WoEgypt #TheNewAgeFairytales Initiative Reimagines Fairy Tales to Promote Gender Equality

December 6, 2020
By: Dina Al-Mahdy


(March 2021) WoEgypt kicks off a new creative writing initiative, Reimagining Fairy Tales for a New Generation, which aims to support a dialogue to change the ways society thinks about women’s and girls’ roles, human potential, and rights. The initiative will explore the role of fairy tales in the cultural struggle over gender equality and feminism.

For this purpose, the “forgotten” narratives which highlight shifting attitudes towards the role of women and girls will be applied in a collection of new fairy tales. These stories will inform younger generations about changing attitudes to women, gender equality and feminism, having in mind that the stories that children grow up with are vitally important in shaping who they are as adults. Fairy tales are part of society’s heritage passed down from generation to generation via oral, pictorial, and written tradition.

Their powerful role conveys root values and norms including gender norms, and creates an opportunity to make a world of gender equality a reality for all children.

For children, tales constitute an entire part of their socialization process stimulating their imagination, creativity and enabling their identification with characters. While tales allow them to temporarily escape from reality, they have a strong educational power helping girls and boys to grow and develop their personality informing girls and boys on gender equality and feminism.

WoEgypt will garner efforts to enable positive change and promote gender equality by devoting a modern fairy tales’ collection targeting young readers and citizens of tomorrow. In 2021, WoEgypt will bring together feminist and children books writers in the first workshop to start re-imagining familiar fairy tales for a new generation.

To bring these reimagined fairy tales to life, the initiative will:-Support feminist writers to develop the New Age children’s stories;-Publish the top 5 stories for children, educators and families on International Women’s Day 2021 (March 2021).Our children deserve stories that encourage them to defy stereotypes and believe in a gender-equal world! Apply to the workshop here: shorturl.at/sFGQ8

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