Taking its steps from Bandung Conference’s aftermath, the first Afro-Asian Women’s Conference (AAWC) held in Cairo in 1961 contributed to feminizing the Afro-Asian movement. This article focuses on the first AAWC, particularly examining the participation of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, and Libyan delegates. Built on hitherto underexplored primary sources, it constitutes a first contribution in investigating the role of Maghrebi women in Afro-Asian solidarity networks. It highlights that the AAWC marked a significant moment of regional cohesion for Maghrebi women and discloses that Maghreb countries’ delegates voiced their respective countries’ positions on women emancipation. The article also discusses the Maghrebi delegates’ contribution to crafting a shared Afro-Asian women’s political agenda. Ultimately, it retraces the AAWC’s echo in the Maghreb during the following years.
Abou-El-FadlR (2019) Building Egypt’s Afro-Asian hub: infrastructures of solidarity and the 1957 Cairo conference. Journal of World History30(1): 157–192.
2.
AdhamR (2012) Durub fi al-haya. Sirat al-dhatiyya [Paths of Life: an Autobiography]. Tripoli, Libya: Dar Al Ferjani.
3.
Afrique Action (1961) Cette semaine à Tunis: arrivées. 13 February, P. 16.
4.
Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference (AAPSC) (1958) Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference December 26, 1957-January 1, 1958. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
5.
AkharbachLRerhayeN (1992) Femmes et Politiques. Rabat, Morocco: Le Fennec.
6.
AmraneD (1991) Les Femmes Algériennes dans la Guerre. Paris: Plon.
7.
ArmstrongE (2016) Before Bandung: the anti-imperialist women’s movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Federation. Signs41(2): 305–333.
8.
Asian-African Conference of Women (AACW) (1958) The First Asian-African Conference of Women: Report and Proceedings. Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Conference.
9.
BakaltiS (1996) La femme Tunisienne au Temps de la Colonisation: 1881–1956. Paris: L’Harmattan.
10.
BakerA (1998) Voices of Resistance: Oral Histories of Moroccan Women. New York: State University of New York Press.
11.
BaldinettiA (2019) Istruzione e associazionismo femminili in Libia (1951–1969): primi appunti. In: BaldinettiAMaimoneGCassarinoMMelfaD (eds) Oltreconfine. Temi e fonti per lo studio dell’Africa. Roma: Aracne, pp. 189–206.
BierL (2010) Feminism, solidarity, and identity in the age of Bandung: third world women in the Egyptian women’s press. In:LeeCJ (ed.) Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, pp. 143–172.
14.
BierL (2011) Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminisms, Modernity and the State in Nasser’s Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
15.
ChakrabartyD (2010) The legacies of Bandung: decolonization and the politics of culture. In:LeeCJ (ed.) Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, pp.45–68.
16.
CharradMM (2007) Tunisia at the forefront of the Arab world: two waves of gender legislation. Washington and Lee Law Review64: 1514–1527.
17.
ChentoufM (1961) The same enemy. Women of the Whole World7: 7–8.
EslavaLFakhriMVasukiN (2017) Introduction: the spirit of Bandung. In:EslavaLFakhriMVasukiN (eds) Global History and International Law Critical Pasts and Pending Futures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.3–32.
21.
GallissotRTaleb-BendiabA (2013) Abdelli Mamia, Mme Chentouf. Le Maitron. Dictionnaire bibliographique mouvement ouvrier mouvement social. Available at: https://maitron.fr/spip.php?article149953 (accessed 10 April 2022).
22.
GuptaPLeeCJMoormanJM, et al. (2018) Editors’ introduction. Radical History Review131: 1–12.
23.
HalimH (2020) Translating solidarity: an interview with Nehad Salem. Critical Times3(1): 131–147.
24.
HammadK (2018) Rihla al-marʾat al-misriyya. Min al-yahmish ila al-musharaka [The Egyptian Women’s Journey. From Marginalization to Participation]. Available at: https://bit.ly/3vCwJAs (accessed 15 January 2022).
25.
Hommage à Niamat Allah el Khatib Boujibar (2007) Casablanca: Eddif—La Croisée Des Chemins Editions.
26.
Ibn ʿAmirAH (2005) al- Marʾa al-libiyya: ibdaʿ wa-Ishʿaʿ. Hamida al-ʿUnayzi wa-nisf qarn min al-riyada al-taʿlimiyya fi-Libiya [The Libyan Woman as a Source of Innovation and Enlightenment. Hamida al-ʿUnayzi and Half a Century of Pathway in the Field of Education in Libya]. Tripoli, Libya: Markaz jihad al-libi li-l-dirasat al-tarikhiyya.
