Since 1851, obituaries in The New York Times have been dominated by white men. With Overlooked, we’re adding the stories of remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times.

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By age 32, Doria Shafik had earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Sorbonne, competed in the Miss Egypt contest, published essays and poetry in Arabic and French, founded an Egyptian feminist organization and took on the editorship of two feminist magazines.

But it was what she did on Feb. 19, 1951, that had the biggest impact on Egyptian history.

She convened a crowd of 1,500 women at a lecture hall at the American University of Cairo for what she billed “a feminist congress.” But that was a just ruse to fool the police. Shafik had other plans.

“Our meeting today is not a congress but a parliament,” she said. “A true one! That of women.”

Moments later, she led her army of women as they stormed through the marble gates and onto the floor of Egypt’s all-male parliament — “the parliament of the other half of the nation,” she called it that day.