Papers by Hind Ahmed Zaki
American University in Cairo Press eBooks, 2012
How do women use courts within the context of paternity lawsuits? This study analyzes the challen... more How do women use courts within the context of paternity lawsuits? This study analyzes the challenges that the formal legal approach to empowering women faces once it is translated into everyday socio-legal experiences and court repertoires. It also seeks to trace the pathologies inherent in personal status law reform and normal legal practices in Egypt, attesting to the limitations of law as an agent of social change in the private domain of the family. It mainly sheds light on the difficulties of separating formal legal rules from informal social practices. It also explores the problem of paternity claims in Egypt. Adding to growing literature on the use of legal mobilization to advance gender equity, this study offers insights on the oftenneglected role of social norms in court experiences, often leading to unexpected consequences that sometimes defy the intended goals behind policies and legislation.
Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern law, 2010
Tunisia's Modern Woman: Nation-Building and State Feminism in the Global 1960s Amy Aisen Kallander (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021). Pp. 280. £75.00 hardback. ISBN: 9781108845045
International Journal of Middle East Studies
Sexual Violence in Public in the Middle East and North Africa
Routledge eBooks, Dec 14, 2022
Politics & Gender
Teaching gender politics has been an increasingly contentious topic in established democracies, w... more Teaching gender politics has been an increasingly contentious topic in established democracies, with instructors encountering a myriad of pedagogical, institutional, and ideological challenges (Butler 2021; Evans 2019).1 Challenges to teaching gender politics are exacerbated in nondemocratic contexts, where academic institutions operate under close regime scrutiny and surveillance, and where patterns of autocratic power structures are prevalent in society and often reproduced in the classroom. While extant studies have shed important light on some of the trends and issues associated with teaching gender politics in established democracies (Bayes 2012; Han and Heldman 2019; Lyle-Gonga 2013), our knowledge remains limited when it comes to teaching gender and politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in Western institutions as well as within the MENA region. Understanding these challenges is particularly relevant given that the MENA region is diverse and has long been “othere...
Social Protection in Egypt: Mitigating the Socio-Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Vulnerable Employment, 2021
In times of crises and emergencies, violence against women tends to increase. The outbreak of COV... more In times of crises and emergencies, violence against women tends to increase. The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in severe precautionary measures such as social isolation, physical distancing, staying at home, curfews and lockdowns, which brought "normal" life to a halt and created a temporary convergence between the public and the private. The pandemic has forced the global community to turn its gaze back to the private, and compelled them to pay attention to the old/new problem of gender-based violence, particularly, domestic violence that spiked during the pandemic. Against such a backdrop, and using a critical feminist lens that analyzes the historical socio-political roots of the problem, this paper revisits the national structures, mechanisms, strategies and policies that address gender-based violence in Egypt. Data for this paper was collected through various methods to measure and analyze domestic violence in Egypt. These included qualitative research tools such as expert interviews in addition to secondary data such as literature review on the policy problem, and a desk review of the official data, relevant laws, policies, and law enforcement practices related to domestic violence. This policy paper argues that while COVID-19 exacerbated a set of deeply-seated problems that have limited the efficacy of national policy interventions, it provided a rare opportunity for a comprehensive reassessment of the national structures of gender-based violence reporting, socio-legal interventions, and risk-mitigation. The paper further argues that while the current policies, institutions, laws and efforts have taken into consideration some of the particular challenges presented by COVID-19 in addressing domestic violence in Egypt, there remains room for more interventions that are sensitive to the root causes of the problem through a set of policy measures. The paper focuses on emergency services during COVID-19 through a close-up analysis of the efficacy of state-run shelters for survivors of domestic violence. Shelters continue to be globally recognized as one of the main tools for mitigating domestic violence. With that in mind, the paper analyzes the main challenges facing service providers of Shelters in Egypt and the gap that exists between international and national standards. While critical of the UN calls for combatting domestic violence worldwide without providing member states with the necessary resources or technical aid to do so, this paper demonstrates how a combined lack of resources, along with a set of complex legal loopholes and socio-cultural set of gendered beliefs about women's role in the family unit render shelters practically useless as tools to tackle domestic violence in Egypt. COVID-19 did however, highlight the importance of the private sphere to the economic and social realms and its life sustaining role worldwide, thus making interventions to combat domestic violence both a policy and public health necessity. The paper concludes with a number of short, medium and long-term recommendations to combat domestic and gender-based violence on a national scale in Egypt post COVID-19.
