Egypt

Description

This video focuses on Soraya Altorki, originally from Saudi Arabia, who is now a professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo. She had to get her education abroad because schooling was not possible for a woman in Saudi Arabia. She recalls with humor the incongruity of being a sheltered Saudi Arabian woman at the University of California, Berkeley, during the radical sixties. After receiving her Ph.D. and stirred by the Arab defeat in the Six Day War, she decided to return to the Arab world. In this candid portrait, she and her educated women colleagues express their fears that the fundamentalist movement will take away their hard-won achievements. Yet, they also resent the lack of understanding of their culture among Westerners and the tendency to regard Muslim women as all the same, without regard to class or education. Member of a series: Women in the Arab World.

Runtime

26 min

Creator

Bos, Froukje

Series

Subjects

Contributor

Geography

Genre

Date of Publication

1997

Database

Alexander Street

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