Power Up!

BY NADINE AWADALLA
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
@nadinetweetstoo

I took a taxi one night last week – the radio was blaring, there were obnoxious colored lights around the dashboard and the driver was going fast enough to kill us both.

A few songs later, the program returned to the hosts – a man and a woman – who were discussing International Women’s Day.

The driver turned the stereo down a little, but I could still hear it. The male host welcomed us back to the show, and informed us very adamantly that the topic will be why International Women’s Day was useless.

The female host sounded uncomfortable and jokingly called him a sexist.

“You already have Mother’s Day, now there’s Women’s Day.
Where are the holidays for the men?” he continued.

Before moving to another song, the female host called on any female listeners out there
to call in and defend their day, while her colleague called for male taxi drivers and workers to argue his view as well.

Well, I heard you and here goes. As long as such attitudes prevail in society, there will be a need for women to stand up and be recognized and for them to call for further empowerment.

Whenever there is a perceived limit in a society to what one sex can do in relation to the other, there will be a continued struggle for equality and recognition.

There is never ‘enough’.

Inferiority is not a contest.

During the January 25 Revolution, the National Democratic Party building burned down, taking the National Council for Women along with it.

Since, state-sponsored women’s empowerment programs have reached a stalemate.

In recent years, the crackdown on civil society has made it increasingly difficult for NGOs to operate in the Egyptian public sphere.

And despite the number of women represented in the political arena, empowerment should not be solely measured by the number of women who can ‘make it’. It should instead be concerned with the allowing the hundreds of women who aren’t in the public eye to fulfill their aspirations, and mitigate the vagaries of patriarchy in Egypt.

It’s 2016, Egypt!

It doesn’t make you any less of a man to celebrate the women in your life, dear radio host.