Born October 27, 1931
Kafr Tahla, Egypt

Women’s rights advocate, psychiatrist, and author

Nawal El Saadawi, considered the Arab world’s leading feminist, has broken the silence on many repressive practices to which Arab women are subjected. Her bold denunciations of the patriarchal (male-dominated) system in Arab and Moslem societies has led to her arrest on more than one occasion. El Saadawi’s many books (both fiction and nonfiction) about the status of women in the Arab world have been banned for periods of time in her native Egypt and in other Arab nations. Driven from her homeland by death threats, Saadawi spent the 1990s teaching, writing, and speaking in the United States and Europe.

Childhood and education

El Saadawi was born on October 27, 1931, in the Egyptian village of Kafr Tahla. Her father, El Sayed El Saadawi, was a school administrator, and...