Amina Al-Saʿid: a liberal femocrat under state feminism

This article discusses the public life of the Egyptian journalist and feminist Amina al-Saʿid (1914–1995), who has hardly received any scholarly attention. On the one hand, it examines her shortcomings as a feminist, and on the other hand, it investigates the contribution of her journalistic work to Egyptian feminism in the decades following the 1952 revolution. During this period, under an authoritarian and centralist regime that promoted state feminism but closed women’s organizations, women such as al-Saʿid allegedly turned into femocrats who preferred their government-supported positions over solidarity with women of other classes and ideological beliefs. By examining the femocrat as an analytical category, this article undermines the perspective of femocrats in authoritarian centralist rule as lacking any agency—particularly feminist agency—and argues instead that al-Saʿid’s lack of explicit political solidarity with feminist activists whom the government silenced were a fruit of her liberal pre-revolutionary upbringing rather than merely being a byproduct of her alliance with the Nasser regime. Importantly, it argues that she continued to make a significant contribution to maintaining a feminist political presence and mediating the implications of state reforms for the reconstruction of gender identity and relations.