When Bothaina Kamel begangathering signatures for her campaign to be not only Egypt’s firstdemocratically elected president, but also its first female leader incenturies, just about everyone knew the campaign wouldn’t succeed. But thatwasn’t the point. As Kamel said during the run-up to the presidential electionsin May, “We have to dream.”
The women of Egypt, Kamelincluded, are certainly dreamers. They dreamt of a government free from tyrannywhen they held hands with their brethren in Tahrir Square in 2011. They dreamtof a future free from harassment, as report after report of rape and assault byboth their men and their military continued to surface.
InMarch 2011, Samira Ibrahim was arrested with dozens of other protesters inTahrir Square and taken to a military facility where so-called "virginitytests" were being administered to detained women. When she wasordered to strip down so that an army doctor could make sure she was a virgin,Ibrahim complied. But that action ignited a firestorm of retaliation thatresulted in the 25-year-old suing the Egyptian government for sexual assaultand winning.
El-Saadawi is a careerdissident and renegade author. Now 80, she has aged with character andresembles something of a caricature ” short, petite body; broad, heart-shapedface; and a large head crowned by a swath of puffy, white Einstein-esque hair.“All my life I was revolting,” she said, ticking off a string of Egyptianrulers. But today, El-Saadawi couldn’t even muster the interest to run forparliament again, despite it being the freest such vote in Egypt’s modernhistory. Her failed 2005 election was “impossible,” she said approvingly,explaining that it was “creative, at that moment, to be against Mubarak."“But this election is possible,” she said dismissively. Now she’s calling for acounter-revolution in Egypt, be it by protesting in Tahrir Square or holing upin an obscure village to work on her latest book.
While many women wereencouraged that the media was highlighting the issue of gender equality at all,a fight in which they had been personally engaged for years, others werefrustrated by what they saw as superficial coverage, with frequent referencesto women in burqas standing hand-in-hand with those in tight jeans.
Yet one attitude was commonamongst all those interviewed “ namely, an insistence on abstaining fromoverarching judgments about what the current state of Egyptian politics meansfor women, and what their role is in the continuing uprising.
