Laura Bier Revolutionary Womanhood Hardcover sku-16658568

Laura Bier's Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminisms, Modernity, and the State in Nasser's Egypt is a hardcover listed under Middle Eastern History Books. SKU: sku-16658568. Described as the first major historical account of gender politics during the Nasser era, it examines feminism as internationally rooted ideas and political practices expressed locally.

Bier connects the secular nationalist projects of the 1950s with present-day Islamist gender politics. She considers debates over education, companionate marriage, enlightened motherhood, veiling, work and women's access to public space in relation to modernity, state feminism and postcolonial state-building.

The book examines how political elites under Nasser sought to make Egyptian women national subjects, and how their vision of a "new" but authentically Egyptian woman both enabled and limited women's ideas of gender, liberation and agency. Bier challenges the view that these feminisms lacked cultural or religious authenticity and discusses their lasting effect on Egyptian womanhood.