Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi (born October 27, 1931, Kafr Ṭaḥlah, Egypt—died March 21, 2021, Cairo) was an Egyptian public health physician, psychiatrist, author, and advocate of women’s rights. Sometimes described as “the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab world,” El Saadawi was a feminist whose writings and professional career were dedicated to political and sexual rights for women.

El Saadawi was educated at Cairo University (M.D., 1955), Columbia University in New York (M.P.H., 1966), and ʿAyn Shams University in Cairo (where she performed psychiatric research in 1972–74). In 1955–65 she worked as a physician at Cairo University and in the Egyptian ministry of health, and in 1966 she became the director-general of the health education department within the ministry. In 1968 she founded Health magazine, which was shut down by Egyptian authorities several years later, and in 1972 she was expelled from her professional position in the ministry of health because of her book Al-Marʾah wa al-jins (1969; Women and Sex), which was condemned by religious and political authorities. She conducted research at ʿAyn Shams on Egyptian women suffering from neurosis; its case studies inspired her novel Amraʾah ʿind nuqṭah al-ṣifr (1975; Woman at Point Zero). Her nonfiction book Al-Wajh al-ʿarī lī al-marʾah al-ʿarabiyyah (1977; The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World) established her work internationally for its discussion of female genital cutting and commentary on the patriarchy of religious fundamentalism. El Saadawi was jailed in September 1981, and during the two months of her imprisonment she wrote Mudhakkirāt fī sijn al-nisāʾ (1984; Memoirs from the Women’s Prison) on a roll of toilet paper using a smuggled cosmetic pencil.

In 1982 El Saadawi founded the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association (AWSA) and later served as editor of the organization’s publication, Al-Nūn. In 1991 the government closed down Al-Nūn and then, several months later, AWSA itself. Due to her outspoken views, El Saadawi continued to face frequent legal challenges from political and religious opponents, including accusations of apostasy. In 2002 a legal attempt was made by an Islamist lawyer to forcibly divorce her from her husband, and in May 2008 she won a case that had been brought against her by Al-Azhar University, the major centre of Islamic learning, that included charges of apostasy and heresy.

El Saadawi’s novels, short stories, and nonfiction deal chiefly with the status of Arab women, as in Mudhakkirāt ṭabībah (1960; Memoirs of a Woman Doctor), Al-Khayt wa al-jidār (1972; The Thread and the Wall), Al-Ḥubb fī zaman al-nafṭ (1993; Love in the Kingdom of Oil), and Al-Riwāyah (2004; The Novel). The oppression of women by men through religion is the underlying theme of El Saadawi’s novel set in a mental institution, Jannāt wa Iblīs (1992; Jannāt and Iblīs). The female protagonists are Jannāt, whose name is the plural of the Arabic word for paradise, and Iblīs, whose name refers to the Devil.