Renowned feminist author Nawal al-Saadawi speaks on women and the Egyptian Revolution

     The Egyptian online publication Bikyamasr.com featured an interview with  Nawal al-Saadawi, renowned feminist and author, on the subject of women in contemporary Egypt. Jailed under the Sadat regime, and then banished under Mubarek, Saadawi is not - perhaps unsurprisingly - nostalgic for the old guard, nor is she overly enthusiastic about the prevailing Islamist political parties, which she considers hostile to democracy.
     She argues instead that the political landscape be completely rewritten, and that the integration of women in the democratic process be the overarching priority:
   
     "Women are half the society. You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women . . . The slogan of the revolution was dignity, social justice and freedom. You cannot have dignity or social justice or freedom without women. The revolution is not only political. The social dimension must be there. The social problems, the culture problems, the legal problems must be changed just as the political law are changed."

      Interestingly, she contends that Egypt, at a cultural level, the level of the people, would have no qualms about backing a female presidential candidate, and that in fact the government, the military, and the Islamist parties and pressure groups are the ones responsible for institutionalizing misogyny. When asked whether or not Egyptians would turn out in mass to vote for a female president, she responded:


    "Of course. Men and women in Egypt are very tolerant toward women. I was a medical doctor in the village and I was examining men and women. You know Egypt has a history of tolerance toward women and Christianity and all religions. We are civilized, not the government . . . It is the government and colonialism. External colonialism. But if you go among people, it is different. My village supported me when I presented my name. And the men before the women. When I was a doctor there they were ready for me to examine them, so it depends about the women, her character, her program, her seriousness . . . "


      While I'm not certain my admittedly limited research on the subject predisposes me to agree, it's nonetheless a moving construct, and one that I'm sure speaks truth about to larger swaths of Egyptian society than is commonly believed.
       On a related note, The Egyptian Gazette ran an article a week before Saadawi's interview revisiting the atrocity of "virginity tests" and the brutal treatment of female protestors by security forces. In a tone I couldn't help reading as rhetorical, the article began, "What is this society, with its laws, institutions and taboos, doing to ensure that women have the right to demonstrate without being humiliated?"
      The answer - far too little. But people are at least being heard.