‘I have been asked to write a book on Arab women’: this answer to polite enquiries on what I was doing with myself these days usually resulted in interesting (and sometimes interested) reactions. Arab women were on the whole pleased and helpful, as were many Arab men. The latter often, only half-jokingly, asked, ‘Why not a book on Arab men?’, and added worriedly, ‘You will write, won't you, that Arab women enjoy their full rights?’ As for sociologists of all nations, their reaction was somewhat disparaging: they thought the subject too general. Anthropologists tended to lose interest when it became clear I was not planning to spend several years in one village on, say, the Nile Delta.

The most frequent reaction to my statement, which showed how marginal this subject is still considered to be, was: ‘Shouldn't someone in your position (I was then editor of a monthly political and socioeconomic magazine), shouldn't someone in your position be writing about something much more important?’ If my interlocutor were Arab, this remark would usually be followed by a list of the problems plaguing the Arab world, from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, to the failures of economic development, to the lack of political freedom. If my interlocutor were Western, the remark might be followed by a pitying look, presumably for having fallen into some feminist trap.