27.
International Preparatory Committee (1961) The international preparatory committee. In: Afro-Asian Woman’s Conference, Cairo, Egypt, 15–24 September. Cairo, Egypt: Dar El-Hana.
28.
JackH (1958) The Cairo conference. Africa Today5(2): 3–9.
29.
JamaliF (1974) The Arab Maghrib and the Bandung Conference. Revue d’Histoire Maghrebine, July2: 177—180.
30.
KallanderA (2021) Tunisia’s Modern Woman: Nation-Building and State Feminism in the Global 1960s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
31.
KaramB (1963) Editorial. Bulletin of the Afro-Asian Woman, January: 1.
32.
LaronG (2014) Semi-peripheral countries and the invention of the “third world,” 1955–65. Third World Quarterly35(9): 1547–1565.
33.
LeeCJ (2010a) Introduction: between a moment and an era: the origins and afterlives of Bandung. In:LeeCJ (ed.) Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, pp. 1–42.
34.
LeeCJ (2010b) Tricontinentalism in question: the Cold War politics of Alex La Guma and the African national congress. In:LeeCJ (ed.) Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, pp. 266–286.
35.
LewisSLStolteC (2019) Other Bandung: Afro-Asian internationalisms in the early Cold War. Journal of World History30(1): 1–19.
36.
LüthiLM (2020) Cold Wars: Asia, the Middle East, Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37.
MacmasterN (2020) Burning the Veil: The Algerian War and the “Emancipation” of Muslim Women, 1954–62. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
MarzoukiI (1993) Le Mouvement des Femmes en Tunisie au XXème Siècle: Féminisme et Politique. Tunis: Cérès Productions.
40.
McGregorKHearmanV (2017) Challenging the lifeline of imperialism: reassessing Afro-Asian solidarity and related activism in the decade 1955–1965. In:EslavaLFakhriMNesiahV (eds) Global History and International Law Critical Pasts and Pending Futures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161–176.
41.
MoghadamVM (1997) Women, Work and Economic Reform in the Middle East and North Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
42.
Nahdatu Ifriqiyya (1958) Taḥdifu Hadhihi Majalla [Objectives of this Review]1(11): 1.
43.
NaylorPC (2006) Historical Dictionary of Algeria. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.
44.
Permanent Secretariat for Afro-Asian Solidarity Organization (1961) Reports, Messages, Speeches, Resolutions. In: The first Afro-Asian Women’s Conference, Cairo, Egypt, 14–12 January, Cairo: Amalgamated Press of Egypt.
45.
Perspectives Maghrébines (1970) Premier Congrès de l’Union des Femmes Maghrébines1: 60.
46.
PrashadV (2007) The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New York and London: The New Press.
47.
QuilesY (1961) Hand in hand: Cairo plays host to the first Afro-Asian Women’s Conference. Women of the Whole World, April4: 6–10.
48.
RobinsonN (2022) ‘Sisters in Asia’: the league of nations and feminist anti-colonial internationalism in South and Southwest Asia. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society47: 987–1012.
49.
Saʿdiyin (al-)M (2017) Shahirat Sala khilal al-qarn al-ʿishrin [Famous Women of Salé in the Twentieth Century]. Salé, Morocco: Jamʿiyat Sala al-mustaqbal.
50.
SalemS (2022) Radical regionalism: feminism, sovereignty and the Pan-African project. Africa Development/Afrique et Développement47(1): 159–191.
51.
ShehabuddinE (2021) Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
52.
StolteC (2019) The people’s Bandung’: local anti-imperialists on an Afro-Asian stage. Journal of World History30(1–2): 125–156.
53.
StoraB (2004) Algeria, 1830–2000: A Short History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP.
54.
StoraB (2021) France-Algérie, les Passions Douloureuses. Paris: Éditions Albin Michel.
VinceN (2018) Looking for “the woman question” in Algeria and Tunisia: ideas, political language,and female actors before and after Independence. In: WeissMHanssenJ (eds) Arabic Thought Against the Authoritarian Age Towards an Intellectual History of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 203–232.
57.
WestadOA (2007) The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
58.
WillisM (2014) Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
59.
ZananiriNV (1962) Entretien avec la princesse Laila Aicha: femmes marocaines et travail social. The Scribe4(2): 70–79.
60.
ZoubirYH (2020) The Algerian-Moroccan rivalry: constructing the imaged enemy. In:MansourIThompsonWR (eds) Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 179–200.
61.
ZouitenS (1961) Five years after the abolition of polygamy in Tunisia. Women of the Whole World7: 27–28.
