(Cairo, June 8, 2021)
The seventh season of Nehad’s Stories TV Show, presented by Nehad Abu AlKomsan, senior lawyer and ECWR’s chairwoman, started in its first episode with discussing the issue of rural women. Nehad emphasized that rural women suffer from high illiteracy rates and an increase in the number of working hours. Rural women work at least 16 hours a day between housework and helping their husbands in agriculture.
Some people think that the situation of rural women has a lot of suffering, however some rural women are able to overcome this suffering and benefit from their experiences in agricultural work and carry out some small enterprises that increase their income, which is reflected in the education of their children.
Abulkomsan told a story of a woman from a rural area who got married after obtaining a diploma. She has four children. With this situation, there was a great financial burden on the family that prevents the eldest son to continuing his education in the school in order to work. She was constantly thinking about how to increase income, and indeed she thought of making something like a union includes small farmers to collect milk and sell it to a factory. They could negotiate with the factory to sell it in an appropriate price. This experience had a great positive impact on her life, she learned from that how to manage her time, work in a team and the skills of negotiation.
The episode presented a video about the 17-days campaign to empower rural women that has launched by the National Council for Women, and a video was shown on the film “Women’s Work… One Village, One Product” project, produced by the National Council for Women in cooperation with the UN Women.
Nehad pointed out that working to eradicate rural women’s illiteracy is very important so that they can change their life and the life of their families for the better, and make better use of all their experience. She also emphasized that the local units help small farmers (men and women) through small loans or equipment for the manufacture, packaging and canning of vegetables and fruits.
In the inspiring personalities segment, the episode hosted “Sanaa Abdel-Gawad”, the woman who was able to enter literacy classes at the age of sixteen until she was able to obtain a master’s degree in law. She was from a simple family from one of the villages of Beni Suef, and tried to learn The alphabet when her father was studying for her younger brother, until she learned from one of her relatives about literacy classes, so she joined and passed. Then, she entered the school in the preparatory stage and worked for a lawyer while she was in the second grade of preparatory school. From that point, She found her passion in law, and she joined the Faculty of Law and obtained a master’s in law, and she hopes that She gets a doctorate. Sana confirmed that her insistence to be educated not only for her but also for her sisters. Nehad Abulkomsan affirmed that Sanaa Abdel-Gawad’s story is an inspiring story and a role model for all.
The episode ended with communicating through questions that the audience sends to the program and answering them.
“Nehad’s Stories” is a television program concerned with women’s rights by simplifying all the knowledge and evidence produced by civil society and related to “women’s empowerment” in all political, economic, social and legal fields and reducing violence. It deals with a simple approach, which is storytelling, analysis, and interaction with the public through questions. The T show is shown on Al-Qahera wa Al-Nas channel every Saturday at 4:30 pm.
