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ឍះ៓៍ ឍះ៓។់, ឍះ់។។។។, ឍ់។។, ឦះ៓។។, ឍះ។។។, វ់។។.
ឋ់។។។, ធ៍៓ៈ, បះ។។, ប់៓, ұ់។៓, ច់។។, ប០។.
This revolution was groundbreaking. It made women grey next to men.
It made most of the Christians together. It made the non-willed women together.
It made elderly and young people together.
It made the young, the LGBT and heterosexuals together.
It was a unitary thought to all the Egyptian population.
For me personally, that was a momentarily acceptance.
And then things got back in it, back to moment when the little did change.
But the nature of the Egyptian society is somehow conservative and actually very patriarchal.
So what the revolution did for feminists from my point of view is that
like what it did for everyone else, for the idea that there is a chance
that along with everyone working on their own issues, we can work but not isolated.
We have a space that we need to fill, but to do that we need to be focused
and to continue our fight and to actively not disturb ourselves
by focusing on older issues like not being out of history and not being forgotten
and not being on closed doors, talking together and doing nothing.
We have to be in the streets in the heart of action.
This is what their revolution brought for us, to be in the action field itself.
My experience with the revolution, we started in 2014 in Jaan
and we had this, our slogan,
change, freedom and social justice.
In this slogan that we all believed and chatted for, inherent in it is women's rights.
We need to change the corrupt status quo
and we need freedom from all the norms and values that have oppressed us
and social justice in its broad term meaning equality and equal opportunities for us.
And for that reason and of course for our country and for our dignity
we went outside by side and we never thought of anything else.
Women challenged all barriers and been in the streets, they selected in the streets
to demand for their rights and suddenly after the revolution
they excluded from the scene and started talking about
okay, thank you, go back and we will take care about Egypt's arrangements
which is completely wrong.
But we understand that this could happen in transitional periods.
This has happened in Tunisia before us, this has happened in Eastern Europe
especially in transitional period women's situation is not good.
After 18 days, after 18 days
more than a political and legal period in the country started to happen.
In the face of women.
In a simple way, if we look at it, we will say that
we want to stop the rule of law
and stop the constitution of the state.
The constitution of the state is not for men only for women.
Because we should have a government.
And it's strange.
Because I participated in the city because I was a witness
and because I was in the middle of the city
because of the fact that I joined the constitution
because I was a society.
We have to be present,
We have to have a voice in what's happening. We have to have a true representation. We have to be active in decision making.
We have now in Egypt two front, front of Democrats who believe of democracy and engagement of all people,
which have liberals and progressive and secular and who believe of better future for all Egyptians.
And those groups focus on political arrangements and they didn't care or they didn't have attention for political participation of women.
And they consider it will come directly if we arranged everything. And actually I consider this is lack of vision because if they read the previous revolution all over the world,
if they read quite well the transitional period and the challenges, if they read about the added value of women participation, they wouldn't say this.
But they really care about arranging things from male perspective, from their perspective and definitely women issue is not in DNA.
Another front who consider women priority because they are the Troy horse to kidnap Egypt, which is conservative and political Islamist group,
and consider women issue is very important and first thing to talk about.
So they talk about veil, separation between men and women. They talk about rule of women attacking all legislation related to women,
family status law, nationality law, child law, all legislation consider women human and consider women as citizenship equal base.
They are attacking, they want to cancel it and the black mailing society by name of Suzan Mubarak, the wife of the president and they say this is Suzan Mubarak legislation.
This is Suzan Mubarak.
This is Suzan Mubarak.
This is Suzan Mubarak.
The family laws that Suzan have did related to the custody of the children, the stipends for women and children, some of them was very good.
Maybe those people hated those laws at this moment and now they think it's a chance to return back women to the proper Islamic or the proper course of things,
which is mostly patriarchal more than Islamic, it doesn't have any reasons.
They still use this almost fascist language when they are offering changes.
They say this is the Islamic version, it doesn't say it's my opinion, although if you discuss with him and debate you will tell you it's my opinion.
Why you offer it as God, the word of God? So we still have this problem in talking with these parties with Islamic references or Muslim Brotherhood.
Many of them are not enough modest to say it's our proposal to a better life.
