Death in Cairo

On 12 December 1947, Huda Sha’arawi died of a heart attack in Cairo, two days after delivering her last public address protesting the UN partition plan for Palestine.[1][2][3] She was 68 years old. Her death marked the end of nearly three decades as the most prominent feminist leader in Egypt and a central figure in Arab women’s organizing.

Sha’arawi’s passing occurred at a moment of profound regional upheaval, with the question of Palestine unresolved and Arab states negotiating new post‑colonial futures. Colleagues in the Egyptian Feminist Union and the Arab Feminist Union mourned her as a visionary who had transformed women from secluded subjects into mobilized citizens.[1][13]

In the years that followed, her memoir The Harem Years and subsequent biographies helped cement her status as an icon of Middle Eastern feminism. Streets, schools, and women’s organizations in Egypt and beyond were named in her honor, and 16 March—the date of the 1919 women’s march she led—came to be celebrated as Egyptian Women’s Day in her memory.[11][16]

Sha’arawi’s death did not end the movements she had built. The Egyptian Feminist Union and the Arab Feminist Union continued to operate, and later generations of activists, including both secular and Islamist feminists, drew on her legacy. Her life and death frame a transformative era in which Egyptian and Arab women began to claim public space, legal rights, and political voice.