First woman: Hoda El-Awary
ROUGHLY a one hour drive from Luxor lies the hamlet of El-Awary, part of Hegaza Qebly village, Qena Governorate. Here is 32-year-old Hoda El-Awarys home, a household that stands out in rural Egypt where patriarchal authority is generally the unquestioned norm. Women are commonly denied the right to education, to voice their opinions, to work, and to marry whom they choose. Such was the stifling setting within which El-Awary grew up, but even as a child she always stood out. Her family made a commendable effort to give El-Awary a fair chance, encouraging her education and sending her to high school.
Her high school, though co-ed, was one in which girls were discouraged from answering questions in class, reading aloud in class, and during recess they were kept inside the classroom simply to be segregated from their male colleagues. Noting her determination to resist discriminating social codes, her classmates nicknamed her Hoda Shaarawy, in reference to the woman hailed as the pioneer of Egyptian feminism. Refusing to passively accept the institutional discrimination and, gathering the backing of other schoolgirls, El-Awary presented their grievances to the school headmaster.
I told him that the male teacher does not allow us to read in class and we are like those boys and want to read as well, or else why would we be here?, recalls El-Awary. I used to tell the girls that I did not walk five kms from home to school, just to sit at the desk in silence. After graduating from high school, she was the first girl from her village to insist on continuing her higher education. Later El- Awary became the first woman to work as a social councillor at the village school and finally pioneered the first womens association for community services in Hegaza Qebly.
Her lifelong ambition of playing a more active role in society materialised more fully in 1994, when a group of 11 schoolgirls led by El- Awary who had finished her higher studies at the Institute for Social Services was established with the goal of abolishing female illiteracy in their village. She argued that Illiteracy is a major problem because it is the backbone to many other problems within the community. Lack of awareness and education translates itself into bad social habits, unhealthy environment, unhealthy babies and unsolved problems.
The group started out quietly, holding classes at the school building after the school day was over. At first the women were so embarrassed from the mens mockery that they used to hide their books inside their clothes. Now they are proud to learn and encourage their daughters to do the same, she explains.
Later, Save the Children paid Hegaza a visit, stopping by El-Awarys home first. As her original concept of social work expanded in scope, El-Awarys father blessed the idea and built an extra room in his house, leasing it for a pittance as the headquarters for the Womens Association For the Development of Village Women. Here, in a spare room of El-Awarys house, was centred the first NGO native to Naga El-Awary.
At first we did not know how to reach out for funding, but we were helped by the documentary film eventually made by Save the Children and directed by Nabiha Lotfy. That is how many people found out about us, recounts El- Awary. They started out with literacy classes, and in 1995 implemented a UNICEF project that included conducting seminars on health issues, legal rights, sewing and typewriting. In the same year the NGO hosted a doctor from Qena to teach the girls first aid. In 1996, the NGO worked with Canadian Aid on The Child Project. As the activities of the NGO grew, it required more space, in 1998 starting a nursery with funding from the Netherlands-based Falien Organisation. They granted both a small amount of money and substantial in-kind aid in the form of toys, with the NGO covering the remainder of expenses from its own finances. Soon afterwards, El-Awarys organisation built a full- time headquarters of their own.
Among the major achievements of the NGO was facilitating the villagers acquisition of the new national identification card. So far they have helped 950 women and men obtain their national IDs. The NGO has been the centre of political and legal rights programmes, health seminars held by the European Union, UNICEF-run projects to combat violence against women, sanitation projects and is currently establishing a permanent health unit.
El-Awarys leadership role is now widely acknowledged in Hegaza Qebly, because she has been able to make a change in her society simply by taking the initiative. She has been successful in bridging the gap between traditional conceptions of honour and the role of women in her village and womens activism, public leadership and education. When the NGO was established men refused to let their women participate, but when the NGO invited the sheikhs and doctors and campaigned from door to door the community at large gradually gave in, she said. Expanding on her vision of active self- emancipation, El-Awary explained: The girl is the one who makes something out of herself. She is the one who demeans herself when she is sad if she gives birth to a girl or aims to have her daughter get married and just stay in the house, she is the one who does this to herself.
According to El-Awarys activist doctrine, the problems of Upper Egypt will be solved through collaboration between the government and the people. As for the status of women, she argues that men will be perpetually unwilling to give women their rights until women claim their rights for themselves. If we do not change ourselves, no one will change us, insisted El- Awary. As she sat in the NGO, after breast- feeding her first child, a baby girl, she succinctly expressed her philosophy, I do not like to walk next to the wall, I have to walk amidst the crowd so that I have an input in society.
