If you are in Stockholm, Sweden, on the 14th of May do not miss an evening with Egyptian activist, feminist, author, and doctor Nawal El Saadawi, organized by UN Women Sweden.
Nawal El Saadawi have spent her life fighting for women's rights in Egypt. Her struggle for equality and an end to gender-based violence is rooted in the experiences she had as a young girl growing up in Egypt. In an interview for the Independent, El Saadawi talks about how she at the age of six, in 1937, was pinned down by four women in her home, whereby a midwife with a razor blade cut of her clitoris. In her first autobiography, A Daughter of Isis, she later wrote about the ordeal and how it changed her life: "Since I was a child that deep wound left in my body has never healed."
El Saadawi has written 47 books about the problems facing women in Egypt, including Women and Sex in 1972, for which she lost her job as director of public health for the Egyptian Ministry of Health. In the 1980s she spent three months in jail for "crimes against the state". While behind bars she wrote her memoir of life in a female prison with eyeliner on toilet paper.
In 2011 she took part in the protests on Tahrir Square in Cairo against Hosni Mubarak and have since been a front figure in the Arab Spring. Her activism and books have led the way for a new generation of Egyptian women who are not afraid to challenge the chains of patriarchalism. Today El Saadawi is in her eighties and have no intention on
scaling down her activism. She recently stated passionately:"I'm fighting against the patriarchal, military, capitalist, racist post-modern
slave system. I am going to fight for this for ever." (The Independent)
On the 14th of May (19.00-21.00) Nawal El Saadawi will speak at Södra Teatern in Stockholm. Whereby there will be an open dialouge led by Margareta Winberg (Chairman of UN Women Sweden). The event is free and open to the public.
For more information about the event visit UN Women Sweden's website http://unwomen.se/event/nawal-el-saadawi-pa-sverigebesok/
(Photo: The Guardian)
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