Waiting and struggling for the revolution. Women's perceptions from Lower and Upper rural Egypt

A common perception of the 2011 Egyptian “revolution” is that it did not pass by the countryside and that women from rural areas played a passive role in the entire process. Based on in-depth research carried out through several interviews conducted mainly in Egyptian villages between December 2012 and October 2013, our findings show that both impressions are based on a simplistic way of approaching the local reality. The analysis starts focusing on rural Upper Egypt, with a particular attention to the severe conditions experienced by local women. Afterwards we turn the attention to rural women in Lower Egypt, providing a comparative outlook between the two areas. As we shall see, Egypt’s rural women do not represent in any way a homogeneous group, but their growing in-door and out-door activism has a common goal: to ignite a cultural and social revolution. Women’s activism and engagement in resistance and reform is not a phenomenon that should be assessed only on the base of public campaigns, or the presence of women in public places. The “reform process” is taking place first and foremost inside the houses of millions of Egyptian women, including, and perhaps especially, the one residing in the “front line:” rural Upper Egypt. James C. Scott would define their attitudes and actions as “everyday forms of resistance” that often “make no headlines (Scott 1986, 8).”