They say it's haram and they say it was an elitist approach and everything that comes out from the Mubarak family is bad, which is ridiculous of course.
Because we cannot bring down all the schools and all the bridges and all the tunnels.
And actually I say this is a Troy horse because this is exactly what's happened in Algeria.
Who gave Gabhat Al-Inqaz a Syriskyu front in Algeria, all votes in the election in 1990 women, because women less educated, less aware, we have in Egypt a high percentage of literacy among women.
We have women suffer more from poverty so anyone can give them any support food or supplies or any kind of support they will follow them.
One of the big hearts that the previous regime did is the percentage of poverty in Egypt.
About half of the Egyptians is around the poverty line or pillow.
It's hard when you hear about this milliarders and this a lot of monies and lands and companies, they all.
Susan Mubarak had lots of money on her own in the banks, which means that she had a cut in every penny that was coming to the country for the houses that she was presumably defending, so she didn't give enough of the financial aid to the people who needed it.
I cannot forget once when I was in my work, I was working in emergency at NETT, so I was speaking with a woman before giving the NETT easier.
I told her you are circumcised. She said yes.
And you will do so with your daughter? She said yes.
I asked her all the television and the media and the NGOs and doctors saying this is a bad habit and harmful for girls and maybe harmful for you.
What was the answer? It was a very diligent word.
This is a virtue not for us or our families. This is for the civilians or the intellectual ones.
This is not for us.
The issue of having a Western agenda is that this is like an old debate and I think it is close to credit because the framework that all activists and women's rights are human rights.
We are all living in a world that is, I would believe, the framework of work and activism and everything is the international standards of human rights.
This is the basic human rights that can be found in the international convention of human rights 60 years ago.
These are the things that you can find and these are the framework we are working with.
These are the democratic values and this is how I see things should go and advance and going back to this Western agenda even more and more and more and it is not only in Egypt and I would say in the region and even in the global south.
We are talking from South America to Asia going through Africa. Everyone is accusing human rights to be a Western agenda but it is not a Western agenda. It is a human agenda so I wouldn't go into this debate on our personal level.
There is a movement of working on women's rights from getting more new interpretations of Sharia to gain more rights for women.
This is something perfect, this is important but still those people who are thinking differently from religion just care about the culture.
The women's rights and humanism is authentic Egyptian agenda. It came from the deep rooted principles in the Egyptian society of equality and justice.
Egyptian people have been always glorifying women like Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Nefertari, all the heroes were featured next to their wives equals with putting their hands on their shoulder.
Hatshepsut was the first woman to rule a kingdom, an emperor, she was the emperor of Egypt, the pharaoh of Egypt and some people say Nefertari is a nobleman.
But you had this women's rights fight in every culture actually I mean it's not like an inherent Western culture to have equality and an inherent little Eastern culture to have inequality. Maybe the fight is different in different things but you have like Tunisia they have a majority of Muslims and supposedly a close Arab culture
Then you have more advanced women's rights and you have like in America you had very similar fights years ago on very similar rights so I don't see it as an inherent religious culture problem but of course it's a problem that has culture in any religious aspect
But I see it as a power game, like no one gives women's rights gracefully, no one gives any rights gracefully, rights are grabbed, are required for it.
So the biggest problem is that it's not that they are not giving us our rights, the biggest really what's huge is that we are not fighting for those rights for our rights, women are not fighting for their rights.
