She got a beating for it, but it worked, and that first victory gave her strength for the rest of her life: giant self-belief, and she needed it. Her campaign against the oppression of women in Egypt, from genital mutilation to routine marital thrashings, from puny inheritance rights to the wearing of the veil, hurled her against the authorities. Her writing was censored, her books banned. “Women and Sex”, published in 1969, cost her her job in the ministry of health.
So could a scalpel. She had no wish to be a doctor, but did so well at school that it became inevitable. As a girl she was lucky to be properly educated at all, when her place was in the kitchen among the onions. The only praise she ever received was when she learned to light the kerosene stove. Girls, her grandmother told her, were a blight; a boy was worth 15 times as much.
Nice to read a positive story here about a woman who gave hope to those other women who suffered so greatly.