Nawal El Saadawi was born in a northern village in Egypt in the early 1930s. She experienced female genital cutting when she was six years old and was supposed to become a child bride. Even though her family was traditional in this way, they still let her gain an education and encouraged her to feel empowered. These seeming contradictions in El Saadawi’s upbringing shaped her career. She went to medical school in Cairo and became an MD in 1955. She worked as a doctor for awhile, and in 1966 she earned a master’s in public health from Columbia University and became the Director of the Egyptian Ministry of Public Health. El Saadawi was also a fierce advocate for health and women’s rights....
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