I felt it was
important to dedicate a note to the Words of Women from the Egyptian
Revolution project which sheds light on, and documents the
participation of women in the Egyptian revolution. Although the Egyptian middle
class is over-represented in the women interviewed, the sheer diversity of
outlooks, lifestyles and pathways to taking part in the protests and the
movement that surrounds them reveals the complexity of the social dynamics in
Egypt today. And, more importantly, the voices of the women interviewed are
voices of determination, courage, steadfastness and resilience, yet, at the
same time, they are voices of ordinary people, simple, devoid of bravado and
pretense. This is a worthy project that explores the encounter of the mundane and
the trivial with the heroic, that
injects the experiences of ordinary women in a male-dominated
collective memory. And although the enunciators are women, their
testimonies capture the plebeian, vernacular character
of the protests that shook Egypt and whose ripples reached other Arab societies
and even neighbouring Israel regardless the gender of the participants.
Each short video is
effectively a "profile" of each woman: her life/work before the
revolution, her participation in the revolution and where she and her work
stand today. The project as a whole, as well as its individual components
provides a valuable insight to the experiences of women from diverse
backgrounds and constitutes a rare resource for those interested in the recent
and ongoing protests in the Arab world and, of course, the participation of
women in them.
All videos are in
Arabic with English and Spanish subtitles (if one clicks the subtitle
button).
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