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AUSTRALIA

Thousands of men and no groping

  • 15 February 2011

A striking aspect of the Egyptian revolution which led to the resignation of its president Hosni Mubarak on Friday 11 February was the participation of youth and women.

Although the cameras focused, especially in the early days, primarily on the men standing up for their rights in Tahrir Square, plenty of women also joined the crowds.

Women, young and old, were on the frontlines, organising security and braving tear gas and gunfire as they called for Mubarak's unseating. Women volunteers monitored the entrance to the Square, checking identification and searching bags to make sure no one brought in weapons. Women were in the Square when men on camels and horseback charged into the crowd beating them with whips.

Women doctors cared for the wounded and bleeding people who were taken to a makeshift hospital in a nearby mosque, after clashes broke out between pro-Mubarak and pro-democracy supporters.

And as women joined men in the square and on the streets, calling for an end to the Mubarak regime, they brought their children, including young girls. Some even camped out in the cold.

These women joined a long history of women who struggled for recognition of their human rights and for freedom in Egypt. They included women such as Malak Hifni Nassef (1886–1918), an Islamic modernist reformer, and Nabaweya Moussa (1886–1951), a pioneer of women's education in Egypt.

Then there was Hoda Sharawi (1879–1947), a writer and political activist who helped lead the first women's street demonstration during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. She became an icon of the Egyptian women's liberation movement.

As the West continued to occupy and exploit Egypt, and an Islamist backlash occurred from the 1930s, most of the gains made by these women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were obstructed and almost vanished. 

It was fitting that Nawal el-Saadawi, Egyptian psychiatrist, activist and former director general of public health education, was there to celebrate Mubarak's departure. She spent time in prison for opposing the Anwar al-Sadat regime. In 1982 she founded the Arab Women's Solidarity Association to promote women's participation in social, economic, cultural and political life. It was later banned by Mubarak.

Ruheya, a 21-year-old university student who had travelled from the town of Sharqeya, 160 km north of Cairo said, 'There are Christian girls here, there are girls