User:OttawaAC/Tawhida Ben Cheikh

Tawhida Ben Cheikh (Arabic: توحيدة بن الشيخ), born on January 2, 1909 in Tunis and died on December 6, 2010, was a Tunisian physician in pediatrics and gynecology. She was the first Moslem woman in the Arab world to practise in this field.

She was born into a family with ancient ties to the town of Ras Jebel. She attended the Lycée de la rue du Pacha between 1918 and 1922 then, in 1928, she became the first Moslem bachelière graduate in Tunisia. She continued her studies at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Paris and received her diploma in 1936.

Returning to Tunis, she practised private medicine, because the public hospitals were controlled by the colonial French authorities. After practising general medicine and pediatrics, she gravitated towards gynecology. She worked to introduce a Tunisian family planning service planning familial through a department she created at the Hôpital Charles-Nicolle in 1963 then through a clinic that she opened in 1968. She became Director of Family Planning in 1970. At the same time, she was Head of Maternity Services at the hospitals Charles-Nicolle (1955-1964) and Aziza Othmana (1964-1977).

She served as Vice-President of the Red Crescent in Tunisia, and became the head of Tunisia's first French-language feminist review, Leïla in 1937.

Tawhida Ben Cheikh died on December 6, 2010 at the age of 101 years. She was buried the next afternoon. She was the mother of Tunisian archeologist Zeineb Benzina, and the niece of politician Tahar Ben Ammar, who was involved in negotiating Tunisian independence from France.

External links

• (in French) Tahar Melligi, « Le parcours de Dame courage », La Presse de Tunisie, 20 décembre 2010
• (in French) Biographie de Tawhida Ben Cheikh (Centre de recherches, d'études, de documentation et d'information sur la femme)