The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights held a roundtable entitled “feminizing the Egyptian Revolution… the political future in Egypt” on Thursday, April 7, 2011. Male and female media workers and decision makers of the Egyptian media attended the roundtable.
The roundtable started with a speech of Mrs. Nehad Abul Komsan, head of ECWR, on the appearance of some powers that try to exploit women in order to control everything, to bring the society backward and to keep woman away from the democratic transition process. Moreover, the decision makers, be it the military council or the cabinet, do not care about involving women in this stage and they exclude women from the political future.
Dr. Yousef Zidan assured that it is not correct to give the name “Revolution” to an event in which women do not participate. One of the characteristics of any revolution is opposing injustice and especially social injustice that is set against everybody, men and women.
The revolutionary movements that recently started in the Arab World took a short period to achieve success, and here we mean “Tunisia’s and Egypt’s revolutions”. These two revolutions succeeded because of the participation of women of different ages; Egyptian women attended and participated in all stages of the Revolution, starting from the call to the revolution, the participation in it, the success of the revolution, and the referendum on the constitutional amendments in which women obviously participated. However, the attempts to exclude women are losses to men as it means a loss of half of the humanity; thus if women are to be excluded after the revolution, it will be an unjust revolution.
Mr. Mahmoud Musallam, a journalist and editor in chief of Al Hayat programs, talked about the problems that media workers face as they find it difficult to ask for help from female experts whether in written or visual work. Media channels and women organizations are responsible for exerting effort in order to enhance female experts in the media dialogue.
The participants agreed on the following:
- The necessity to focus on women’s role and not to exclude her
- Activating the role of the media in spreading women’s issues and highlighting their role in different revolutions such as that of Algeria and France, and their role in the rebuilding of Germany after they were defeated in the war. The participants affirmed women’s existence as political or legal experts and the necessity of changing the usual image of women.
- Assuring that women participated in the revolution not just to fight against the president but against him and his wife, because women feel oppressed; thus it is wrong to connect women’s issues with the president’s wife.
- Assuring that the calls to repeal women’s laws that gave the Egyptian women many gains and the calls to cancel councils are considered a setback. We shall work in order to counter such regressive powers and to assure that such laws were passed after a great fight by the civil society’s organizations and not by instructions of the ex-president’s wife.
- Activating the organizations of civil society and forming pressure groups that will work on holding trainings for female cadres and enable them to become effective representatives in the People’s Assembly.
- Assuring on the challenges that female candidates face such as the individual electoral system and large constituencies and society’s culture.
- The necessity of demanding that appointments in jobs shall be based on qualification and professionalism and not on personal connections that breach the principle of equality.
- The necessity of working on eliminating the patriarchal values in order to maintain women’s gains of the revolution.
