Law

How do women use courts within the context of paternity lawsuits? This study analyzes the challenges that the formal legal approach to empowering women faces once it is translated into everyday socio-legal experiences and court repertoires. It also seeks to trace the pathologies inherent in personal status law reform and normal legal practices in Egypt, attesting to the limitations of law as an agent of social change in the private domain of the family. It mainly sheds light on the difficulties of separating formal legal rules from informal social practices. It also explores the problem of paternity claims in Egypt. Adding to growing literature on the use of legal mobilization to advance gender equity, this study offers insights on the often-neglected role of social norms in court experiences, often leading to unexpected consequences that sometimes defy the intended goals behind policies and legislation.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Egyptian women gained the unique right to divorce their husbands unilaterally through a procedure called khul‘. This has been a controversial application; notwithstanding attempts to present the law as being grounded in Islamic law, opponents claim that khul‘ is a privileged women’s law, and a western conspiracy aimed at destroying Egyptian family life and, by extension, Egyptian society.
In Khul‘ Divorce in Egypt, Nadia Sonneveld explores the nature of the public debates—including the portrayal of khul‘ in films and cartoons—while an examination of the application of khul‘ in the courts and everyday life relates and compares this debate to the actual implementation of the procedure. She makes it clear that the points of controversy bear little resemblance to the lives of the lower-middle-class women who apply for khul‘; they merely reflect profound changes in the institutions of marriage and family.

In Egypt's modern history, reform of personal status laws has often formed an integral part of political, cultural, and religious contestations among different factions of society. From the beginning of the twenty-first century, two significant reforms were introduced in Egyptian personal status laws: women’s right to petition for no-fault judicial divorce law (khul‘) and the new mediation-based family courts.
Gender Justice and Legal Reform in Egypt examines the interplay between legal reform and gender norms and practices. It examines the processes of advocating for, and contesting the khul‘ and new family courts laws, shedding light on the agendas and strategies of the various actors involved. It also examines the ways in which women and men have made use of these legal reforms; how judges and other court personnel have interpreted and implemented them; and how the reforms may have impacted women and men’s understandings, expectations, and strategies when navigating marriage and spousal roles.
Drawing on an extensive four-year field study, Al-Sharmani highlights the complexities and mixed impacts of legal reform, not only as a mechanism of claiming gender rights but also as a system of meanings that shape, destabilize, or transform gender norms and practices.