Qiwamah and Wilayah & Women's Lived Realities
AT ONE GLANCE
Population 91,500,000
(World Bank, 2015)
Total fertility rate 2.8
children born per woman
(WEF, 2015)
Child marriage 2% of girls married by the age of 15 and 17% by the age of 18
(UNICEF, 2016)
Maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births)
45 (WEF, 2015)
Life expectancy at birth
73 years for females,
69 years for males
(World Bank, 2014)
Religions (2010) 94.1% of
the population is Muslim and
5.9% Christian (with a majority of Coptic Orthodox)
(Pew, 2012)
Literacy rate 65% for
women and 82% for men
(WEF, 2015)
Labour force participation (female, male)
26%, 79% (WEF, 2015)
The Egypt Life Stories Project was undertaken by the non-governmental research-based organization Women and Memory Forum (WMF). Founded in 1995, WMF works towards unearthing the voices and roles of Arab women in cultural and religious traditions, and combatting patriarchal representations and perceptions of women. The Egyptian life stories research team consisted of three researchers/activists: Maissan Hassan, Diana Abdelfattah and Hoda Elsadda.
The main goal was to capture feminist stories, specifically the personal trajectories of three Egyptian women from different age groups and class backgrounds as they experienced and resisted gender inequalities in different eras and contexts. The stories questioned assumptions about the 1950s and 1960s being the golden age of liberalism in Egypt in terms of gender equality; explored the lived realities of gender roles in families in the context of the open-door policy of Egypt and labour migration; and examined female independence and the role of the provider in the context of unmarried single woman in present-day Egypt.
Resource Persons*
Amina (74 years old)
is a prominent Egyptian psychoanalyst and activist. Although born into a wealthy and well-known family, she faced and overcame many obstacles in pursuing her education and career. Her experiences of marriage, divorce and migration contributed to her empowerment. After obtaining her PhD, she became active in Egyptian civil society and focused on women’s rights issues. Amina finally moved to the United States with her second husband, an American citizen. She chaired and presided over two UN-related organizations and is currently working as a psychoanalyst and human rights activist.
Nadia (45 years old)
is a well-educated divorced mother of three children. Born into a workingclass family, and as the eldest of her siblings, Nadia had to work to support her parents and soon became the main provider. Later, she migrated to the United Arab Emirates and sent remittances to her family in Egypt. She eventually married twice to Egyptian migrants in Dubai, but faced many hardships in the marriages including financial neglect, psychological and physical abuse, and abandonment. After her second divorce, Nadia returned to Egypt and started a taxi business, asserting her female authority in a male-dominated field.
Sara (27 years old)
is a well-educated single woman. Born into a middle-class family, she grew up with a relative amount of freedom and hence learned to challenge the social conservatism of her father. Sara was allowed to maintain a romantic relationship with her boyfriend although she decided to end the relationship when he started to infringe on her freedom. Sara started to work and to contribute to the livelihood of her family, which gained her more freedom. After the 25th January Revolution, Sara became politically and socially engaged, and started working in the field of human rights. She is now living on her own against her father’s wishes.
*Note that all of the resource persons’ names have been changed to protect their identities and that most of the quotations and stories have been translated, edited and condensed for clarity.
Male Authority & Negotiation of Gender Roles
The Egyptian research team documented life stories of women who continuously challenged the rigidity of traditional gender roles and the resulting determination of their life choices and place in society. The idea that men are the providers and protectors of their female wards in exchange for the latters’ obedience is both enforced by the state laws and embedded in social values. Indeed, although the resource persons did not engage directly and overtly with the religious and legal concepts of qiwamah and wilayah, their stories demonstrate how these concepts were manifested in social norms that shape gender relations and roles. Beyond the different generational experiences and social backgrounds, Amina, Sara and Nadia faced gender-based barriers in their access to education, the pursuit of their careers and their freedom of mobility.
