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Throughout history, women in Egypt have played a variety of roles and held a variety of positions within Egyptian culture.

From pharaonic times through to modernity, the roles of women in Egypt have been ever-shifting. In ancient Egypt women were seen and treated as the equal counterparts to men. Women were afforded equal treatment under the law and could hold high up positions in both the political and religious spheres (though these two worlds were often blended). Women were judges, priestesses, physicians, healers, and even rulers. Women were seen as the eternal partners of men, and female gods played important roles in the stories of the Egyptian deities. As a testament to their equality, women were even depicted as the same size as men in drawings and paintings of the era. Women could be educated and received the same title as men when they completed their selected course of study. However, as foreign influence came to play in Egypt (beginning with Roman domination and Arab conquest in the seventh century), the role and view of women began to shift. The place of women was most influenced, however, after the French Invasion of Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte. With the conquering French soldiers also came the social ideas and norms, which began to be adopted by the Egyptians. Some women even went so far as to imitate the behavior and dress of the Europeans; however, this was not the norm and was actually strongly opposed by a good number of Egyptians. The greatest influence on Egyptian women, though, has been the religion of Islam. Under the laws of Islam, men and women are afforded equal protection and treatment under the law. In their equality, it follows that no gender could, therefore, be superior to the other. Under Islam, women are also allowed equal education as men and are allowed to pursue work. Women also must consent to marriage and are afforded the right to a divorce. Under the post-French rule of General Muhammad Ali, a push for modernization reforms was made. Under these reforms, advancements were made in womens education, though this really only applied to those women in the upper class. He also built a school to teach women how to be midwives. Alis successor, Ismail Pasha, opened the Suyliyya Girls School, which provided women instruction in a variety of school subjects. Again, it was really the upper class that benefitted from this. The nationalist movement and 1919 Revolution saw an increase in women in the public eye. Women were heavily involved in the rallies of the revolution, the first time in non-ancient Egyptian history that women had played such a large public role. In the years following the revolution, a feminist movement began in Egypt. This led to the formation of the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU) by a member of the Wafd Party, the party responsible for many of the nationalist feelings of the 1919 revolution. The EFU concerned itself with the education, social welfare, and legal protection of the women in Egypt; the organization viewed the gender issues as the states neglect towards the problems of its people. While influences from groups like the EFU had the Constitution of 1924 address issues dealing with women, such as marriage age, etc., it did not go so far as to address political differences between the sexes. After the Revolution of 1952, the new government dissolved all political parties, causing the breakup of many feminist groups. These groups began to focus more on charity work after this. During this period, though, women were finally granted the right to vote and run for public office (1956). Today in Egypt, there exist many feminist groups; however, women are still not afforded completely equal standing with men. There is incredibly unequal political representation for the genders, and the outlook for improvement in this area is fairly grim. Despite the large role that women played (especially in the forefront of) in the Revolution of 2011, they have been overlooked in the

formation of the new government. No women were on the committee to write the new constitution, and a briefly proposed lower house in the parliament (a 512 person house) had only about 12% of the seats set aside for women. After playing such a large role throughout history (ancient, modern, and present-day), hopefully the new regime will begin to level the playing field between the sexes. However, as shown by an Amnesty International study in 2010 that ranked Egypt 125 out of 134 countries in gender treatment and equality, there is still much ground to be made up.

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