Saturday May 2, 2020               By: Dina Al Mahdy

“You define your success, not your gender.” This is the message that Women of Egyptwould like to deliver to the whole world.

In light of WoEgypt’s core missions, WoEgypt launched a new campaign titled “Because She Is A Woman” for professionals to share their success stories as well as breaking boundaries and stereotypes, and re-appropriating phrases of prejudice, patriarchy and paternalism against women to actually reflect their great value, potential and power!

The aim was to launch a campaign that would resonate with professional women in order to build long-term equity in this often-overlooked segment, and to open a dialogue around gender stereotypes.

But as always happens, some didn’t agree with the campaign, thinking that derogatory stereotypical statements are subjective and are not commonly used in society. Others think that the best way to abolish these statements altogether is to introduce completely new, positive and empowering ones, and that using these statements in this campaign further reinforces them, even if the aim of the campaign is to counter the negative connotations of these common phrases.

Notable to the campaign is that the women featured in the campaign are actual established Egyptian professionals, who presented the sexist phrases against them that they personally come across. This gave the campaign legs to stand on. It is crucial when doing purposeful work that the output is honest, genuine and credible.

Under the sponsorship of EVA Cosmetics, the social media launch of the campaign took place at the end of April 2020 so as not to fall within the clutter of Women’s Month. The intention is always for the campaign to live longer than a month — women’s empowerment is not only important in one month. This is why we invited our followers to share the phrases they are forced to confront every day.

The campaign exceeded expectations across every metric and many women asked to join our campaign. But, more importantly, we have empowered professional women all over Egypt by contributing to breaking the stereotypes.

Due to the overwhelmingly positive response to our campaign “Because She is A Woman”, we would like to thank everyone for supporting our efforts to deliver this powerful message from the women of Egypt to the world.

If our message is as important to you as it is to us, please stay engaged with your shares, likes and comments. If you come across any sexist phrases against women, share your story with us. Send us your story here.

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