For instance, Amina, born to a wealthy and non-religious family, had to struggle a great deal to pursue her higher education. Her father was against the idea of sending his daughters to school as he believed that girls were supposed to stay at home and become housewives. When he eventually agreed to send his daughters to a French convent school, he believed that they would learn how to draw and play piano. When she applied for university, her father first refused and then imposed his conditions by deciding for her which field of education to go into and making her promise that she would not work after graduation. Since living alone in the university hostel was not an option for her father, the whole family moved to Alexandria. To pursue graduate studies in France, Amina once again had to comply with her father’s condition that she marry before going abroad to study.
Similarly and on a different level, Sara had to challenge the authority of her father, mother and boyfriend to assert her independence. When she was offered a scholarship to study in the United States, she faced the opposition of her mother and boyfriend, who argued that it was inappropriate for a young woman to travel alone without a male guardian. Her boyfriend also criticized her way of dressing and her friendships. At that point, Sara realized that she could not accept her partner’s authority and decided to end the relationship. Sara’s father was not religious but he still believed that it was his moral duty to protect and control his daughter’s life choices. Hence, while he allowed Sara to have a romantic relationship and study abroad alone, she was still subjected to his control and curfews. It was only when she started to work that she was allowed to stay out until midnight for work purposes. Even after Sara moved out of the family house to live on her own, she still faced her father’s interference in her private matters. He considered her status as a single woman and her economic independence as threats to his social image and honour as head of the household.
Context & Pathways to Empowerment
The Egyptian life stories also show many ways in which the resource persons managed to overcome gender-based obstacles, to assert their autonomy and to lead more empowering lives. The life stories highlight the different contexts of resistance for each resource person and the impact these had in shaping their pathways to empowerment.
For instance, although born in the Egyptian ‘golden age of liberalism’, Amina had to bargain with structures of authority and patriarchy to secure her life choices. She even went on a hunger strike to pressure her father to agree to her pursuing university education. Throughout her life, Amina has had to comply with traditional expectations as part of her resistance, such as having her whole family move with her so that she could pursue her university studies or agreeing to an arranged marriage so she could do doctoral studies abroad. Amina’s mother played an important role in supporting her empowerment. For instance, she convinced her husband to send their daughters to school. When Amina’s husband graduated and decided to return to Egypt, she encouraged Amina to stay in France until she completed her postgraduate studies.
Years of education, living in different places and career experiences enabled Amina to develop a strong sense of self. Unhappy in her arranged marriage, she decided to divorce her husband. Later, she decided to dedicate her life to support human rights and women’s causes in Egypt and in the world. Furthermore, Amina contributed to developing the use of a psychoanalytic approach to tackle socioeconomic challenges faced by developing countries and eventually chaired the United Nations Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
Sara’s life story addresses the issues of women’s rights and place in the Egyptian society after the 25th January Revolution. Indeed, though concerned for their daughter’s safety, Sara’s parents did not object to her participation in the protests, including when this involved coming back home late at night. For Sara, her presence at the Tahrir Square sit-ins and substantial participation in collective efforts towards political and historical change was fundamental. It intertwined with and enabled her pursuit of gender freedom, leading her to challenge male authorities in her private life and resist social expectations of gender roles from her parents and the surrounding community.
Although Nadia faced several hardships during her two marriages in the UAE, she transformed her difficult marital experiences into strengths. After her second divorce, Nadia returned to Egypt and started first a business buying and selling cars, and then a taxi company. She had gained enough confidence through her life experiences to resist gender-based discrimination, mockery and sexual harassment in a male-dominated field. By demonstrating her physical strength and self-confidence, she asserted her authority and is currently respected by her male business associates. Although she still faces disapproval from some family members, Nadia has gained enough confidence to live her life the way she wants. During the 25th January Revolution, Nadia befriended human’s rights activists and became popular among local and international NGOs. She started giving interviews and promoting women’s economic participation, which led to her desire to train female drivers to deal with gender-based discrimination in male-dominated fields.
