Egyptian women shave hair

Under the slogan "No to violence against women. No to the Constitution", large groups of women demonstrated in front of the Tahrir complex, calling for a re-election to draft a new constitution instead of the current one which they believed to be “distorted”. They threatened to start an open sit-in and take other escalating steps up to civil disobedience in order to preserve their rights, which were violated in the new constitution. Ten women, three of them veiled, belonged to various women's organisations. They carried Anti-Muslim Brotherhood banners and began shaving off a lock of their hair in front of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Even the veiled women shared in the protest by shaving a tress of hair from under the veil, stressing that they found no other way to let the “world hear their scream”. The female activists stressed that they will not accept this distorted constitution which was passed through a "false referendum". They rated the referendum as "the most null electoral procedures in the history of Egypt, "and accused the new constitution of shrinking women rights." The activist Mona Abdel Hady, a member of April 6 Youth Movement, said: "This idea dates back to the era of the Pharaohs, where the daughter of Akhenaten cut her hair in objection to marginalising the power of her father by priests". “We follow the steps of our ancestors to protest against the tyranny of our President and to defend the rights we gained throughout the past centuries' constitution" Hady concluded.