This paper contributes to the broader endeavor of writing a political history of the effects of neoliberal economy in republican Egypt from a gender perspective, focusing on the corporality of women’s lived experience and women’s narrations of history. Building on the work of feminist historians and theories elaborated by feminist epistemologists on decolonizing feminism, I focus on the construction of what I call a collective feminist body in the decade between the first two UN conferences dedicated to Women: the Mexico City Conference of 1975 and the Nairobi conference of 1985. Trough an analysis of 15 oral histories about that period I have collected in Cairo between 2011 and 2018 (among prominent feminist and human rights activists, intellectuals, trade unionists and politicians), I question the ambiguous link between the launch of infitah policies in 1977 and the emergence of the so-called second-wave of Egyptian independent feminism that emerged in the early 1980s. Specifically, I analyse the feminist genealogies and the trajectories that led to the emergence of second-wave independent secular feminism in the above-mentioned period, illustrating the challenges faced by independent feminist activists who were operating in the framework of an authoritarian State. While the public discussion on women and development, on reproductive health and on sexual rights flourished in governmental and international spaces, in good measure by stressing the burden imposed by “traditional cultures” in order to enhance their agenda of “modern development”, independent feminist activists and emerging women’s collectives and associations emphasized that more than the “traditions” and “culture”, it was the economic factor – in particular, the severe economic crisis followed upon the years of infitah policy and the adoption of a structural adjustment program – that most reinforced cultural and social conservatism. My research, narrating history through the collection of personal stories shifts the focus from the institutional accounts produced by the government to activists' lived experiences, contributes to the epistemological debate about decolonizing feminism and to a larger discussion on corporeality through feminist history lenses. By asking how feminism addressed neoliberal governments’ attempts to policing and to disciplining women’s bodies, this research leads to a deeper understanding of Egyptian political history in that period.