Feminism Is What Passes Between a Mother and a Daughter

When my daughter was in middle school and just starting to eye me suspiciously, aware of the fact that some day in the no longer unforeseeable future she might have something in common with me beyond our inexplicable fondness for American cheese and sweet pickles melted into a rolled up tortilla, she asked me, "Mom, why the hell do you call yourself a feminist?" She apparently, as she vouchsafed, had not yet experienced any sort of discrimination, nothing that limited her ability to enjoy her life and express her opinions and her talents to their fullest. Nothing, that is, except her feminist parent, who refused to answer this question until it was posed without the Dantean reference to the place that makes the Sahara feel like a fjord. I am of the generation that still believes that everything matters and, not least of all, the words we use.

Well, little girls do become recognizable as their mothers from certain angles, usually when the lighting is poor, and my daughter went away to college and majored in, of all things, Women's and Gender Studies. Or at least that is what she studied until engineering caught her eye, and she enrolled in a College of Engineering where at least five percent of the students were, like her, sometimes noticeably female. This summer, we were together

in Egypt. She'd been there since last year, teaching math and science to children in the desert; I came in large part because she was there. My life has not been the same since. Hers was never the same.

What does this have to do with the little girl who disavowed a need for feminism and the mother who still keeps "Passing the Equal Rights Amendment" at the top of her To Do list? Everything. Egypt is a country that has gone backward in terms of women's rights. During the reign of Hosni Mubarak, women have not only covered their heads, they have covered their arms and their legs; they have muffled their voices. It was part and parcel of the repressive regime. Indeed. Religious fundamentalism, in any color and any creed, consistently endorses and enforces the subjugation of women. Why?

Well, in the simplest analysis of all, to remove a little over half of the population from political relevance and engagement is to remove over half of any regime's possible enemies. This is an incredible accomplishment for any regime. It's like jailing half the population, without the administrative costs of building prisons or hiring prison guards. It's an analysis that has frankly not been acknowledged nearly enough in the obfuscation of trendier, more complex explanations.

Secondly, it trims the pool of the unemployed very nicely. If you can make it uncomfortable or (better yet) unfeasible for half the population to hold meaningful jobs, the statistics of joblessness, which are built from the figures of citizens actively seeking employment and not finding it, look significantly better. In Egypt, where unemployment is at 12% overall, 25% if you look at a more youthful cohort, it's pretty much imperative to keep women from actively seeking jobs and sending these percentages skyward. (The younger cohort includes noticeably more women, as younger women are far less likely to be married or in charge of childcare, especially since Egyptian moral law prescribes that a man provide an apartment and a living before he can propose marriage.)

Yet I would be inaccurate and foolish if I tried to persuade anyone, least of all myself, that women feel more oppressed and thwarted in Egypt than they do in the US. Even older women, who have lived in Cairo under Nasser and Sadat as well as during the reign of Mubarak seem, by and large, content with their hijabs and their long skirts and their lack of equal opportunity to be jobless.

These older women can remember, if you press them, miniskirts and capris. They can remember kissing in the park, drinking wine. They hang on to the careers they achieved back when it was a thrill to be female in the busy epicenter that was Cairo.

"Women are not made to do anything they don't choose to do," I heard over and over from men in Egypt this summer. "No one makes them cover themselves; it's their choice." But it is the men who tell you this. You don't get to speak to the women. Even in women's clothing stores, although a young woman will be the one who approaches you and pulls out long skirt after long skirt for your approval, when it comes time to pay, it will be a man who takes your money and men (they are never alone in Egypt) who watch every minute of the transaction between you and the young woman on the shop floor. "Shokran! Thank you!" you call out over your shoulder as you leave the shop with your packages, trying to see the sparkling young woman who helped you find just what you want despite the fact that your Arabic was pretty much limited to hello and goodbye. But she's busy, applying herself with equal energy to the next customer.

The two young men behind the cash register are slouching against the wall again and smirking as they survey the female customers with a sense of obvious privilege. You step out onto the crowded sidewalk and the mild Cairo evening feeling just a little bit violated.

One evening, my daughter and I were walking through a new part of the big city looking for an art gallery someone had mentioned to us. We had a street name but not much else and had been walking in what was starting to feel like circles. In a very narrow side street off the avenue we were walking for the third time, we caught the eye of what was almost certainly another mother/daughter duo, this one sitting on small stools outside what was probably the family business. They were watching us as we approached, and their eyes were friendly. We approached them and asked for directions. My daughter's Arabic is much better than mine.

Before they could answer, a man stepped in. He, like everyone we met, was nice. He extended himself in a way no man in any American city would, unless he was fresh off the airplane from some non-Western country. Soon he had not only answered our questions with an orchestra of hand motions and the usual three consultations with other men who paused nearby in anticipation of just these consultations; he walked us to our destination.

It's hard to complain when you get this kind of treatment. Riding in a cab through Cairo one day, I told the driver I liked the music he was playing. Without a second's hesitation, he popped it out and handed it to me. Another time, in another car, stuck in traffic, I said I was thirsty. "Oh. You want a drink?" Before I could demur, the driver had put the car into Park and hopped out to buy me a fruit juice at the little grocery at the corner. Neither driver would accept any money for their gifts.

But we were sad, my daughter and I, as we followed the quick steps of the man in the gallabiya to the street that would eventually give up the gallery to us. We looked back. The woman and her daughter were whispering and watching us.

How we would have loved to know what they were saying. How nice it would have been to have tea with them.