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Nawal El Saadawi
Nawal El Saadawi (Arabic: نو ال ا لسعد اوي) is an Egyptian physician, psychiatrist, feminist writer, and political activist. Through her own experiences and her work as a doctor, she saw first-hand the horrific effects of oppressive customs on women’s bodies and minds. Her experiences led to a lifelong fight against the religious, political, and cultural oppression of women. She is one of the foremost authorities on women in Islam, arguing that legal inequalities, forced veiling, polygamy, and female genital mutilation are at odds with the foundations of Islam or any religious faith. She has been described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World", and "Egypt's most radical woman".
Nawal El Saadawi was born in 1931 in Kafr Tahla, Egypt. Although her parents were relatively progressive, she was brought up in a conservative extended family. Her family valued boys much more than girls, and her grandmother told her that “a boy is worth 15 girls at least... girls are a blight." At the age of 6, Saadawi was subjected to female genital mutilation. At 10, her family attempted to arrange a marriage for her, but she objected and her mother supported her resistance. Her father encouraged her to think for herself and express her ideas, and to learn Arabic and pursue an education.
In 1955, she graduated with an MD from Cairo University. She went to work as a doctor in her hometown, where she witnessed the oppression and difficulties faced by rural women. Through her medical practice, she saw that patriarchal culture, classism, and imperialism had negative impacts on women's physical and psychological health. After attempting to protect one of her patients from domestic violence, she moved back to Cairo, where she became the Director of the Ministry of Public Health, and continued to work as a physician and psychiatrist.
In 1966, she earned a master’s degree in public health at Columbia University. In 1972, she published Woman and Sex (المرأة والجنس), a book discussing patriarchal aggressions against the female body including female genital mutilation, which became a foundational feminist text. Due to publication of this book and her other political activities, Saadawi was fired by the Ministry of Public Health, and also lost her position as Assistant General Secretary of the Medical Association. She moved on to research women and neurosis at the medical school at Ain Shams University from 1973-76, and acted as the United Nations Advisor for the Women's Programme in Africa and the Middle East from 1979-80.
She continued her fight against the oppression of women, and in 1981, she helped publish a feminist magazine, Confrontation. Due to her criticism of the Egyptian government and President Anwar Sadat, she was arrested and incarcerated at Qanatir Women's Prison, but this didn’t stop her. She recognized and accepted that "Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies".
She formed the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, the first legal feminist group in Egypt, while imprisoned. Although prisoners were not allowed to have pens or paper, she continued to write using a "stubby black eyebrow pencil" and "a small roll of old and tattered toilet paper." One month after Sadat’s assassination, she was released from prison. She wrote her 1983 Memoirs from the Women's Prison (مذكرات في سجن النساء) about her experiences while incarcerated.
In 1993, she fled Egypt due to Islamist death threats, and began teaching at Duke University and at the University of Washington. She went on to positions at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the Sorbonne, Georgetown, UC Berkeley, and Cairo University. All the while, she continued her writing and activism. In 2011, at age 80, she was among the protesters in Tahrir Square in 2011, advocating to abolish religious curricula in Egyptian schools. She passed away in March of 2021, aged 89, in Cairo.
In addition to founding the Arab Women's Solidarity Association, Nawal El Saadawi was co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. She was awarded honorary doctorates on three continents, and won the North-South Prize from the Council of Europe (2004), the Inana International Prize, Belgium (2005), the Sig Dagerman Prize (2011). She was one of BBC’s 100 Women in 2015, and was the subject of the film biography She Spoke the Unspeakable, broadcast in 2017 by BBC One. In 2020, she was one of Time Magazine’s 100 Women of the Year.
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