Activism, advocacy, and rebellion: Arab women through the work of nawal El Saadawi

Abstract

The Egyptian society is regarded as being masculinist and patriarchal. Research of this region, like many Arab societies, mainly focuses on women's sexuality, suppression, and-to a great degree-a lack of freedom. Arab women have been gazed upon as objects or chattel among Arab societies and Arab men, leading to heavy critique being delivered by the Western World against the lack of emancipation and sexual freedom Arab women are seemingly able to have agency over. Arab women are to be no longer a subject of the male gaze, but rather to be free agents in creating their own narratives. This chapter presents a critical review of Nawal El Saadawi's work and key ideas which have emerged in her writings about women's liberation in modern Arab societies. Having spent her life resisting and rebelling, and lobbying for the rights of others, El Saadawi was a psychiatrist, who emerged from poverty to international acclaim, ran for President, but was largely subject to social ostracization and even imprisonment throughout her life. El Saadawi grew frustrated with the lack of future thinking by successive governments. In doing so, she has urged Arab Women to seek opportunities to be heard, to pursue education, to be acknowledged as an active agent contributing to the fabrics of the Egyptian society and to be instrumental in the state's new beginnings. Whilst her work was widely accepted across the Western World, it remained controversial in the Arab World, we argue El Saadawi and her work has played a huge role in empowering Arab women. Moreover, the effects of her work have been more broadly applied across transcultural and transdisciplinary contexts to change the face of modern feminism.