Al Hayat daily drew attention last Saturday to the feminist campaigns that have mushroomed in Egypt recently as a result of the exacerbating conflicts within the family in addition to increasing economic pressures. These campaigns, the newspaper wrote, did not stop at gender parity in basic matters, like education and work, but went as far as proposing a life void of men. According to Al Hayat, the campaigners attributed their motives to an attempt to relinquish dependency on men in life, in general. For more on the subject, the newspaper interviewed sociology professor at Ain Shams University, Dr. Sayid Abdel Radi, who pointed out that the campaign does not only target couples, as a large number of participants are single women, he explained, stressing that marriage has never been the cause of tension between males and females in society at large. The problem, he explained, lies in the actions of some members of society who encroach on and harm a particular segment of society. As such, Abdel Radi justified, the campaign attracted women who seek to escape from the anguish in an overly-controlling father or brother within a family. For her part, Lina Samir, a post graduate student at Cairo University, clarified that she joined the campaign after being subjected to violent pressure from her eldest brother who tried to prevent her from completing her studies following the death of her father. Samir said more than 2 thousand women have joined forces in one year and anticipated the number to rise due to the tremendous societal pressures incurred on women. All the criticism targeting the campaign will be useless as it cannot offset a deep desire by those women to break free from male-chauvinist convictions. (Al Hayat, December 30, 2017)
