Sudanese women have benefited from a law giving them equal pay for equal work since 1973, and have enjoyed mandatory representation of at least 25% in parliament since 2005. Many now work as ministers and advisers to the president, as high court judges, academics and ambassadors. These successes did not happen overnight or effortlessly, and one of the leading pioneers who helped to pave the way for such a situation was Khalida Zahir, who has died aged 88.
Khalida was born in Omdurman to Fatima Arbab and Zahir Assadati, an officer in the Sudan Defence Force. Her family and my uncle had close links throughout the years, mainly due to shared left-leaning political beliefs. Unusually in the 1930s, Khalida’s father supported her wish to go to secondary school, although others, both inside and outside the family, were against such a radical idea. She passed her school certificate at the Unity school in Khartoum, and when her success came to the attention of Emily Shore, the wife of Sir Stewart Symes, governor general of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Shore lobbied the Kitchener School of Medicine (at what is now the University of Khartoum) to allow Khalida to attend. In the event Khalida was one of two young women accepted that year, and they went on to graduate as the first female Sudanese doctors of medicine.
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