El Saadawi was known as a defender of women’s rights and fought hard against the widespread practice of female genital mutation.
She was imprisoned and persecuted and received lifelong threats from conservatives for her bold views.
El Saadawi was the founder and president of the Association for the Solidarity of Arab Women and co-founder of the Arab Association for Human Rights. In 1981, she founded a feminist magazine called “Al-Moawgaha” (which translates to “Confrontation”).
El Saadawi’s most popular books are “Women & Sex” and “Memoirs from a Women’s Prison.”
“Women and Sex” has been banned in Egypt for nearly two decades, and after its publication, El Saadawi lost his job as director of public health at Egypt’s Ministry of Health.
“Women cannot be liberated in a class society or in a patriarchal society dominated by men. That is why we must escape, fight class oppression, gender oppression and religious oppression,” El Saadawi told CNN in -an interview in 2011. “We can’t talk about the revolution without women,” she said.
There was an outpouring of grief at the news of El Saadawi’s death, with some prominent activists expressing condolences on social media.
“Egyptian feminist Nawal El Saadawi is dead. Until I gather my thoughts: rest in power, Nawal,” she added in a tweet.