Ayah Aman has been writing for Al-Monitor since July 2013. She is an Egyptian journalist for Al-Shorouk specializing in Africa and the Nile Basin, Turkey and Iran, and internal Egyptian social issues.

Al-Monitor:  Why did you decide to become a journalist?

Aman:  At the beginning, I wanted to study journalism in the faculty of media at Cairo University. I didn't live in Cairo, though, and it was difficult for me to convince my family to let me travel and live on my own during my studies, even though my hometown was only 100 km [62 miles] away from Cairo. However, according to our traditions, it is frowned upon for girls to leave their parents’ house to study or work. This is not to mention that the biggest challenge for me was to convince them to let me study journalism and to work in this field, especially given the bad image of women as journalists in Egypt. My parents’ rejection was a strong motivation for me to work in the field of journalism and to try to change this negative mindset for women in this profession.

Al-Monitor:  Did you have female role models to look up to when you were first starting out? Who?