Pomeps Conversations

Sherine Hafez talks about her latest book, Women of the Midan: Untold Stories of Egypt’s Revolutionaries, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. In her book, she demonstrates how women were a central part of the revolutionary process of the Arab Spring; not only protesting in the streets of Cairo, but also demanding democracy, social justice, and renegotiation of a variety of sociocultural structures that repressed and disciplined them. Hafez explains, “I just wanted to make sure that the contributions of women in the Midan during the uprisings, and specifically in Egypt, were documented so that…the activism cannot be written off as just part of the revolution…And I wanted so much to make sure that this is a record that can be read by future young activists of all genders, so that they can look back and know that there is a record of their contributions to politics in the Middle East.” Hafez goes on, “When I decided to write the book, the revolution was in its hey-day…The revolutionaries felt that things c