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Fairytales and stories are an essential element of popular culture and communicate social beliefs about gender roles. The Women’s Stories project of the Women and Memory Forum was started to give women an opportunity to challenge traditional texts, re-define their role in society, and develop writing skills by re-writing stories from their own perspective.

Founded in 1997 in Egypt, the Women and Memory Forum’s mission is to promote a society based on justice and equal opportunities for men and women. One of the ways the organization does this is through re-reading and re-defining Arab cultural history. The Women’s Stories project, a set of gender-sensitive writing workshops, focuses on re-defining and expanding the portrayal of women in folk literature.

The first Women’s Stories workshop titled “Re-Writing Arab Tales from a Gender Perspective” was put up in 1998. The workshop brought together a diverse group of Arab women, active in the spheres of literary criticism, creative writing, social and cultural history, and theater. The workshops are held on a monthly basis. During each gathering, the women analyzed an Arab folk story, such as one of the stories from 1001 Nights, and discussed its gender elements. Following the discussion, each participant would separately write an alternative version of the story. Then they would all re-convene to read to one another the resultant new, gender-sensitive and feminist stories.

In addition to publishing some of these stories, several were also used in public story-telling performances that included theatrical elements, such as directing, costumes, lighting, and accompanying live musical effects. By translating the stories into public performances, the stories were presented as newly created gender-sensitive cultural material to be disseminated to a wider audience.

This process was also shared with other groups. For example, the WMF held a story-writing training workshop from a gender-sensitive perspective for young Palestinian girls, and in the Sudan. The girls and young women took ownership in their writing and are sharing their own stories in their culture. In addition, WMF in collaboration with grassroots NGOs, creative writing workshops were conducted in low income neighborhoods in Cairo and Upper Egypt providing an opportunity for women to share their experiences and for enhancement of an awareness of gender rights.

This story-telling aspect of the project usually proves successful in uncovering forms of gender discrimination within the indigenous culture to a non-specialized audience and in empowering young females. However, the Women and Memory Forum did encounter challenges. Some professional popular literature scholars felt that the WMF was distorting classical texts. There were also those who felt the public performances of the stories exhibited aggressiveness and hostility to men.

By finding ways to publicize the women’s stories beyond the space of the workshop, WMF brought the issue of gender roles and gender representation to the attention of a greater public audience including very positive reactions from youth, young men and women, as well as media.