Women Speak : Nadia’s Life Story
Education and economic role
I grew up in a very modest family in Bab El-Sheeriya. I loved school and had good grades but I also had to help my mother with the housework. As the eldest of my siblings, I had many responsibilities, including working to financially support my parents. While studying at the Faculty of Agriculture in Cairo University, I started working in the service and tourism industry. After graduating, I held a research assistant position in one of the prestigious state-owned research centres. My dream was to pursue a PhD. My monthly salary was EGP120 (currently less than USD20). But by the end of the 1980s, I chose to quit this job to focus on a more lucrative career. I made more than EGP1,500 through my new job in the service industry, owned a car and provided for the household.
My first love was a young sailor from a well-off family. Although we were officially engaged and loved each other, his family forced him to break off because of my lower social status. Alone, I worked very hard and became the main provider for my family, paying for the education and marriages of my younger siblings. After a few years working in Cairo, I received a job offer as an event organizer in Dubai. My first years in Dubai were the best in my life and I was happy. I earned enough to support my family and my personal needs while saving money.
First marriage and divorce
After several years in Dubai, I met my first husband, a young good-looking Egyptian who worked in the same hotel. We married in Dubai without seeking my parents’ approval. At that time it was not a concern for my parents. My younger sisters were already married and my mother was happy that her eldest daughter was also getting married. I paid for most of the marriage costs and for the new household’s expenses.
For me, marriage was not about love but partnership. But my husband was not a good partner. He was not ambitious and was thriftless; most of our arguments about money ended with him beating me. Once pregnant, I had to quit my position as a wedding organizer because of the long hours. I started a new job in a government hospital with a lower pay, which caused more fights with him.
When I gave birth to my twins, it was hard to balance work and my maternal duties. I could not afford child care and did not have any relatives to help me. In the meantime, my relationship with my husband had worsened and became hateful. I did not want this to affect our children, so after a year, I decided to leave them with my mother in Cairo.
After getting a divorce, I managed to focus on my career again. I was motivated by the desire to maintain a decent standard of living for my children, particularly now that they were away from me. As a divorced woman living alone in a foreign country, I had to be aware of how others perceived me. I spent most of my time between work and home. I did not go out with friends as I had before getting married. I decided that I would never marry again until I met Tarek, who became my second husband.
Second marriage and difficult divorce
Tarek was a well-off, charming, handsome young man and I fell in love with him. Interestingly, this time, my family insisted that my brother meet Tarek before my wedding. My family was impressed by his background and advised me to marry him. They believed that marrying Tarek was a golden opportunity considering my situation as a divorced woman with two children. Not only was Tarek young and never married, he also owned a small business in Dubai.
During my first weeks with Tarek, I experienced happiness that I never felt in my first marriage. However, suddenly everything changed. Tarek became aggressive towards me and behaved violently. He had started to have problems with his business, so I gave him the money to save him from bankruptcy. After a few months, Tarek told me that he had been married to another woman before me—a jinnia (a female jinn, invisible being). He said that he possessed extraordinary powers, which made him charming. According to him, his violent behaviour was due to the jinnia and her children’s jealousy towards me. Despite my attempts to help him, Tarek was still very violent to me, beating me, pulling my hair and punching me. His abusive behaviour did not stop even after I got pregnant.
While my daughter was still a newborn, Tarek convinced me to apply for a loan under my name in order to help his business. However, our relationship worsened since Tarek did not make regular payments to the bank as requested. I finally asked for a divorce but he refused. After several months, I convinced him to go to the court to register our divorce. However, I found out that he bribed one of the court employees to hijack the divorce process. He told the judge that I had been seen with a strange man in his car, which was illicit behaviour. Although I refuted this false allegation, they presented a witness and the judge refused to grant me a divorce.
A few months later, Tarek left Dubai suddenly without letting me know. He left me alone with a newborn child and a debt of 10,000 Dirhams. I spent three years paying the loan back to the bank while providing for my baby in Dubai and my children and mother in Cairo. After living in harsh conditions for these years, I decided to go back to Egypt and rejoin my family and children.
