State feminism and international policy transfer negociations : the case of FGM in Egypt

Since the mid-1990s, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has been the subject of particular attention in Egypt. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development organised in Cairo brought Egypt, concerned about its international image, to raise the issue publicly and a law was eventually passed in 2008 officially banning the operation. My work is inspired by the analyses of transnational public policies that challenge the linear notion of international ‘transfers’. While the cause was added to the agenda in a context of international pressure and continues to be promoted and funded by international programmes, the anti-FGM policy has also been renegotiated several times within the political framework of public action specific to the national level. As the latest administration promoted women's rights as a key element for political change in 2013, my work focuses on analysing the period 2013-2021 in order to highlight the political and institutional configurations that are behind the accelerated adoption of UN gender standards over this period. Wishing to contribute to a better understanding of public action with regard to the practice of FGM, not as such, but as a case study of state feminism politics in a context of reliance on international aid, I show how, within a homogeneous development milieu, members of state institutions and Cairo-based representatives of international organisations work together to define the national anti-FGM norm, in a consensus that is both adapted to the national gender framework as defined by the state and in negotiation with international norms.