Does Political Islam Impede Gender‐Based Mobilization? The Case of Egypt

Abstract Does political Islam impede gender‐based mobilization? An affirmative answer to this question is held by many scholars and feminist activists alike. From the Taliban in Afghanistan to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the various political Islamist organizations spreading throughout the South are often cited as anti‐gender mobilization, if not anti‐women altogether. The widespread and exponential support of political Islamism in the South, coupled with the decline of non‐religious‐based women's movements, warrants an examination of this assumed correlation. Using Egypt as a primary site of investigation, this paper argues that this correlation is spurious, if not ideologically biased and ahistorical. Looking at a recent initiative for building a non‐religious‐based women's movement in Egypt – ‘Women for Democracy’ – as a microcosm, this article argues that the lack of such movements in the South should be understood through a historical–structural analysis of post‐colonial state–society relations, in addition to agency‐related factors of professed ‘feminists’ in these countries.