Quote by Nawal El Saadawi: “A woman's body is her only true possession.”

Everything else a woman might own — her name, her wealth, her legal status — can be taken from her by husbands, laws, or custom. But her body, at least in principle, belongs only to her. El Saadawi wrote this to expose how even that last possession is routinely violated and controlled.

El Saadawi published Woman at Point Zero in 1975, the same year as the UN's first World Conference on Women in Mexico City. As a physician, she had seen firsthand the medical consequences of female genital cutting, domestic violence, and illegal abortions in Egypt, and her fiction drew directly on those experiences.

Egyptian feminist writer, physician, and activist whose work challenged patriarchy, religious fundamentalism, and political repression across the Arab world. Her 1975 book Women and Sex led to her dismissal from the Egyptian Ministry of Health, and she was imprisoned in 1981. She published over fifty books in her lifetime.