Egyptian parliament approves tougher penalties for female genital mutilation
Egypt's parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill stipulating tougher penalties for female genital mutilation, which remains widespread despite an official ban on the practice. The move coincided with the death of feminist author Nawal El Saadawi, who fought long and hard for an end to the procedure from which she herself suffered as a child.
"Since I was a child, that deep wound left in my body has never healed."
So wrote Nawal El Saadawi in her memoir in reference to the traumatic procedure of female genital mutilation that she experienced at the age of 6 and that scarred her for life.
The Egyptian author, psychiatrist and activist, who died of natural causes in Cairo on March 21, chronicled the agonizing procedure she was subjected to in her 1977 book "The Hidden Face of Eve." The book is both an autobiography (as Saadawi recounts her experiences growing up in a conservative rural community where religion plays a significant role in people's lives) and a harrowing nonfiction account of the brutality faced by women in the broader Arab region.
While Saadawi's revelation about female genital mutilation remains as shocking today as it was nearly half a century ago, many women in her native Egypt — where the harmful practice remains prevalent despite a 2008 law criminalizing it — can relate to her firsthand account of the brutal procedure.
