The Extraordinary Women Of Egypt

The short documentary The Women of Tahrir Square is fascinating. It’s about the power of individuals to affect social change, of course. But it’s also about Egyptian women “defying all of the Western world’s stereotypes.”

The women in this film — secular and more observant, in jeans and hijabs — deliberately challenge the simplistic picture of themselves as “perennial victims, perennially subservient” and are, to a woman, clearly fed up with having to respond to a stereotype that has nothing to do with their reality. Says one distinguished writer, Adhaf Soueif, she wants to “present Islam as a feminist faith.” While the film is short — and will not be a revelation to those who have been following the events in Egypt closely — it’s both a good overview from a woman’s perspective and an eloquent demonstration of the importance of the female voice in both the revolution and the country’s future. And it ends on a heartening note: “I’ve never been as comfortable as a woman as I have been in the past two days.”