A Reflection on the Sudanese Feminist Movement

© Ahmad Mahmoud

One of my earliest and favourite childhood memories is when I was six years old. My grandmother told us that we will be getting henna. The dark reddish or black body art used by Sudanese women [and men on wedding occasions] as a way of expressing joy during weddings, celebrations and other celebratory occasions. This was an occasion my grandmother was secretly planning. She applied henna on our hands and feet and asked us to lie down inside a big room, which we were rarely allowed into as it was designated for receiving guests. My older sister and I couldn’t be happier, although lying still in one place is the most difficult thing one can ask a child to do. Yet we enjoyed the henna and were excited about our mother’s return home from abroad on this glorious day.

As I grew older, my knowledge or awareness of gender and gender equality was as blurry as my knowledge of what was going on the ‘glorious day’, a day you will soon discover is significant.

Two years later, my mother was graduating and her graduation research was titled, “Measuring the Knowledge of Secondary School Female Students of the Sudanese Feminism Movement”. Despite the fact that I could read, this title didn’t mean anything to me nor was I able figure out what is it all about and why my mother would receive the award of the best graduation thesis for it.

A feminist?

Other milestones in my exposure to the ideology of feminism where the moments of sympathy expressed by other people when I mentioned that we didn’t have a male sibling. My father’s mother stated that my father was too good of a man to just have girls and that he should marry another woman to have sons that would carry his name and great legacy.

On my journey to discovering feminism, I began to relate and identify to the ideology and movement. I can now identify as a ‘feminist’. Now, when I look back, I think it was rather a lengthy revelation. Long time ago, I would get very angry whenever I heard irrelevant people deciding what women should and should not do. I believe it’s quite easy to identify as a feminist even when one is not 100% sure of its meaning. As the late British author and journalist Rebecca West said, ‘I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat’.

Despite its previous existence as a movement, the term ‘feminism’ surfaced during the civil movements’ era. It symbolises the activism and advocacy towards abolishing the suppression of women based on their gender and it symbolises achieving their independence and freedom of self-expression. Feminism in Sudan progressed similarly to my personal feminist revelation; both my personal journey and the movement progressed from blurry individual actions to manoeuvring around the prevalent stereotypes, acknowledgment and full growth.

A brief history of women’s movement in Sudan

Women have always maintained a strong position in Sudan. Since ancient Sudanese history, women ruled on their own known as kandakas. The legacies of female queens of Kush are preserved through pyramids and royal cemeteries. However, the feminist concept that began to form in the early years of the 20th century was through girls’ education. The first formal school to teach girls was established in 1903 by Babiker Badry.

Other girls’ schools that were later established by the British during colonisation, mainly focusing on preparing girls to become teachers, midwives and nurses. Graduates of these institutes later led the formation of several women’s unions that were concerned with women’s education and working conditions. It wasn’t until the 1940s when the first women association was born under the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (later known as the Sudanese Communist Party). The association included daughters of the most elite families in the country.

Soon after, in the year 1952, Sudan witnessed the birth of the Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU) which was chaired by Sudanese physician and women’s rights activist Khaldah Zahir, one of first women in Sudan to become a doctor; Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, who later became the first female in the Parliament; and Haja Kashif Badry, a researcher in Sudanese feminist movement. This union demanded equal wages, maternity leave and pensions in addition; it promoted gender equality between men and women, which was not widely welcomed by the religious groups leading to a dichotomy among the union and religious voices asking to suppress these activities.

In the following years, the union continued on and off following the political sphere in the country. It was embedded in the ruling socialist party while pioneers such as Zahir, Ibrahim and Badry were neglected due to their disagreement with the governing party. In the early 1990s, when the Islamic front took over the government, the Sudanese Women General Union (SWGU) was formed under the national congress cadre, the governing party in Sudan, and operating under its Islamist ideologies; consequently, the previous leadership was scattered with a limited activity. Ever since, SWGU has been serving as the main body yet it is crippled by socio-political taboos when it comes to advocating for current issues.

It is an ongoing movement

The Sudanese Women’s Union has contributed immensely to the liberation of women of Sudan. As a result, it stands at the only women’s union in the world to receive the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights in 1993. Nevertheless, looking closely, in the beginning it didn’t escape the classical trap of excluding marginalised women (women from Western tribes and women of religious minorities in the South) rather focusing on working women’s rights residing mostly in the north specifically in Khartoum. As the union emerged under the liberal frontier, it was always linked to communism, forming a barrier between the people and the movement – a prevalent stereotype in Sudan is that communism equals atheism, leading to eternal clashes with the Islamic frontiers in all the eras.

By looking at this brief history, we can track how the feminist movement in Sudan has evolved to meet the requirements of every period of time, starting with education, political and career choices to personal status laws including marriage and child custody and to interacting with modern-day issues.

It was that ‘glorious day’ that set my journey on the feminist movement in Sudan. It was meant to be our ‘genital mutilation day’, a commonly practiced ritual known as khitan or tahur in Sudan, which involves the cutting of the external female genitalia. My grandmother who was a well-respected midwife in the community and had to put on a show to convince our local community that we were ‘purified’ like our female peers to protect us from stigma. This failed to come about as my mother rejected the ritual and refused her girls to be mutilated – at a time when female genital mutilation (FGM) in girls and women between the ages of 15 to 49 years was practiced by 90% of the population. A few years later, my grandmother stopped practicing FGM.

The feminist movement still flourishes in other forms with – rather than a national unified body – many initiatives, be it independent or politically affiliated, are widely advocating for women’s rights such as calling for the end of FGM, marital rape and the public order law (Article 152 of the Criminal Act of 1991 prohibits indecent and immoral acts, leaving it to police officers to decide what is ‘indecent’ or ‘immoral’). 

Jawhara Kanu is an economist with a postgraduate degree in Economics and Finance for Development from the University of Bradford. In addition to writing, her interests include political economy, development and women empowerment. After completing her bachelor’s degree in economics and finance in 2015, she has been working in development projects implementation in Sudan.