Rowaq Arabi - رواق عربي
This article takes up the feminist movement against sexual violence in Egypt after January 2011. ... more This article takes up the feminist movement against sexual violence in Egypt after January 2011. It argues that the post-revolution movement is a distinct one, distinguished by the narratives of feminist discourse it advances and the various tools it uses. It further asserts that the January revolution represented both a material space arena and grand narrative that allowed for the creation of arenas for action, occupied by new and diverse feminist actors. In turn, this allowed for the production of new discourses and tools for a broad feminist movement, one that does not break in full with its predecessors, but rather represents a continuation and evolution of the older movement. In its methodology, this article relies on ethnography and personal interviews, as well as personal observation. It concludes that the new feminist movement in Egypt has currently moved beyond the struggle for recognition as its animating cause to make the issue of sexual violence in the public sphere the ...
In the Shadow of the State: Gender Contestation and Legal Mobilization in the Context of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2018Gender issues emerged in various forms as part of u... more Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2018Gender issues emerged in various forms as part of uprisings that swept the Arab world starting from 2011. However, little attention has been paid to the differences among various countries of women's mobilization during and after the Arab Spring. The differences between Tunisia and Egypt, two of the central countries in the uprisings of 2011, have been stark in the ways women mobilized for action. In Tunisia, women's claims were principally channeled through the formal institutions of the state-a top-down process. In Egypt, in contrast, women went outside the standard institutions of the state to voice more radical demands-a bottom-up approach. My project asks why such different forms of women's contestation developed in these two states? I argue that the distinct history and legacy of state feminism in each country was key in the development of novel rights claims on the part of the women's rights activists after the revolutions. Furthermore, this research project argues his that it is often the multiple identities that women develop because of their involvement in politics, as new forms of subject formation, that act as critical symbolic resources in rights-based campaigns. In addition, this manuscript develops an argument on why and how mobilization occurs in contexts where states are direct perpetrators of gender-based violence. I argue such mobilization could lead to one of two possible outcomes: movements either turn to top-down approaches that seek to secure formal wins, or movements employ extra-institutional politics to push forward more radical claims of rights. I argue that the former happened in Tunisia where activists made strong political appeals to the state and developed a collective past legacy of state feminism. This, in turn, made it difficult to hold the state accountable for its violations. In contrast, and because of the ambiguous nature of state feminism in Egypt, the movement against gender-based violence was able to challenge the state hegemonic discourses within a much more repressive political context by employing extra-institutional tactics. The broader implications of these findings question the assumption that democratic transition, transitional justice, and gender justice go hand in hand. Furthermore, the findings show how addressing violation committed by state agents through strictly technical channels could further perpetuate hegemonic understandings of the state's prerogative powers over its citizens
Nouvelles luttes autour du genre en Egypte depuis 2011
Depuis le soulèvement de 2011 en Égypte, les problématiques de genre ont émergé sous différentes ... more Depuis le soulèvement de 2011 en Égypte, les problématiques de genre ont émergé sous différentes formes dans le cadre des mouvements protestataires – révolutionnaires, réactionnaires – et plus largement, dans celui des transformations sociales se produisant autour et entre ces vagues de mobilisation. Alors que les relations entre citoyens et autorités étatiques ont été contestées, modifiées, puis repoussées dans une direction réactionnaire, comment les relations de genre ont-elles été contestées depuis 2011 ? Quels nouveaux imaginaires, quels nouveaux rôles et identités ont été revendiqués ? Quelles mobilisations se sont construites face à l’essor saisissant des violences sexistes dans l’espace public ? Quatre ans après le début de la période révolutionnaire, ce numéro d’Égypte/Monde arabe explore les nouvelles luttes liées au genre en Égypte au prisme de la sociologie, l’anthropologie et la science politique. Chercheuses, expertes et/ou activistes proposent ici un éventail de regar...
How do women use courts within the context of paternity lawsuits? This study analyzes the challen... more How do women use courts within the context of paternity lawsuits? This study analyzes the challenges that the formal legal approach to empowering women faces once it is translated into everyday socio-legal experiences and court repertoires. It also seeks to trace the pathologies inherent in personal status law reform and normal legal practices in Egypt, attesting to the limitations of law as an agent of social change in the private domain of the family. It mainly sheds light on the difficulties of separating formal legal rules from informal social practices. It also explores the problem of paternity claims in Egypt. Adding to growing literature on the use of legal mobilization to advance gender equity, this study offers insights on the often-neglected role of social norms in court experiences, often leading to unexpected consequences that sometimes defy the intended goals behind policies and legislation.
