| Personal Status Laws in Egypt are the secular translation of religious law into the modern legal system. These laws address a variety of issues, but are mainly concerned with regulation of the family and marital relationships. Personal Status Laws are politically controversial, and are used to construct and control Egyptian women. In particular, Article 11b of Law No. 100 of 1985 discusses the process of polygamous divorce. This article uses grammatical constructions and language choices to create Egyptian women as subjects. This has a myriad of impacts for women, the most specific being denying them agency and action in the divorce process related to polygamy. I use critical discoure analysis to interrogate how and why this subject construction is accomplished, and the lived and legal impacts that this has for women. |
