Will Women Benefit from Middle East Revolution?

When the dust of Egypt's revolution began to settle and the country struggled toward a democratic government, many of the women who stood side-by-side with men in Cairo's Tahrir Square were struck that not one woman was named to the committee to reform the constitution.
Prominent Egyptian author and activist Nawaal el-Saadawi says that angered women who marched on equal footing with men to oust former President Hosni Mubarak - only to find themselves thrown back to the old ways and excluded from the new order. She said the women felt their rights were being taken from them.

Reuters

Egyptian novelist, essayist and physician Nawaal el-Saadawi. Her feminist works focus on the oppression of women and women's desire for self-expression

"Women’s rights cannot be given ... We have to take [them] by the political power of women," she said. "And that’s why we are reestablishing our Egyptian Women Union."
Al-Saadawi says women were scattered, weak and divided under the former regime and efforts are under way to unite them.
"So we are trying to bring women together to have political power so that we can fight for our rights in a collective group," al-Saadawi explained.
Fears of being excluded also echoed in neighboring Tunisia among many of the women who participated in the revolution to oust the Ben-Ali regime. Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and Director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations says Tunisian women worry about the return to power of some of the more conservative elements might try to repeal Tunisia's progressive family laws.