Weekly Blog Post

Many people believed Sisa Abu Daooh was a man until several weeks ago, when she revealed her 42 year secret, she is a woman. Perhaps surprisingly in a society where many hold conservative notions of gender roles, Ms. Daooh’s announcement was greeted not with condemnation but with curiosity and a flurry of mostly positive reactions from local news media and officials. In an interview last week, Ms. Daooh said she began dressing as a man as a practical matter, to escape restrictions on women’s employment in a patriarchal culture and earn enough to support her daughter, Hoda. This article was very interest because of how gender roles are today. The fact that a woman pretended to be a man for 42 years because of women's employment, that just crazy.