As women, we never thought 2015 would still be an age when Arab women are oppressed, but the sad truth is that women aren’t just oppressed anymore; they are now seen as fighting an unreasonable battle for illegitimate reasons.
A video that is part of a collection of short films on women titled “Minhom Feehom- From Within: Their Stories” by Director Maggie Morgan, caught our attention because of the alarming facts the women in the video discuss. Many familiar Arab faces, including Egyptian Actresses Yara Gobran and Farah Youssef, starred in the video that exhibited how oppression takes on a whole new level. 160 million Arab women who live in the Middle East voice their concerns about how the majority of women are illiterate because of the notion that males are prioritized when it comes to education.
Even more alarming was the fact that most of the women in Egypt and Sudan have been forcefully circumcised, and beaten by almost all the males of kin to them, under the vile excuse of tradition. For most of these women, it’s not really about feminism or defying men, or even equality. All what these women strive for is an opportunity to love and live their lives, the way any human being should.
In this video, the floor is given to the Arab women, and the silence is broken: