Recent political events in North African have led to a renewed interest in women status and political participation in Muslim societies, and in particular to their engagement with fundamentalist Islamist political parties. It is observable that fundamentalist political parties such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose political platform opposes gender equality, have attracted increase support from women voters, and also have increased the numbers of women members and political activists. Why do women in such significant numbers support a political party that does not support women's rights? In explaining women’s support for Islamist movements, a section of the academic literature has contributed to constructing a collective imagine of Muslim women as submissive subjects and victims of social patriarchal structures. To overcome this denial of women's agency this paper examines the motivation of female supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood as expressed in a range of written and web based material produced by the women themselves. Its findings suggest that the motivation of women in organisations such as the Muslim brotherhood, that has been engaged in the radical restructuring state, has a striking similarities with women's engagement in nationalist movements as both types of organisation are about challenging and defining political identity. In both cases women's core political views are not significantly different to those of men. Women as well as men in Egypt are engaged in an analysis of the failure of the Egyptian state and like men the political actions and policies that flow from this analysis are contained within a fundamentalist and an Islamist framework.
