Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy was born on August 1st, 1967 and is currently 58 years old. Mona Eltahawy was born in Port Said, Egypt. Eltahawy attended The American University in Cairo.

Mona Eltahawy is a public speaker, commentator, and journalist with international renown who has made a name for himself speaking on issues in the Arab world.

Eltahawy’s opinion pieces have been featured in prestigious publications such as The International Tribune and The Washington Post. She has also appeared on major outlets as a media analyst, where she shares her insights.

She became very popular during the Egyptian revolution that ultimately removed long-serving president Hosni Mubarak. She was known for her accessible explanations of what was happening in Egypt. For her work, she was called the much-needed counterbalance to male voices by Newsweek.

It was in 2000 that she moved to the US after doing a lot of work in the Middle East as a news reporter. She has worked in Jerusalem and Cairo as a correspondent for Reuters in addition to reporting from China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Libya, among many other places.

Mona Eltahawy has been all over the world as a speaker. She spoke about how women can fight back against stereotypes of Muslim women and virtues of confusion at the debut TEDWomen conference.

Outside of her public appearances and writing, Mona Eltahawy has given lectures on the changing role of social media in the Middle East. She has also been a professor at Costa Rica’s University for Peace, the University of Oklahoma, and New York’s New School.

Mona Eltahawy calls herself a liberal Muslim and is active in equality movements. She is also a member of the global initiative on equality and justice in the Muslim family, Musawah.

In her debut work, Headscarves and Hymens, Mona Eltahawy provides a critique of how religious, cultural, and political forces reinforce the oppression of women in the Arab world.

Having made her name as an outspoken activist, Eltahawy asserts that ever since the Arab Spring, women have had to deal with resisting deeply rooted systems that deny them their rights, and fighting strongmen alongside men.

Finding inspiration from her time as an activist and reporter, she shares stories from women across North Africa and the Middle East. The work calls for action and anger, as she exposes the harmful effects of religion and tradition while offering hope and outrage as effective tools for change.

In The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, Mona Eltahawy urges women to embrace what they have been encouraged to avoid so as to break free of the bonds of patriarchy.

Finding inspiration from the #MeToo Movement, she identified seven sins, including power, anger, lust, ambition, attention seeking, profanity, and violence, that women need to get back.

Her call is driven by her experiences of harassment and assault, in addition to those of other women who fought back.

Rather than teaching women how to survive inside oppressive systems, she asks that they resist and take them down instead.

Related Authors

Fans of Mona Eltahawy also enjoy these authors:

1. Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
2. Gabrielle Zevin, author of: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
3. Stephen King, author of The Dark Tower Series.
4. Andy Weir, author of: Project Hail Mary.
5. Ursula K. Le Guin, author of the Earthsea Cycle Series.

Mona Eltahawy: F.A.Q