NPF Cycle Two Fellows and Projects

Ahmed Kadry: “Nationalizing” Gender in Egypt 

 

Abstract: Abdel Fattah el-Sisi currently enjoys vast popularity in his leading role in removing the Muslim Brotherhood, specifically former president Mohamed Morsi, from power. The aim of this paper is to consider whether this mass popularity of el-Sisi as state leader has had any effect on the national conversation on sexual harassment and assault in Egypt that is widely endemic. Taking el-Sisi’s speech from the hospital bed of a victim of sexual assault as its centre point, this paper uses a symbolic interactionist approach that will highlight the changes in the discourse on gender-based violence in the judiciary and state media since this speech.

 

Ahmed Kadry is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Language and Cultural Studies at Imperial College London. His thesis centres on how the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and its post-revolutionary period was contested along gendered contours between the state (specifically Mubarak’s regime and the SCAF government that followed) and those opposed to it. Kadry is a frequent writer and commentator on Egypt and the Middle East, where he has featured on the BBC, Al Jazeera, and The Huffington Post, among others.