Time March 16–23, 20201980s1981
Nawal El Saadawi
For a more equal Egypt
For Egyptian psychiatrist, feminist and
novelist Nawal El Saadawi, prison was
a rebirth. The 1972 publication of her
fundamental work of feminist criticism,
Women and Sex, had cemented her rep-
utation as a fearless commentator on
women’s rights in Egypt. In 1981, she
was jailed for “crimes
against the state” for her
outspoken views, includ-
ing her criticism of fe-
male circumcision. For
El Saadawi, the sentence
was a clear demonstration of the link
between political power and patriarchy.
With eyebrow pencil and a roll of toi-
let paper, she wrote of her experience:
Memoirs From the Women’s Prison, pub-
lished in 1983, became the basis of a
continued body of work that has shaped
the discourse on women’s liberation in
the Arab world. —Aryn Baker
1980
Anna Walentynowicz
Mother of Polish independence
Poland’s escape from Soviet rule
began with Solidarity, a movement
for the rights of workers that Anna
Walentynowicz, a welder and crane op-
erator, helped create in 1980. In retalia-
tion for her activism, she was fired that
year from the Lenin Shipyard. Her col-
leagues went on strike to
get her job back, spark-
ing a mass resistance
that culminated in the
Gdansk Agreement,
which allowed the first
free-trade union in communist Eastern
Europe. Within a year, the Solidarity
union had nearly 10 million members,
with Walentynowicz as one of its lead-
ers. The triumph in Gdansk precipitated
the fall of communism, a decade later.
It also led generations of Poles to see
Walentynowicz as the mother of their
independence. ÑSimon Shuster
72