FILE / AP Photo
Prominent Egyptian writer, feminist, and activist Dr. Nawal El Saadawi, who was honored yesterday with the Women of the Year Outstanding Achievement award in London, spoke to The Huffington Post's Julie Tomlin about fighting against the exclusion of women from Egypt's ongoing revolution. "Tahrir Square was marvelous, we were like a family," she said, recalling the earlier days of the revolution with nostalgia. Now, she says, women are suffering in a post-revolution backlash and are being excluded from the new political committee to change Egypt's constitution. But she's determined to reform the Egyptian Women's Union, originally established in 1923 until it was banned by Suzanne Mubarak in the '70s, which she hopes will unite women and men and implement more female representation in the temporary government. "History has shown us that women can lose their rights after a revolution," she said. "We have to unite across the country and across the Arab world and internationally," she says.