About the Episode:
In this episode of Global Stage, political scientist Nermin Allam (Rutgers University) describes her research on the intersection of women activism and authoritarianism. Interviewed by Kellogg Doctoral Affiliate Francesca Freeman, Allam unpacks the questions of how power is yielded, reproduced, and contested within patriarchal authoritarian regimes. Her new book project, “The Afterlife Goes On,” studies the legacy of women’s participation in the Egyptian uprising in 2011 against Hosni Mubarak.
 
Show Notes:

Welcome to Global Stage, a podcast highlighting academic and policy-oriented international research on democracy and human development. Global Stage is brought to you by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Today, host Francesca Freemen, a Kellogg doctoral affiliate studying peace and history, is joined by guest Nermin Allam. In today’s episode, Allam describes her research on gender politics and how power is produced and contested in patriarchal authoritarian regimes. She also describes her new book project called, “The Afterlife Goes On,” which discusses women’s participation in the Egyptian uprising in 2011 against Hosni Mubarak.

To begin, Allam shares that she is a scholar of gender politics and social movements. Her research started when she began answering questions related to power, power structures, and how they shape different groups. She also researched how Egyptian women that did go against the regime were targeted and suppressed. She also has conducted an exploration of what feminism looks like in Egyptian women and that the absence of gender issues was not an actionary response to western conceptualizations of feminism. It was not misguided or passive, and this view is problematic because it erases women's agency and their voices in telling their own narratives. She found that women did not voice issues because of three factors: legacy of nationalist discourses, state feminism, and limited culture of equality. The way in which we think and write about feminism is far too complex and complicated, and we risk losing the authenticity of our analysis if we are not willing to think critically about it. 

Next, Freeman and Allam discuss the status of Egyptian women a decade after the uprising. There have been some advancements, but regimes have cracked down on independent feminist groups, which leaves feminism without feminists. In 2019, the current Egyptian president pushed for an amendment that expanded the two presidential terms from four years to six years. A quarter of the seats now go to women, which marks a change in the tone of the regime, but it is not enough. They target independent feminists, and the agenda for women's rights becomes a pet project. The reforms become the exception and not the norm. We need to ask important questions on how we can qualify these advancements. For her new book project, “The Afterlife Goes On,” Allam interviewed many women and found frequent themes of despair and disappointment. She has studied the women who participated in the 2011 uprising and how it has influenced their gender consciousness and gender subjectivities in the aftermath. She has traced their views and has been able to determine whether their shift in opinions was due to their involvement in the uprising. Many survivors are coming forward with their surveys and she says it is our ethical responsibility to look at and highlight hope. 

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