Business in Cairo
In Cairo, I could not find a job matching my experience, so I started a small business buying and selling used cars. My past marriages helped me survive in a male-dominated market and I managed to gain respect from my business partners. This respect was not always easily obtained. Once, I had to hit a man in a business meeting after he made a sexually explicit remark about me.
After I bought a taxi, a friend advised me to keep it and to employ drivers. But I was let down by the drivers’ lack of commitment, so I decided to drive it myself. For several months, I did not tell my family about my new job. While my mother did not mind and encouraged me, my siblings were sceptical and ashamed.
I am now seeking to establish an academy for female drivers where I can teach women how to drive and to prepare them for working in the field. I want to integrate women’s issues in the trainings in order to develop a feminist consciousness. It is important for women to learn how to deal with all kinds of harassment, especially as a female taxi driver. Moreover, I would like to create a syndicate for female drivers to investigate and tackle their problems.
Gender Equality
Despite the state’s constitutional and international obligations to protect, support and promote gender equality, Egyptian women still face gender-based discrimination and violence in both the private and public spheres. Although gaps are closing between male and female enrolment in secondary and tertiary education, female literacy remains 17% lower than that of men. Traditional gender role expectations along with socioeconomic and geographical factors continue to affect girls’ access to primary education. In 2015, 76% of out-of-school children of primary school age were girls, compared to 24% for boys.
Furthermore, women’s employment rates remain low while gender wage gaps are observed in every industry with an estimated earned income more than three times lower for women than men. According to UNFPA, gender gaps are accentuated by poverty. This is reflected in the higher incidence of illiteracy among female-headed households in rural areas and high rates of female participation in the informal sector, which foster women’s vulnerability and impoverishment.
Many Egyptian women are subjected to various forms of physical and psychological violence, including female genital mutilation, sexual and collective harassment, marital rape and beatings, whether at home, the workplace or the public space. According to a study released by UN Women in 2013, 99.6% of women have been subjected to some form of gender-based harassment. In 2014, a law criminalising sexual harassment was passed with the offence carrying a minimum penalty of one year’s detention. However, prosecution remains deficient, with a very limited number of convictions and a large majority of female victims still awaiting justice.
Political & Legal System
The Arab Republic of Egypt is a democratic state with a semi-presidential political system in which the popularly-elected President shares executive power with the Prime Minister and Government, the latter being accountable to the Parliament. The Egyptian legal system emerged from a combination of Islamic Law and French Napoleonic Code and is based on a set of written and codified laws. The main sources of law in Egypt are the Constitution (2014), international conventions, codified statutory rules, executive regulations, decrees, customs, and general principles of law. The 2014 Constitution enshrines in its article 53 the equality of all Egyptian citizens before the law, establishing that all have the same civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and prohibiting all forms of discrimination. Yet, its article 2 provides that the principles of Islamic Shari‘ah are the main sources of legislation, while its article 3 states that Egyptian Christians and Jews are to be governed by their own personal status laws.
The fiqh-based personal status law consists of a set of substantive laws (Law No. 25/1920 and Law No. 25/1929, both amended by Law No. 100/1985) and a procedural law (Law No. 1/2000). These laws contain a number of provisions that discriminate against women in terms of spousal rights and duties in marriage, a wifely legal obligation of obedience, unequal access to divorce and financial rights, and unequal rights to custody and guardianship of children. Furthermore, Egypt’s Penal Code No. 58 of 1937 has a lenient approach to crimes motivated by ‘honour’ (article 237) and prohibits abortion in all circumstances, even in cases of rape, incest or lifethreatening pregnancy.
Egypt is a State party to the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, CEDAW, and the regional African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. These conventions are considered to have the same legislative status as national laws and to be equally binding. Yet, Egypt maintains its reservations to CEDAW articles 2, 9, 16 and 29, providing that compliance to these articles shall not “run counter to the Islamic Sharia.”
