Feminist Voices and the Regulation, Islamization and Quango-ization of Women's Activism in Mubarak's Egypt

This chapter examines the context in which diverse forms of women’s activisms thrive in Egypt today. It is a politically volatile context, in which political space expands and contracts in unpredictable ways. It is also a context in which women’s national machineries are making claims as the principle actors mediating between the international community and the state on gender matters, and between state and society.

It is also a context which has seen the increasing marginalisation of the voices of those who choose to deviate from the religious normative framework through which state and society engage, in particular on matters to do with gender and power. Yet in spite of the many political and social constraints, women are agitating and mobilising, in different ways and under different banners.