The Coptic senator who became the Egyptian Senate's first female undersecretary

CAIRO - 20 October 2020: A Coptic woman from Ismailia was elected by the people to be a member in the Egyptian Senate, and was elected again inside the council to be its undersecretary.

 

It may have been expected that someone like Phoebe Fawzy, a Coptic woman who is not from Cairo, was appointed by the president to be in her position. But Fawzy of the People's Republic party was elected by the people twice to be the first woman and Coptic to occupy that position. She garnered 199 votes out of the 300 hundred members of the Senate.

 

Fawzy has an MA in mass communications at Cairo University, and is a news director at Canal T.v. Most notably, she has a carrer in women's rights. She is a rapporteur at the National Council for Women (NCW) in Ismailia, with which she has exercised a lot of field work. Head of the NCW, Maya Morsi, said Fawzy's election by the people and senators will have a great impact for Egyptian women's place in politics and public life. 

 

The senator told reporters on Suday that electing her as an undersecretary is a victory for Egyptian women and proves their worth of this legislative and leading position.

 

She highlighted that had it not been for the June 30 Revolution in 2013, which overthrew the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood, she would not have been able to be in this place today. 

 

"The diversity witnessed by the Senate is an important step on the way to build the Egyptian man," Fawzy told Channel One of the Egyptian T.V., adding that the council "has members from all political, social, economic, media, art, and sports fields, as well as intellectuals and party leaders."

 

She emphasized that a senate with that diversity will have an active role in legislative life and state strategies. 

 

The Senate held its inaugural session Sunday. Egypt has not had this council since 2013, then called the Shura Council. It was dissolved after the January 25 Revolution in 2011, and again in June 2013 after an election that the Constitutional Court had found unconstitutional.

 

While Fawzy was elected by the people, Sisi appointed two members of the Salafi Nour Party in the Senate to ensure diversity after people with religious features largely refrained from running in elections and voters also avoided choosing politicians from a religious background in the aftermath of rule and overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood regime.