Today, our world lost a feminist icon. Nawal El Sadaawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. In her book The Hidden Face of Eve, she described how she was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), which she fought against ever since, because it was a tool to oppress women. FGM was only in 2008 banned in Egypt.
Nawal was born in 1931 as the second child in a family that had both progressive and traditional views. Nawal was circumcised herself when she was just 6 years old, yet her father also insisted that his children got an education. Nawal did realise at a young age that girls were regarded as less valuable than boys. When both her parents died young, Nawal was left with the care of a large family.
In 1955, Nawal graduated as a medical doctor from Cairo University. She specialized in psychiatry. She later became director of public health for the Egyptian government but had to leave this position when she published her non-fiction book Women and Sex in 1972. In this book, she railed against FGM and the sexual oppression of women.
While the government continued to work against her (for example shutting down the magazine Healthwhich she founded), Nawal never stopped her fight for women’s rights. In 1975, she published Woman at Point Zero (a novel based on the true story of a woman on death row) and in 1977, Nawal published the book The Hidden Face of Eve, where she talked both about her own experience with FGM and her experience as a village doctor witnessing sexual abuse, prostitution and honour killing.
In 1987, Nawal was arrested as part of a group dissidents under president Sadat. She spent 3 months in prison. When president Sadat was assassinated, she was released. They then censored her work and her books were banned. Because of her fight for women’s rights, in which she didn’t shy away from conservative believers, she received death threats, was taken to court and later went into exile in the USA. There, she continued her fight for feminism.
In 2018, a BBC presenter suggested that she tone down her criticism, to which she replied
“No. I should be more outspoken, I should be more aggressive, because the world is becoming more aggressive, and we need people to speak loudly against injustices. I speak loudly because I am angry. ”
While she gained much international recognition for her fight for women’s rights , she never got recognition from her home country Egypt, something she really dreamed off. In 1996, she returned to Egypt.
Very interesting to read: this interview she gave: Saadawi, Nawal El, and Adele S. Newson-Horst. “Conversations with Nawal El Saadawi.” World Literature Today, vol. 82, no. 1, 2008, pp. 55–58.
