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Samia I. Spencer (ed.). 2016. Daughters of the Nile: Egyptian Women Changing Their World. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 402 pp.
This could also have been subtitled, "Egyptian women out in the world," since more than half of the subjects are not living in their native land. This tome is a kind of scrapbook or victory lap if you will of thirty-seven high-achieving Egyptian women in the business, public-service, and academic domains writing brief sketches of their lives. The proceeds of the book are being donated to charity and it doesn't claim to be a scientific study of Egyptian female achievers, so we can't judge it too harshly. Nevertheless, a reading of the book brings to light several common characteristics of these women and some noteworthy statistics. First of all, and getting out of the way a point which may disappoint some but will not surprise most: no social mobility emerges in these self-portraits; these were all daughters of the technocratic middle class, the elite or of the ionospheric sub-set of diplomatic families; no contributor fought her way up from humble beginnings. And the least of these women "merely" succeeded. However,...