Revolutionary Papers

Menu

Revolutionary Papers is a transnational research collaboration exploring 20th century periodicals of Left, anti-imperial and anti-colonial critical production. Read More

Women’s Liberation

A poster of a female cadre photographed by Christian Freund. Source: Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG).

A striking aspect of the popular revolutionary movement in Dhufar was the PFLOAG’s commitment to the liberation of women, a policy that was adopted at the 1968 Hamrin Conference. The PFLOAG believed that the liberation of women was central to the success of the revolution which would not come about automatically but through a sustained struggle against the “objective backwardness” of society.  1 This was based on a Marxist, materialist conception and analysis of society. The Dhufar Revolution was influenced by Maoist thought, including on the equality of female cadres, popularised through Mao’s famous declaration that “women can hold up half the sky”.  2 Julia Lovell, Maoism: A Global History (London: Vintage, 2019). Women’s political participation in the armed struggle alongside men was deemed an important aspect of equality while specific policies were later implemented in the liberated areas to transform the social position of women, such as the banning of female circumcision, polygyny, and the reduction of the bride price after unsuccessful attempts to abolish it completely.

The PFLOAG’s policies remarkably challenged the “unhappy marriage” between feminism and Marxism, as conceptualised by the Western feminist scholar Heidi Hartmann in 1979 – in other words, the tension between women’s liberation and national liberation. 3Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Toward A More Progressive Union,” Capital and Class 3:2 (Summer 1979): 1-33. Here, I borrow from Manijeh Moradian who makes a similar argument about a feminist Iranian student movement pamphlet, see: Manijeh Moradian, “Iranian Diasporic Possibilities: Tracing Transnational Feminist Genealogies from the Revolutionary Margins” in Arang Keshavarzian and Ali Mirsepassi, eds., Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). The PFLOAG recognised the double oppression faced by women, both in terms of their position as women in relation to men, and in terms of their position as women in relation to the economic system. Attracted to the PFLOAG’s radical position, the Lebanese filmmaker Heiny Srour travelled to Dhufar in 1971, capturing documentary footage of women fighters later used in her 1974 film The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (Saat El Tahrir Dakkat). 4The film is currently available online: https://kinoforward.net/film/the-hour-of-liberation-has-arrived/

I was a defeated feminist in Lebanon. The Lebanese Left was not interested in feminist issues and kept closing the subject under various pretexts, one being that the women will be free when the main enemy, Imperialism, is defeated. […] I couldn’t believe my ears when the representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf opened the subject of women from his own initiative and proudly said that the Front was fighting against women’s oppression — because women were not just oppressed by imperialism and class society, but also by their father, husband, brothers. I dropped my other film projects and put all my energy into making this film.  5 https://www.screenslate.com/articles/heiny-srour-hour-liberation-has-arrived ”
— Heiny Srour on The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived

The campaigns for, and implementation of, the above mentioned policies came through the initiatives of revolutionary women, the Bahraini cadre Laila Fakhro (Huda Salem) for example pushed the PFLOAG to ban female circumcision and limit the bride price. 6See Takriti, Monsoon Revolution, 107-131. Laila Fakhro also played an important role in the revolution through political education, teaching, care-work, women’s activities, and the PFLOAG’s media and foreign relations. 7Bassima Al-Ghassab, Hagh al-Hulm: Bahrainiyun fi Thawrat Dhufar (Riyad Al Rayyis, 2021). The PFLOAG’s other main periodical, 9 Yunyu (9 June), was a monthly magazine which preceded Sawt al-Thawra’s founding, set up in June 1970 by Laila Fakhro and Abdel Rahman al-Nuaimi (Said Seif). 8Abdulnabi Alekry, Zakerat alwatan walmanfaa (Faradees, 2015).

Sawt al-Thawra promoted women’s political participation in armed struggle, drawing parallels to female fighters such as Vietnamese women and thereby placing the PFLOAG’s revolutionary women in the wider tradition of the revolutionary Third World. The periodical highlighted and documented women’s protest, arrests and mistreatment of women and girls by the British-backed regime, and women’s internationalist activities. Women’s representatives and delegations took part in many regional and international conferences, prior to and after the official establishment of the Omani Women’s Organisation in June 1975, a committee headed by Wafa Yasser.

The first official visit by an Omani women’s delegation, comprising Nadia Khaled and Huda Muhad, took place in July 1975 in a symposium on women’s economic development organised by the Soviet Women’s Committee in Alma-Ata, Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. Following this trip to the Soviet Union, the delegation visited the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at the invitation of the Women’s Federation of Vietnam. 9Sawt al-Thawra, no. 165, 9 August 1975; Sawt al-Thawra, no. 161, 13 July 1975. These encounters were important for producing strong ties of solidarity, the exchange of experiences and ideas, and direct engagement with a major source of their own inspiration, the Vietnamese people’s struggle. Most significantly, these material links demonstrate that Dhufar was not a detached revolution in a little-known and distant part of the Gulf, but one that was globally connected and which importantly placed emphasis on women’s political participation.

  1. This was based on a Marxist, materialist conception and analysis of society. →
  2. Julia Lovell, Maoism: A Global History (London: Vintage, 2019). →
  3. Heidi Hartmann, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Toward A More Progressive Union,” Capital and Class 3:2 (Summer 1979): 1-33. Here, I borrow from Manijeh Moradian who makes a similar argument about a feminist Iranian student movement pamphlet, see: Manijeh Moradian, “Iranian Diasporic Possibilities: Tracing Transnational Feminist Genealogies from the Revolutionary Margins” in Arang Keshavarzian and Ali Mirsepassi, eds., Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).→
  4. The film is currently available online: https://kinoforward.net/film/the-hour-of-liberation-has-arrived/→
  5. https://www.screenslate.com/articles/heiny-srour-hour-liberation-has-arrived →
  6. See Takriti, Monsoon Revolution, 107-131.→
  7. Bassima Al-Ghassab, Hagh al-Hulm: Bahrainiyun fi Thawrat Dhufar (Riyad Al Rayyis, 2021). →
  8. Abdulnabi Alekry, Zakerat alwatan walmanfaa (Faradees, 2015).→
  9. Sawt al-Thawra, no. 165, 9 August 1975; Sawt al-Thawra, no. 161, 13 July 1975.→