From Libya to Egypt to Syria, as we have watched revolutions unfold, we have seen women spurring change. They've been there right at the front of the demonstrations, risking their lives for new leaders and new rights. So perhaps no one has more riding on the outcome of the Arab Spring than the women who have lived under oppression and now hope for freedom. But will they get it? In the new cover article for Foreign Policy magazine, Egyptian American journalist Mona El-Tawahi asks, why do they hate us? She warns that the rights of women in the Arab world are a little insurious jeopardy. Mona joins me now from New York. Mona, thank you very much for joining me with this very powerful article. First of all, explain the role women have played in the course of the Arab Spring. Women have been on the front lines of every single uprising in revolution that we witnessed in the region since Muhammad Boazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia of December of 2010, whether it's in Syria today where we still see that incredible courage alongside men or in Egypt where inside jails, outside of jails or in Tunisia, where they're building their country towards a new constitution. Women have been front and center alongside men, which is why it's really important that we think of the second revolution, the revolution that will continue this one, which I believe must be a gender revolution. Okay, Mona, what was it that those women who are in the front lines of these revolutions were asking for? What did they want from change? Well, they wanted freedom and dignity, which have been the catch words or the themes of all the revolutions across the region. Now, in Egypt, for example, Hosni Mubarak oppressed all of Egypt, but when we take Hosni Mubarak outside of the picture, the Selamul Barak in our minds, there's a Mubarak in our bedrooms, there's a Mubarak in the streets, because Egyptian society, in its conservative patriarchal attitudes towards women, oppresses Egyptian women. So it's like a hierarchy of oppression. So when women went out on the street, they were fighting the patriarch, Mubarak. But many of the women I know there on the street, and when I go back and demonstrate with them, we're now fighting against the small patriarchs, which is that conservative attitude that does not believe in freedom and dignity for all. Okay, and in terms of the governments that have taken over in places like Tunisia and in Libya and we're still waiting in Egypt, have they given women the things that they were asking for from the revolution? Have they paid them back effectively? Well, at least in Tunisia, they have more than 40 women in their constituent assembly, and that speaks to the high visibility of Tunisian women in their country. But in my country, birth Egypt, in our constituent assembly, which has now been disbanded, thankfully, or suspended, out of 100 members, only seven were women, and that is a shameful and disgraceful number. So the point of my essay is that the revolutions in the Middle Eastern or South Africa were started by a man, Muhammad Boazizi, and they will be complicit by women, because it's women who understand the freedom and dignity that truly lie at the heart of these uprisings. Okay, but Mona, you also, I mean, you have this very provocative title, Why Do They Hate Us? And your suggestion is that women are not going to get the kind of dignity and freedom and equality that they want in the Middle East because they are, as you put it, hated by their men folk. Right, one of the points I make is that we don't have any freedoms in the Middle Eastern or South Africa because they hate us. And that's why I'm saying that what's going on in on the ground there now, be it through various feminist movements or individual activists who stood up to the military junta in Egypt or others, what they're doing is they're saying we demand those rights, just as the populations that rose up said we demand freedom and dignity. Women are saying we demand it because we can't wait until it's given to us. We have to fight for it. Briefly, Mona, you do think hatred is the right word? Is that what you feel women suffer in the Middle East? I do, Katty, because a picture that illustrates my essay is of the six or seven soldiers that were stomping very violently on a woman in Tahliu Square in December. And that level of viciousness is truly hatred. And I know it's a provocative word and I think we need to be provocative. We need to poke. And so as a writer, I think it's my job, it's my role to poke the painful places. And so I use hate to be controversial and to make people really ask what's going on. Okay, Mona El-Tawahi is a very strong piece. Thank you so much for joining me, Mona. Thanks.