact, without a gender lens, such studies are incomplete and misleading. Both books can serve as important sources for classes on women's studies, regional studies, international relations, and comparative political studies. Scholars of the nation-state and social movements would also do well to listen to the messages of these books and apply a gender lens to strengthen their own research. [End Page 259]