Muslim World Journal of Human Rights, 2017
Scholarship on personal status law systems in Muslim-majority countries stresses the challenges f... more Scholarship on personal status law systems in Muslim-majority countries stresses the challenges facing women’s rights activists seeking to reform family laws. Yet, little research is done on how Islamic family law systems, being inherently pluralistic, could enable activists to challenge hegemonic hermeneutical understandings of Islam. This article draws from a qualitative study of a decade and a half long campaign to reform divorce laws in Egypt to argue that dual legal systems, like the Egyptian one, enabled women’s rights activists to push forward novel hybrid rights claims, despite the structural and discursive constraints they faced. Grounding those claims in the context of Egypt’s pluralistic family law system and shrewdly negotiating multiple legal orders, including alternative interpretations of Islamic Shari’a and national codes, women’s rights activists successfully utilized the cultural power of legal pluralism. The success of this campaign demonstrates the ways in which ...
Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law Online, 2010
APA Citation Magdy, D. & Zaki, H. A. (2021). After COVID-19: Mitigating Domestic Gender-based Vio... more APA Citation Magdy, D. & Zaki, H. A. (2021). After COVID-19: Mitigating Domestic Gender-based Violence in Egypt in Times of Emergency. Social Protection in Egypt: Mitigating the Socio-Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Vulnerable Employment, socialprotectionegypt.com https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_journal_articles/502 MLA Citation Magdy, Diana, et al. "After COVID-19: Mitigating Domestic Gender-based Violence in Egypt in Times of Emergency." Social Protection in Egypt: Mitigating the Socio-Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Vulnerable Employment, 2021, https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_journal_articles/502
Feminist issues in Egypt and Tunisia before and after the Arab Spring
Limited statehood in post-revolutionary Tunisia: Citizenship, economy, and security
Mediterranean Politics
This book explores the complexity of the only widely-acclaimed successful democratic transition f... more This book explores the complexity of the only widely-acclaimed successful democratic transition following the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011 – the Tunisian one. The country’s transformation, in terms of state-society relations across several analytical dimensions (citizenship, security, political economy, external relations), is looked at through the prism of statehood and of limited statehood in particular. The author illustrates how the balance of power and the relationship between the state and societal forces have been shaped and reshaped a number of times at key critical junctures by drawing on examples from very different policy arenas. The critical reading of statehood speaks beyond the Tunisian case study as notions of limited statehood can be applied, with different degrees of intensity and in some dimensions more than others, to most political systems in the Middle East and North Africa. Accessible for students, academics and professionals alike, the book illuminates the complexities and challenges of a successful, albeit still fragile, transition.
Resisting and Redefining State Violence: The gendered politics of transitional justice in Tunisia
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa
Égypte/Monde arabe
I n the wake of the overthrow of former President Morsi amid massive demonstrations through June ... more I n the wake of the overthrow of former President Morsi amid massive demonstrations through June and July 2013, a speciic new gender discourse began emerging in Egypt. Focusing on the high levels of participation of women from all wakes of life in the demonstrations against Islamist rule in Egypt, this new popular discourse is articulated in vernacular forms of expression, in the media, or in the writings of intellectuals and political analysts. It stresses the supposedly unanimous and uncontested support of "Egyptian women" as a uniform category, to the Egyptian military in their war against Islamic terrorism and to the military State, as well as their purportedly universal infatuation with President Abd El-Fattah El-Sissi. This indicates the rise of a new discursive form of State feminism, one that seeks to erase a rich four-year history of diverse gender-based mobilization.
Rule of Law, Rule of God or Rule of the State?: Pardoxes of Judicical Reform in Egypt's New Family Court Structure
This paper attempts to discuss sources of institutional inefficiency as identified in reform init... more This paper attempts to discuss sources of institutional inefficiency as identified in reform initiatives in Egypt Family Court system. I use the lens of family court reform to discuss the particualar implications of attempting to enforce The rule of law as part of a wider proccupation, both local and international, with strenghening good governance and citizenship rights issues in the
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Papers by Hind Ahmed Zaki