Dubai: Female authors from the Arab world, branded as feminists, have argued that literature has no gender.
"Women have only started writing in the last 150 years. In the past, we saw very few writings from women in Arab history but they have not contributed to the formation of culture," said Sahar Al Mougy, who participated in the second day of the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature.
Sahar, an Egyptian author and lecturer at Cairo University, participated in a discussion with female authors Mansoura Ez Eldin, Haifa Bitar and Rajaa Al Sanea on whether literary works produced by Arab women share distinctive characteristics and features.
Rajaa, the youngest author on the panel from Saudi Arabia, said she would not have been able to publish her debut novel Girls of Riyadh if it weren't for the support from her male family members.
Her brother suggested she write under an alias, but she refused. However, she was not able to have her work published in Saudi Arabia and had to resort to finding a publisher in Lebanon.
"In Saudi Arabia, culture is dominated by men and a woman needs a lot of discipline if she wants to be in charge. We have been able to overcome our oppression through writing, and writing for us is not a luxury but a breakthrough," said Rajaa.
She pointed out that women have not coped with modernity as men have, and most women are forced to write mainly from imagination rather than their own experiences.
