Huda Sha'rawi

I first heard of Huda Sha'rawi when I heard my Dad and my uncles talking about her during our traditional breakfast on the garden. 

My father said that Huda Sha'rawi had led the first feminist movement in Egypt early in the 20th century. 

I instantly became interested!

Huda Sha'rawi came into awareness that being born a female meant that she would live a different life. 

She started to understand the word patriarchy-that is, the power men had accorded themselves irrespective of class, to make rules and to impose their rules on women to keep them subordinate.

Huda Sha'rawi was born Nur al-Huda Sultan in 1879 at Minya in Upper Egypt on her father's vast estate. Huda was five years old when her father died. Upon the death of Sultan Pasha his sister's son Ali Sha'rawi had become the legual guardian of Huda and her brother, and the wakil, the agent or executor, of their late father's estate.

When Huda was thirteen, her mother arranged her betrothal to her cousin and guardian. At fourteen she separated from her husband and she returned to live under her family pressure.

When Huda was twenty-one, she started rebelling. She was deeply distressed by the preferential treatment given her brother, and the other males of her family, even questioning her own identity as a daughter.

One day, she asked her mother's co-wife why she was not able to raise her voice like her brother.

She replied: "One day the support of the family will fall upon him. When you marry you will leave the house and honor your husband's name but your brother will perpetuate the name of his father and take over his house. You understand now, Huda?"

Huda was not convinced so she decided to take action and she decided to change her world.

Huda Sha'rawi recounts how a woman poet who came periodically to stay in the family house did not suffer from the same limitations as women in the household. Huda said that the woman poet used to sit with the men and discuss literary and cultural matters. Huda said that observing this woman poet convinced her that, with education, with learning, women could be the equal of men if not surpass them.

At the age of forty,Sha'rawi took to the podium to commemorate Bahithat al-Badiyah, in what can only be called a feminist eulogy, to carry her mission.

Margot Badran described Sha'rawi's dictation of her memoirs as her "final unveiling" and her "final feminist act" in the preface of the English translation of the memoirs, Harem Years.

Indeed, Huda Sha'rawi is remembered and celebrated as the pioneer of Egypt's woman's movement and her efforts, partly through the publication of L'Egyptienne, shaped the ideal of the New Egyptian Woman.

The pages of L'Egyptienne give readers an understanding of early Egyptian feminism, articulating women's goals and hopes for the future.

Huda Sha'rawi (1879-1947), an active participant in the nationalist movement, founded a new organization in 1923, the Egyptian Feminist Union (EFU), as a forum for women's feminist demands. 

Aurep-Nordin, Elisabeth. “Les sourds-muets en Egypte.” L’Egyptienne 1, no. 6 (1925): 187-191. 

Badran, Margot. Feminists, Islam, and the Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. 

Baron, Beth. Egypt As A Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. 2005. --. 

The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. 

“La Baronne von Kardoff.” L’Egyptienne 5, no. 49 (1929). 

“Bilan de l’année féministe de 1938.” 

L’Egyptienne 14, no. 151 (1939): 40-42. 

Booth, Marilyn. “The Egyptian Lives of Jeanne d’Arc.”

 In Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, edited by Lila Abu-Lughod, 171-199. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. --.