Twelve Egyptian women have made it onto the list of the most powerful Arab women in 2014, a list that includes writers, legal experts, business women, artists, activists, and academics. Mirvat al-Tilawi, Tahani al-Gibali, Yosra, Lamis al-Hadidi, Hanan Soliman, Hoda Qotb, Mona al-Tahawi, Ghada Amer, Dalya Megahed, Anisa Hlassuna, Nawal al-Saadawi, and Sahar al-Salab are all included in the list in a tribute to their careers and commitment to the arts, science and economy of the region. International Women's Day, marked on 8 March, is an occasion for us to remember not only the outstanding women of the region, but also the history of the women's struggle. It was in Paris in 1945 that one of the first large gatherings of women's rights activists was held in the form of the International Congress of Women organised by activists Eugenie Cotton and Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier to promote peace, protect children, and enhance the status of women. Some researchers say the origins of modern-day feminism go back to 1856, when thousands of women protested in the streets of New York to demand better working conditions. In his book, Le Caire: Le Nil et Memphis, published in 1906, the French orientalist and Louvre curator Gaston Migeon also offered insights into the lives of Egyptian women at the time. His book, translated into Arabic by Medhat Ayed Fahmi, provides us with clues about women's lives in this country just over a century ago. In Migeon's time, Cairo had just started expanding to the west, and while much of the capital's commercial life was still conducted in the traditional neighbourhoods of Gammaliya and Moski, the Azbakiya part of town was beginning to acquire the European flavour it has kept to this day. Walking around this neighbourhood, one got a glimpse of middle-class Egyptian women wrapped from head to toe in black silk with embroidered face veils known as the burka to guard their identity and sense of modesty. Women's eyes, emphasised in kohl, were the only visible part of their bodies. This dress code was rather severe among middle-class women, whose engagements in public life were kept to a minimum. However, the opposite situation applied to women of the working classes and in the countryside. These women, having to make a living, had a more relaxed dress code. Migeon notes that “peasant women” in Egypt mixed freely with men in the marketplaces and weren't overly concerned about covering up. “She walks in the street with her face uncovered and wears a blue cotton dress, cut low at the breasts. Usually she has a long scarf hanging from the top of her hair to her shoulders, or all the way to the ground,” he wrote. Migeon, an art expert by training, was fascinated by the tattooed chins of peasant women, with their “three lines in green.” Their painted nails also caught his attention, “reddened by henna.” He also admired the way Egyptian women in the countryside walked “purposely and steadily” and the way they were able to balance heavy weights on their heads, “like an offering to the gods.” This was the image that Egypt offered to the first trickle of tourists that came to the country after the improvement in transportation and the invention of mass tourism. But this image was only fleeting, superficial, and impressionistic. Images of the period can tell us much about how things looked, but little of how Egyptian women really felt about their lives and the future. In fact, the turn of the last century ushered in a new beginning for Egyptian women. This was when the writer Qassem Amin wrote his famous book The Liberation of Women, and it was when Egyptian women began their fight for equality in education, jobs, and public life. As Migeon admired the country's colourful souqs, or marketplaces, and described the wedding processions in the streets, women such as princess Nazli Fadel were holding cultural salons for the country's top writers in which they discussed not only literature and art, but also politics and social change. A decade later, we find the first generation of women's rights activists, many of the country's affluent families staging their own struggle for equality. Hoda Shaarawi and Safiya Zaghlul inspired a whole new generation of women when they shed their veils and appeared with bare faces in public from 1919 onwards. Their contemporary, Saiza Nabarawi, captured the imagination of the country through her daring essays on women's right to equality. Nabarawi, who became editor of the publication Egyptian Woman when she was still in her twenties, was the granddaughter of Morad Bey, one of Egypt's last Mamluk rulers. Other women journalists that changed the face of cultural life in this country included Malak Nasef (a.k.a. Bahisat al-Badiya), Samira Musa Fatma (a.k.a. Rosa) al-Yussef, and Monira Sabet.
