Doria Shafik

Doria Shafik (1908–1975) was one of the leading pioneers of the Egyptian women’s liberation movement in the first half of the twentieth century and played a major role in securing women’s political rights, including the right to vote and stand for election in the 1956 constitution. Born in Tanta, she studied in France before returning to Egypt to work as a journalist, writer, and political and social activist. She founded the Arabic women’s magazine “Bint al‑Nil” (Daughter of the Nile), dedicated to educating and empowering Egyptian women, and contributed to other feminist periodicals. In the late 1940s she created the Bint al‑Nil Union, which campaigned for women’s education and opened literacy classes for women in Cairo’s Bulaq district, while leading landmark women’s demonstrations, including the storming of Parliament in 1951 and a hunger strike in 1954 to demand full political rights for women. She also opposed British colonial presence by organizing boycott campaigns against Barclays Bank. After the 1952 revolution, she sought to transform the Bint al‑Nil Union into the first women’s political party in Egypt. Shafik died in Cairo in 1975, leaving a legacy that continues to inspire scholars and activists as one of the key figures in the history of Egyptian feminism