Egypt

There was also a similar changing of roles of women in another place in the Ottoman Empire- Egypt. Although the trend of migration out of Egypt runs for over a century, the impact it has left on the family and on women’s roles have remained the same. As authors Sajeda Amin and Nagah H. al-Bassusi write in their work Education, Wage Work, and Marriage: Perspectives of Egyptian Working Women, “International migration influenced a reevaluation of household structure and family, and may have fostered a degree of independence among women as large numbers of women were left behind to manage households” (1290). This quote shows how immigration changed women’s roles in Egypt just like in Mount Lebanon, even though they were very different areas in the Ottoman Empire.

In Egypt, there were a number of feminist organizations and movements. According to Rabab el-Mahdi, “Egypt saw the budding of an organized feminist movement as early as the 1920s with the formation of the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1923” (382). This shows that the Egyptian women’s rights movements were going on about the same time as their counterparts in the United States. However, this does not necessarily mean that they were not inspired by previous Western movements. Unlike the Western movement, particularly American, the Egyptian feminist movement was tied to religion. A el-Mahdi continues to say, “…there is currently no significant non-religious women’s movement in Egypt” (382). Although this refers  to current day feminist movements in Egypts, it is a reflection of the women’s rights movement in Egypt as a whole over time. Central to the women’s movement was something called the “woman’s question”. This “woman’s question” referred in actuality to a number of questions about a woman’s role and her life- does she need love in a marriage, what roles does motherhood assign, and what does love involve- just to name a few. Although these may not seem like radical ideas or questions to the modern reader, it was to Ottoman citizens of both sexes at the time. This “woman’s question” also influence. This is shown by Ottoman female author Halide Edip, whose “… early period, which focus on significant gender-related themes such as love, marriage, motherhood, and divorce- themes that in lae Ottoman culture comprised the “woman’s question”- as part of a social transformation project” (Basci 146).