Casa Árabe and the Tres Culturas Foundation invite you to a four-voice conversation with Nawal El-Saadawi (Egypt), a writer and feminist militant; Wassyla Tamzali (Algeria), a specialist on gender-related topics, Nieves Paradela (Spain), a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and Eva Lapiedra (Spain), a professor at the University of Alicante. 

This round table discussion will analyze the changes and developments in the Arab world’s feminist movements as of the final decades of the twentieth century, with a special focus on Egypt and Algeria. It will also deal with the current situation in the fight for women’s rights, after developments in the social and civil movements over the last five years, coupled with the complex situation through which many of today’s Arab societies are living. 

Nawal El-Saadawi. Born in Kafr Tahla, Egypt, in 1931, El-Saadawi is the daughter of a Ministry of Education civil servant and a mother who came from an upper-class family that allowed Nawal to enter the School of Medicine at the University of Cairo in 1949, contrary to social norms. She has had more than forty books published, including her famous autobiography Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and Women and Sex. Her books on the status of women have had a huge impact, clearing the way for new generations over the last four decades. In December of 2004, she entered the elections as a candidate to the presidency of Egypt. As she has explained in several interviews, this was more of a symbolic gesture, knowing that she would never be given the opportunity to form part of the government.

Wassyla Tamzali was born in Algeria in 1941, Tamzali’s biography is associated with feminist militancy: she practiced as a lawyer in her country before leading the UNESCO program which seeks to ensure gender equality for nearly twenty years. As of 1996, she headed the trans-Mediterranean cooperation program within UNESCO to assist women. She has had several books published, including Une éducation algérienne, de la révolution à la décennie noire (An Algerian Upbringing, from the revolution to the black decade, 2007) and Une femme en colère (An Angry Woman, 2009). Her most recent published work was My Algerian Land (published in Spanish by Saga Editorial, 2012),  Letter by an Indignant Woman (published in Spanish by Cátedra, 2011) and The Burka as an Excuse (published in Spanish by Saga Editorial, 2010).

Nieves Paradela is a professor with the Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, which she directed from 2008 to 2012. She is a specialist in the Arabic language and how to teach it, and in contemporary Arab literature. She also performs research on Arab feminism and other modernization processes in today’s Arab societies. She is the author of monographs on a wide range of topics. Amongst these, she has authored the monographs El otro laberinto español. Viajeros árabes a España entre el siglo XVII y 1936 (The Other Spanish Labyrinth: Arab travelers to Spain from the seventeenth century to 1936, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 2005). Most notable amongst her articles are “Time of debates in the Arab world: the Lewis case at the Syrian Protestant College” (published by Anaquel de Estudios Árabes, 2014) and “Arab feminism and the fight for women’s rights” (published in Feminismo/s, 2015). 

Eva Lapiedra is a professor and the coordinator of the  Department of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Alicante. She has devoted several research works to analyzing the terminology in historiographical discourse and its translation, as well as the transmission of historical and literary subjects from Arab-Islamic culture to the kingdoms of Spain. In recent years, she has grown interested in feminism in the Arab world. In 2010, she organized a series of events at the University of Alicante on “Feminine and feminist re-interpretations of Islam today,” and she coordinated issue number 26 of “Feminismo/s,” which was given the title “Feminisms in Arab Societies.” This issue was just published. At present, she is working on topics related with privacy and intimacy in Islam.