Abstract
This paper investigates how the socio-political context shapes women’s exposure to traumas and influences women’s perceptions of and responses to these traumas. Narratives of five Egyptian trauma survivors were examined to explain the modes of victimization of, and resistance by these women in the context of Egypt post-2011 revolution. The paper focuses on sexual and political violence as two forms of gendered traumas that are tightly connected to socio-political changes after the 2011 revolution and the following military coup of 2013. Applying the interpretative phenomenological analysis and employing a feminist contextual lens, five themes emerged highlighting (a) the survivors’ gendered readings of the context in which their traumas occurred, (b) how the construction of stereotypical femininities and masculinities shaped the five women’s exposure and response to trauma, (c) their everyday practices of resistance, (d) their actions of resistance during the traumatic events, (e) and finally their sense of victimization versus sense of agency. The analysis underlines the necessity for women’s experiences of traumas to be read as manifestations of the wider gendered context and to be considered through a sociopolitical lens. As the paper captures contextual factors that contribute to the differences and similarities in the five women’s experiences, it challenges the traditional psycho-medical understanding of trauma and suggests different premises for trauma interventions.
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Notes
The practice of cutting parts of external female genitalia, mostly happening to girls between the age of 8 and 12.
The trauma therapy that followed this study is a tailored version of Narrative Exposure Therapy that adapted the intervention modality based on a feminist analysis of the participants narratives. The intervention specifically employed the extracted five themes to help the participants process their traumatic experiences and reach a better self-appreciation. The intervention consisted of 90 to 120-minute individual sessions held weekly, with the total number of sessions ranging between 0 and 12 for each participant. The intervention started with an initial psychoeducational session on trauma, PTSD and intervention techniques. Subsequent sessions consisted of narration and in-depth discussions of each traumatic event indicated by the participants, with a purpose of reaching habitation and constructing a coherent narrative and post-trauma meaning.
All names were changed to pseudonym to protect the participants privacy.
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Acknowledgements
We thank El Nadim Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence who hosted the implementation of this research. We express our deep appreciation and gratitude to the five participants who generously shared their stories and showed their trust and cooperation.
Funding
This work was supported by the Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain) under the grant [Coopération au développement-2015]; and the Open Society Foundation under the Civil Society Scholar Award [number IN2018-44588].
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The study conforms to the APA ethical standards on the treatment of research participants, including the rights to privacy, confidentiality, self-determination, and the avoiding harm (APA, 2017). The psychiatric board of the hosting institute in Egypt revised and approved the study protocol and its ethical considerations prior to the implementation of the interviews. A written informed consent statement was discussed and signed with each participant prior to the interviews (more details concerning the ethical considerations are under the methodology section).
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Barakat, K.S., Philippot, P. The Lives of Egyptian Women Between Continuous Trauma and Everyday Resistance: A Feminist Analysis of Narratives of Five Survivors in the Context of 2011 Revolution and its Aftermath. Gend. Issues 41, 2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-024-09321-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-024-09321-z