The idea didn't come from the activist in reality, it's a coalition for women organizations that working about 12 years ago in this separation of the international women's day to a collective work and a collective separation
But the use invited all to share in a big demonstration to save this what we gain in the revolution that women have to share in all the changes and will never be back to home
We are still present, we have to share in politics, in the constitution of changes, in new laws, in the new government and then we are a part of this revolution and that changes came as I said before
I don't know which tense to speak about but I think all the tenses in English language can't express how I feel. I was overwhelmed and it was brutal. I was overwhelmed because we went from the press syndicate to the top, the middle of Tahir, Tahir Square
We were chanting, I was very happy, it was a windy day, but it was ok and we were invaded in the street but when we reached Tahir Square the Salafis, the men, the misogynists
Actually the fundamentalists and misogynists were essentially harassed girls and they beat them and they swear to them
It was a shock, we were so little numbers, we were harassed, some of us were beaten, some of us were sexually harassed and we heard the worst things said to us
Like you are a foreigner, you are not Egyptian, you come from, and I would have died just like you are
And now I am called a foreigner and now I am called deaf out and I am not, so that was a shock and this was the first shock. We didn't have solidarity with other women because a lot of people saw this as I don't know how can I call it
A class related demands or advance out of the revolution or this is not what we offer
We have a problem with the International Women's Day in Egypt because we were very happy about it but you might take a look and see that there were cops fighting for their rights, there were students fighting for their rights
And we forgot that our main issue is to be in the streets and present and we could have had a stronger voice being with those people in the university
We are here as women, as families, we support each and every cause and not just talking to ourselves and international media that we are celebrating women's day, this is not true, we should have been in other fights by our own identity as feminists and as women
We didn't talk to ourselves and as an idea that there is an appearance for women in general, this is an idea that is not available or is not available, I don't know
So I think that this was a mistake or something else this time and I was very happy, I was very happy that we are asking for a peaceful stop in the city to honor the martyrs
Women working together that is needed, importantly in women working together is alien to the society
The main challenges now is to really build a movement, a women's rights movement, not only NGOs, not only projects, not only programs, but a real healthy and strategized movement
With very clear demand that can reach normal people, what we call grassroots people
This is first we have to build this agenda, second we have to come up with these demands
The next thing I would say is that to see women's rights as part of the whole package of democracy, so calling for a civil democratic state
We have to mainstream women's rights in these demands for democracy and civil, democratic and civil, so this would be the third challenge to mainstream our demands inside the whole society
Some of the support is needed to be top bottom, like coming with some policies, with new governments, policies for gender equality, for changing, for closing the gender gap or working on some positive discriminatory measures
Just like the quota or things like that, we need some help from the top also, we cannot wait until we change awareness in the perception of the public
I talked with lots of women leaders, you young women in the revolution, they said, one of them told me, if I want to be minister I will be
There is no discrimination, I told their coach you tell others is the recipe because there is many women want to be a minister, but they don't know what is the recipe
And actually this is the lack of vision and experience because they consider everything will be arranged and women's status will be directly become better
This is not true, we have to emphasize this part, but what I see is they generous enough to wait, but they are not weak
So in the moment they will discover, they will discover they have been discriminated, they are strong enough to defend their rights
So instead of 20 women, we will take half of the society and there will be no women, no system of women that will be able to do that, and we will be in another revolution to take half of the society and there will be no society for our country
We need something that can touch every woman
We need something that can touch every woman
When we talk about harassment, we are all involved because we all have it and we are all touched by it as women and we are all against it
And you cannot have a certain imam or sheikh that will tell you this is haram to call again, if we use, we have to use to start choosing our battles, things that really touch the people and things that we can actually fight for
Everything can change to the good side and the bad side according to what you are doing for it, are we just silently working on things irrelevant, are we just separated from the world or are we forcing our presence, if we are not forcing our presence we do not deserve to be present, it's our cause we need to work on it
Solidarity is very important, but I think this is where haram has to come from the grassroots level
Yemeni women came out to the thousands and thousands of them on the streets, they sent a very strong message, not only to the president, to themselves
I think this is what we need, not only for women movements to come together, but for Egyptian women to realize that they are one entity
Of course, there is no revolution or the change of democracy in the country that does not depend on the society as a whole
But if we rely on one half and he is the man, I think we are going back to the dictatorship, we will not go back to the democratic one, because we are in the revolution
And I see now a very beautiful thing came after the revolution, definitely the most important thing is our freedom
The most important thing to come out from the revolution is our freedom, and there is a price for this freedom
We bade and we have to bade and part of what we have now is a price for this freedom
How we organize things to go in the right way, this is our responsibility now
But in addition to our freedom, the most beautiful thing I saw, women who have no relation with anything, they never participated before, they have been in the street
Women who never participated in voting, they have been in referendum
Women who have not engaged with anything, now they are making demonstrations in the street, asking for their rights and their children's rights
Again, it is the threat of cancelling family status law, which gave us a very important indicator
Or I am sure what I said, women, Egyptian women before 25th of January is not anymore Egyptian women after 25th of January
Thank you for watching!
