Global search engine Google celebrated the 106th birthday of late lawyer Moufida Abdel Rahman on January 20, changing its well-known logo to display Abdel Rahman wearing a lawyer’s coat.
The Akhbar al-Yom portal outlined the most important information about Abdel Rahman’s life.
Amongst the first female lawyers in Egypt, Abdel Rahman was the first female lawyer to file lawsuits at Egypt’s Court of Cassation, the first woman to practice the profession in Cairo, the first woman to file a lawsuit before a military court in Egypt, and the first woman to file a lawsuit in the more conservative society of Upper Egypt.
Abdel Rahman was also the first married woman to enroll in the King Fouad I University (currently Cairo University) in 1935, and later became the first mother to graduate from the university.
She was chosen to defend activist Dorya Shafiq in court. In February 1951, Shafiq was arrested after she gathered 1,500 women secretly and organized a march to the parliament with demands mainly related to women’s social and economic rights.
Abdel Rahman worked in the 1950s as a defense attorney in well-known political trials relating to a group accused of plotting against the state.
Although she was the mother of nine children, she became a member of parliament for the Al-Ghuriya and Al-Azbakeya neighborhoods in 1959, and became an active MP for 17 years in a row.
She was the only woman who participated in the Committee to Amend the Status of Muslims work that started in the 1960s.
Abdel Rahman was a member of the Board of Directors of the Gomhuriya Bank, the Bar Association, the board of University Associations, the National Conference of the Socialist Union, the National Union, and the board of the Postal Authority.
She also worked on the founding of the Women of Islam Association, and she held the position of chair of the association for several years.
