ABSTRACT
We start our investigation in this section with the memories of Huda Shaarawi, an Egyptian feminist who gained international recognition in the early twentieth century by discarding her veil and declaring her commitment to the emerging international feminist movement. The excerpt we include from Shaarawi's memoirs encapsulates many of this section's themes. She writes about her painful consciousness as a young girl of the preferential treatment her brother receives in her family. Her childhood awareness acts as a clear reminder of how early cultural ideas about gender are taught in families and how what is learned is much more than an intended lesson. She turns to the women in her extended family network for understanding and support as she begins to perceive unfairness. When Shaarawi hears the culture's lessons about what girls are and can expect, she refuses to accept them. She recalls the strategies she developed to bring attention to herself even while the cultural attention rushed toward her brother. Throughout her life, she would call attention to the ways in which the subtleties of family life exhibit themselves on the larger screen of public life, and expose the links between them in an oppressive system.
