Berkley Center

Walking the streets of Cairo, you cannot help but notice an interesting trend: for every woman outside, there are 10 men. Less surprisingly (for a Muslim country), for every veil-free woman, there are at least 10 hijab wearers. Intrigued by this, I questioned an Egyptian: “So are there really more men or do all the women just always stay inside?” In response, I received a detailed analysis of the Egyptian hijab phenomenon, from its history to its modern-day social implications.

The hijab has not always had such widespread popularity throughout Egyptian society. Urban Egyptian women began going outside with their hair uncovered in the 1920s and 1930s, but this trend began to reverse itself in the 1970s and 1980s. As the years go on, the conservative trend has continued, especially with a growing number of women choosing to completely cover their face with the niqab. This is more of a social trend than a political one, as the government has not done anything to encourage this resurgence of the veil. In fact, Egypt’s Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni has recently even enraged the conservative Islamic community by describing the veiling trend as “regressive.”

The hijab can be seen as a way of stratifying society. At the American University in Cairo, most of the Egyptian students are part of the wealthy upper class. Most girls are uncovered, and dress, for the most part, the same way as their Western counterparts. Women wearing hijabs frequently face discrimination when looking for work or trying to go to trendy bars and restaurants. When my roommate, an American who has been wearing the hijab since childhood, tried to go to a bar popular amongst foreigners in Cairo, she was denied admission to the bar area. Managers claim that they do this because many of their clients would be intimidated or offended.

The hijab has become so widespread that it has ceased to become a true symbol of religious piety. I tried covering myself up on a few occasions to see if I could minimize the attention I got on the streets, but instead I encountered more harassment. I found out that this is because many women feel pressured to wear the hijab due to social pressure, not religious reasons. Therefore, although they wear the symbol of sexual piety, their behavior may not actually reflect this. Men realize this and no longer shy away from a woman just because she is covered up. This is especially true when they see a foreign woman wearing a veil, which in their eyes only serves to add a sense of mystery and thus frequently makes her more attractive.

The combination of the effects of social pressure, government, and religion make the hijab trend in Egypt a very interesting thing to observe. Social pressure goes two ways—in the lower middle classes, the vast majority of women are pressured into veiling themselves, but in the upper classes women who want to seem more Western and those seeking careers are discouraged from doing so. Women in these spheres who choose to wear one for religious reasons frequently encounter resistance to such a decision. Meanwhile, the government is trying to establish a more “progressive” society, one in which a hijab is seen as “backward.” However, the growth in Islamic political movements has made the hijab and niqab more and more popular. It will be interesting to see how all these conflicting forces play out in future years.