She for She : Thoughts on Society’s Urban Legends

Hajir Almahdi
Jul 21, 2017 · 2 min read

The other day I was browsing through the internet and I read this story on Project Silphium about Noura and Sawsan and how Noura had help her sell her notebooks in Benghazi and deliver them to her customers. It’s a sweet story about these two women who helped each other out.

When I read it I remembered the “ a woman is another woman’s worst enemy” phrase, but how much of that is an urban legend ?

When I think back about my life I’ve always had the help and support of another women to do something.

Last year, I wanted to do a LaTeX workshop and I had no place to hold it, so I contacted @Najla_Missalati from @Tatweer_Research and asked for her help. This person had no idea who I was but that didn’t stop her from helping me with the workshop.

I needed an internship to graduate, again I contacted @Najla_Missalati and again she helped me because she believed I had the capabilities and what it takes to do it. The thing is, she did the very same thing for different people.

Noura said something that day that strike a cord with me

If you have the opportunity to help someone else, I hope you take it, especially if it’s a woman. Our society is already difficult enough and life for women, in particular, is filled with hardships. If you can help a fellow Libyan woman and support her with what she needs, Please do it.

It’s true at least you need to know there are other good hearted women you can rely on and go to for help when you need it.

There are lots of great women helping women stories everywhere, I’m sure everyone of us has experienced something like that at least twice in her life, as of that I think we should start saying phrases that are more inspiring like

“ Strong women lift each other up” instead of that enemy nonsense.

Project Silphium

Project Silphium is a platform that allows Libyan women to connect and network in a safe interactive online space.

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Hajir Almahdi

Written by

I play with data, words and sometimes guitars. Data Scientist.

Project Silphium

Project Silphium is a platform that allows Libyan women to connect and network in a safe interactive online space.

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