Tawhida also becomes the first female physician to serve on the National Council of the College of Physicians of Tunisia in 1959. In 1962, she will be elected as Vice-President.
Then ,Tawhida Ben Cheikh founded the first hospital family planning which she will head in 1970 and the first clinic specialized in birth control.
The step of this discreet and passionate woman was heavily involved in the Tunisian modernity
Tawhida Ben Cheikh becomes in 1936 the first female doctor and Tunisian "Arab world." Honored after her death by the city of Paris with the creation of a health center in Montreuil called "Centre Tawhida Ben Cheikh," she died at 101 years old, 6 December 2010
Tawhida Ben Cheikh
Project released by:Tej Mrad
Ahmed Mnif
Sejir Bali
Mahdi Chakroun
committed feminist
Born in 1909 in a family from Ras Jebel (Bizerte Governorate), she became in 1929 the first Tunisian to get the degree, then began a brilliant medical studies in Paris with the support of her mother, Halouma Ben Ammar who will head a family who was against it. Dr. Etienne Burnet, future Director of the Institute Pasteur de Tunis, also encouraged her.
Back to Tunis in 1936, she opened a pediatric practice at 42 rue Bab Menara Tunis, and specializes in gynecology.
In parallel, she engages in the feminist struggle and participates, in 1937, in the action of the Club of the Tunisian girl and the Union of Muslim Women.
This is the year where she became the first editor of the first women's magazine published in French Tunisian "Leila".
At the independence of the country , she directs gynecological and obstetric services of Charles Nicolle Hospital ( 1955-1964) and Aziza Ottoman Hospital (1964-1967) and participated in the creation of the School of Midwifery. She retired in 1967.