Huda Sha'arawi
[7] At the age of thirteen, she was married to her cousin Ali Sha'arawi, who Sultan named as the legal guardian of his children and trustee of his estate.
[8][9] According to Middle Eastern scholar Margot Badran, a "subsequent separation from her husband gave her time for an extended formal education, as well as an unexpected taste of independence.
After returning from the 9th Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome, she removed her veil and mantle, a signal event in the history of Egyptian feminism.
Characteristic of liberal feminism in the early twentieth century, the EFU sought to reform laws restricting personal freedoms, such as marriage, divorce, and child custody.
[26] Even as a young woman, she showed her independence by entering a department store in Alexandria to buy her own clothes instead of having them brought to her home.
Even if only some of her demands were met during her lifetime, she laid the groundwork for later gains by Egyptian women and remains the symbolic standard-bearer for their liberation movement.
The conference elected Huda as the vice-president of the International Women’s Union and considered Atatürk as a role model for her and his actions.
She wrote in her memoirs: "After the Istanbul conference ended, we received an invitation to attend the celebration held by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the liberator of modern Turkey.
In the salon next to his office, the invited delegates stood in the form of a semicircle, and after a few moments the door opened and entered Atatürk surrounded by an aura of majesty and greatness, and a feeling of prestige prevailed.
Honorable, when my turn came, I spoke directly to him without translation, and the scene was unique for an oriental woman standing for the International Women’s Authority and giving a speech in the Turkish language expressing admiration and thanks to the Egyptian women for the liberation movement that he led in Turkey, and I said: This is the ideal of leaving Oh the elder sister of the Islamic countries, he encouraged all the countries of the East to try to liberate and demand the rights of women, and I said: If the Turks considered you the worthiness of their father and they called you Atatürk, I say that this is not enough, but you are for us “Atasharq” [Father of the East].
Its meaning did not come from any female head of delegation, and thanked me very much for the great influence, and then I begged him to present us with a picture of his Excellency for publication in the journal L'Égyptienne.
"[This quote needs a citation] Sha'arawi is depicted in the song "The Lioness" by English singer-songwriter Frank Turner on his 2019 album No Man's Land.
