Negotiating Gender Rights and Gender Relations in the Constitutionmaking Process in Egypt: Towards a ‘Thick’ Constitutional Guarantee for Women’s Rights

The purpose of this article is to explore gender-sensitive constitution-making. I will examine the constitution-making process in Egypt, as well as the constitutions themselves, from comparative constitutional law and gender perspectives, and I will then include the Japanese experience. Constitutionalizing or legalizing women’s issues is one of the most controversial or challenging legal areas because women’s issues are often assumed to be matters deeply embedded in tradition or culture, and therefore, it has been held that changing the status-quo relating to women’s issueswill erode the tradition or culture which should be protected.