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.