Renowned feminist figure, Nawal Al-Saadawi, said on Saturday that poverty is not the exclusive problem women confront, their real problems lie in not being aware of their entitlement to rights.
The founder and president of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association said that Egyptian women who do not suffer poverty are also subjected to oppression, harassment and different forms of physical abuse.
“Women of all social classes are subject to various forms of sexual, economic, social and even intellectual oppression,” Saadawi said.
In an open discussion with the prominent psychiatrist, she said that she knows quite well that poor women suffer more, stressing, “Women’s freedom should not be ripped-off under the pretext of poverty.”
The Egyptian political analyst and fighter for the human rights of women, was born in rural Egypt in 1931. She had personally undergone female genital mutilation. Saadawi is an adherent fighter of this commonplace ritual in Egypt.
Saadawi condemned what she described as the “government’s rigid stance towards the establishment of particular entities, preventing feminist organization that are not distinctively approved by the government for being consistent with its agenda from being founded.”
The 80-year-old political activist believes that liberating Egypt is not to be isolated from liberating women, she explained, “Women are half the society, you cannot liberate society if women are constrained.”
She pointed out that the January uprising erupted for the eradication of poverty, oppression and tyranny, explaining that the women’s issues are a science studied in universities outside of Egypt.
Saadawi graduated as a medical doctor in 1955 from Cairo University. From 1973 to 1976 she worked on researching women and neurosis at the Ainshams University’s Faculty of Medicine. From 1979 to 1980 she was the United Nations Advisor for the Women's Programme in Africa (ECA) and Middle East (ECWA).
