CAIRO — Radwa Helmi made history on Saturday as the
first woman judge to sit on the bench of
Egypt's State Council, a top court in
the Arab country.
اضافة اعلان
Helmi, making her appearance in a Cairo courthouse, was
among 98 women appointed last year to join the council, one of Egypt's main
judicial bodies, following a decision by President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
"The fifth of March has become a new historical day for
Egyptian women," said the head of the
National Council for Women (NCW),
Maya Morsi.
The move came ahead of the March 8 International Women's
Day.
Women in Egypt, the most populous Arab country, have been
fighting an uphill battle for years to secure their rights.
Egypt has hundreds of women lawyers but it took decades for
one to move up the judicial ladder and become a judge.
The first was Tahany Al-Gebaly, appointed in 2003 to Egypt's
Supreme Constitutional Court.
Gebaly held that post for a decade before being removed in
2012 by then Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
Although no law bars women from being justices in Egypt, the
judiciary in the conservative Muslim-majority country has traditionally been
a male preserve.
The State Council was set up in 1946 as an independent body that
mainly adjudicates in administrative disputes and disciplinary cases.
Since
Egypt's founding as a modern state in the 19th
century, women have been marginalized.
Women gained the right to vote and run for public office in
1956, but their personal rights have remained flouted.
Most women have no authority over their children or their
personal lives, with such responsibility often delegated to male guardians,
under Islamic Sharia-inspired law.
Women currently hold about a quarter of cabinet posts and
some 168 seats in the 569-member parliament.
In May 2021, the grand imam of the prestigious Cairo-based
Al-Azhar, Egypt's highest Sunni institution, weighed in on the debate.
Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb said no religious edict prevents women
from holding high-ranking posts, traveling alone or having an equitable share
of inheritance rights.
But he stopped short of stating women should have equal
rights to men.
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