On March 13, Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway, came to AUC. When someone asked about child marriages, she responded that "in those societies, women are not valued as equals."


On April 7, I crossed the border to Israel, and the border officer checking my passport asked why I was studying in Egypt. When I responded that I study Women's Studies, she asked, "Women's Studies there?"


On April 23, Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian columnist and activist, published a piece in Foreign Policy magazine that begins: "We [Arab women] have no freedoms because they hate us."

Egypt taught me that feminism isn't easy.

I don't want to write to you today about the status of women in the Middle East. I don't want to write to you about the role of women in Islam. And I do not want to write about how Arab women aren't valued or how they have no freedom. I am not here because of those questions.


I am here because women like Samira Ibrahim, subject to forced virginity tests at the hands of the military, are taking their cases to court. I came here because of women who organized and mobilized in the textile workers' strikes and the food shortage demonstrations before risking their lives in Tahrir Square last January and at every demonstration since. I came here because women are here, working to end military trials, standing for free, peaceful protests, supporting fair elections and a democratic constitution, and defending Egyptians' right to the original slogan of the revolution: "bread, freedom, and social justice."

I came here because feminism doesn't always have a place for these stories. When I say that I study Women's Studies in the Middle East, the frequent assumption is not that I study the courage and power of these women, and the millions more across the region; the assumption is that I study their status, generally assumed to be that of victims, suppressed by religion and limited by lack of education, mutilated by female genital cutting and economically and politically silent.


It is very hard for me to respond because, of course, you should not just take the word of an American girl with shaky Arabic for any of this. But I do not think that it is right to see the women of Egypt as victims.

This is not to say that it isn't hard to be a woman in Egypt right now (not that it seems easy to be an Egyptian man, either, or anyone anywhere, for that matter). Sexual harassment is a daily struggle, women are underrepresented in government, business, and religious hierarchies, and the country's economic vulnerability has specific implications for women in finding and keeping work and in providing for their families.

But I think that if we focus only on these problems, we miss so much of the story. I think sometimes that I look for the stories of oppression, from sexual harassment to political marginalization, without understanding that women are never only victims. Their resistances, complex and diverse, are always present, even when they are harder to find.

This is an obvious-sounding truth that I have learned in Egypt: the women are here. Women are organizing much of the Muslim Brotherhood's grassroots service operations. They are leading strikes, protesting for the right of Salafi candidates to run for office, sleeping in Tahrir Square, and reporting, writing about, and teaching in this moment. They are going to work and working at home, taking care of families and friends. They're driving next to my bus in the morning while talking on cell phones held in place by their hijabs. They are dying and being wounded in protests and caring for others in makeshift hospitals in the squares. They are being detained and fighting for the freedom of other political prisoners. I think that when we expect to see only oppression, we do not see all of this.

This graffiti is from Mohammed Mahmoud Street, adjacent to Tahrir Square, where 41 people were killed in clashes with the military this past November. It says: "The women of Egypt are present."