What Did I See in Egypt? The Egyptian Women's Union: Its Club and Its School

No sooner had our airplane set down on the soil of Egypt than there appeared before us slender figures, radiant faces, and sweet smiles: they were the ladies and misses of the Egyptian Women's Union, come to receive the delegations of the Arab women's unions. It was a warm meeting, with smiling hope drawn upon every face.

We stayed in Cairo eleven days, in which we came to know the face of modern, rising Egypt. In those few days, between the meetings, we managed to visit a few of the institutions and clubs. We also visited the Liberation Province, which has made of the desert a luxuriant garden where plantings of every kind ripple in waves, with its villages laid out in a modern, scientific order — I shall speak of these villages on another occasion — and I confine myself now to mentioning some of what the Egyptian ladies and misses are doing.

Here is the club of the Egyptian Women's Union, which served as the seat of the meetings; adjoining it is the preparatory school of the Egyptian Women's Union. Both were built by the fondly remembered Mrs. Huda Shaarawi out of her own private fortune. In the aforesaid club meets the General Union of Egyptian Women's Organizations, a union comprising twenty-one women's associations, all of them working in the care of childhood and motherhood, in the fight against ignorance, poverty, and disease, and in raising the standard of woman culturally and socially. May God bless them and take them by the hand to complete the noble mission begun by the late Mrs. Huda Shaarawi.

The preparatory school for girls of the Egyptian Women's Union is under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. The number of girls in it is four hundred and fifty, and twenty-eight teachers, men and women, instruct them. They learn the Arabic, French, and English languages, the social and health sciences, music, drawing, household management, cutting and sewing, and physical education. The course of study is four years, after which they enter the secondary schools.

She is seconded from the Ministry of Education, holds a diploma in teaching from Egypt, and afterwards joined a practical mission for a year, in the course of which she studied the various methods of teaching in the schools of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

The Egyptian Women's Union also has a workshop for girls, taking in nearly seventy girls, who learn there — likewise free of charge — cutting, sewing, and various kinds of handwork.