Known as a defender of women’s rights, El Saadawi fought strongly against the widespread practice of female genital mutation.
Jailed and prosecuted, she was threatened by conservatives all her life for her bold views.
El Saadawi was the founder and president of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association and a co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. In 1981 she founded a feminist magazine called “Al-Moawgaha” (which translates to “The Confrontation”).
El Saadawi’s most popular books are “Women & Sex” and “Memoirs from a Women’s Prison.”
“Women and sex” had been banned in Egypt for nearly 20 years and after its publication El Saadawi lost her job as Director of Health at the Ministry of Health in Egypt.
“Women cannot be liberated in a class society or a male-dominated patriarchal society. Therefore, we must get rid of class oppression, gender oppression and religious oppression,” El Saadawi told CNN in an interview in 2011. “We cannot speak of revolution without women, ”she said.
There has been an outpouring of grief over the news of El Saadawi’s death, with some prominent activists expressing their condolences on social media.
“The Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi has passed away. Until I have my thoughts together: rest to power, Nawal,” she added in a tweet.