El factor invisible

Deutsche Welle:

Tens of thousands of protesters, demanding political reforms, were standing their ground again in Cairo on the 17th day of the popular uprising in Egypt - and many of them are women.

A lot of the news footage from Egypt's Tahrir Square in central Cairo shows men standing and shouting in the front rows of demonstrators, but the impression is misleading.

Tahrir Square is full of women, talking, camped out in tents, wrapped in blankets, with children, singing, and chanting for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

Some of these women are young, some are old. Some are wearing veils or headscarves; others are in tight jeans. They are doctors, bank tellers, housewives, mothers and grandmothers.

In Tahrir Square, volunteers - many of them women - have erected portable toilets, brought food and water, set up makeshift kitchens, sound stages and mobile phone charging stations.

Central Cairo is now a sprawling tent city, indicating that the protesters have no intention of leaving.

Entire families have set up house on "Liberation Square" to demonstrate their support for Egypt's fledgling democracy movement. Again and again, they shout their discontent with Mubarak to each other and the soldiers standing around them: "he should go; we're not going."