In 1923 Huda Shaarawi stepped off a Cairo train and publicly removed her veil, a calculated act that helped launch Egypt’s women’s liberation movement. This episode traces her journey from a secluded elite childhood to international leadership.

We explore her upbringing in the harem system, the separation that let her expand her education, her philanthropy and schools, her role in the 1919 revolution, and the Egyptian Feminist Union she founded to lobby for legal reform.

• Her secluded upbringing in the elite harem system
• Marriage at 13 and the separation that expanded her independence
• Founding Egypt’s first women-run philanthropic society
• Organizing women during the 1919 revolution
• Founding the Egyptian Feminist Union and its journals