With Tahani El-Gebali likely to become Egypt's first sitting woman judge, Amina Elbendary reports on the issues behind this historic appointment The façades of courthouses often feature the blindfolded figure of Themis, the Ancient Greek goddess of law, holding a pair of scales. However, in Ancient Egypt justice was also figured as a woman, this time as the goddess Maat. With Cairo abuzz this week following news of the appointment of three women to the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), justice it seems is once more a woman. The most senior appointment, that of judge, goes to Tahani El-Gebali, 52, formerly an attorney at law. El-Gebali joins Samiha El-Disyawi and Amani Aboul- Nu'as, who have been appointed to one- year terms on the State Commissioners Authority, an advisory committee of legal experts attached to the SCC. Once confirmed by President Hosni Mubarak, El-Gebali's appointment will make her the first sitting woman judge in modern Egyptian history. Elated at the news, El-Gebali told Al-Ahram Weekly that she has postponed press interviews until after the appointment has been confirmed by the president, expected later this month. While Egyptian women have long worked in the country's judiciary, traditionally they have been barred from holding senior positions and from sitting as judges. It was only in 1998 that Counselor Hind Tantawi was appointed head of the Administrative Prosecution Authority (APA), whose current head, Counselor Nagwa Sadeq, is also a woman. For women, the road to senior judicial appointments has been a long one. "It's been more than 50 years," Aisha Rateb, lawyer and former minister of social affairs, told the Weekly. In 1949, Rateb, a young graduate of the Faculty of Law applied for the position of judge at the State Council, her application being rejected by the then Prime Minister Hussein Sirri Pasha on political grounds, with Judge Abdel-Razeq El-Sanhouri Pasha, then president of the State Council, stressing that Rateb had been rejected for social and political reasons. Though the Egyptian constitution guarantees the equality of men and women, generations of women law graduates have been denied appointment as deputies to the prosecutor-general, the traditional starting point in the career of any judge. Religious scholars have also disagreed on the permissibility of a woman holding senior positions of state, including that of judge. Three of the four main schools of Sunni jurisprudence deny women's right to any such appointment, with the fourth Hanafi school holding that a qualified woman can be appointed judge. However, Ahmed Taha Rayyan, former dean of the School of Shari'a and Law at Al-Azhar University, stresses that the Hanafis allow a woman to judge only on affairs where her testimony is accepted, such as cases related to family and financial affairs. The majority of Sunni Muslim jurists do not allow a woman to judge, he said, adding that while a woman could be appointed as assistant or adviser to men, she should not herself assume positions of high authority. Women should only head institutions that are devoted exclusively to women, such as girls' schools and women's colleges, Rayyan said. In the controversy following the appointments, others have argued that a woman's "emotional nature" makes her unfit for the judiciary. "Justice requires patience and sturdiness, which women lack," Rayyan said. While others have conceded that women have been able to fill important jobs with considerable success, society, they say, will not accept women judges, thereby compromising the judge's authority. Nevertheless, during the 1990s several rights groups campaigned to open up the legal profession to women, organising seminars and conferences to stir public debate. In October 2002, the Alliance of Arab Women (AAW) invited women judges from a number of Arab countries to a conference in Cairo, noting that 11 Arab countries, and even more Islamic countries, have women judges. As Hoda Badran, director of the AAW, explained to the Weekly, following the conference Egyptians, traditionally in the vanguard on women's rights, were shocked to realise that they were lagging behind other Arab states, such as Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco and Jordan, on this issue. The public has also gradually become more tolerant of the idea. Both the Sheikh of Al-Azhar and the Egyptian Grand Mufti have adopted the Hanafi opinion. Maamoun El-Hodeibi, supreme guide of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, is also of the view that there is no reason why a qualified woman should not hold senior positions in government, including that of judge. While the work of lobbyists has generally focussed on getting women accepted into the prosecutor-general's bureau, the first step on the judicial ladder, the decision to appoint three women to the SCC is a decision coming from above, a familiar occurrence in the history of women's rights in Egypt. "Nevertheless, it is a very important step that we hope will open up the way towards having women in all branches of the judiciary," argues Badran. Previously, detractors had claimed that a woman could not serve as a judge without first being trained as a prosecutor. El-Gebali will now be appointed judge without having completed that training. Until recently a member of the Nasserist Party, El-Gebali has spent her career as a lawyer. Graduating from Cairo University's Faculty of Law in 1973, she later earned a diploma in Islamic Shari'a, and was the first woman elected to the board of the Lawyer's Syndicate in 1989, being re-elected in the following round of elections. During her period at the Lawyer's Syndicate, El-Gebali entered into many controversies with other members of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated board. In 1992, she was the first woman elected to the Permanent Bureau of the Union of Arab Lawyers. She is also a legal expert at the UN, an international commercial arbitrator and a lecturer at the Arab Institute for Human Rights in Tunis.
