FREEDOM HOUSE

Women’s Rights in the Middle East & North Africa

http://www.freedomhouse.org/

http://www.freedomhouse.org/media/pressrel/052005.htm

 

Egypt

by Amira El-Azhary Sonbol

 

Population: 72,100,000

GDP Per Capita (PPP): $3,810

Economy: Mixed statist

Ranking on UN HDI: 120 out of 177

Polity: Dominant party (military-influenced)

Literacy: Male 67.2% / Female 43.6%

Percent Women Economically Active: 35.7%

Date of Women’s Suffrage: 1956

Women’s Fertility Rate: 3.5

Percent Urban/Rural: Urban 43% / Rural 57%

 

Country Ratings for Egypt

Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice: 3.0

Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person: 2.8

Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity: 2.8

Political Rights and Civic Voice: 2.7

Social and Cultural Rights: 2.4

(Scale of 1 to 5: 1 represents the lowest and 5 the highest level of freedom women have to exercise their rights)

 

 

Introduction

Egypt is a republic that gained its formal independence from Great Britain in 1922 and acquired full sovereignty following the end of World War II. The country’s constitution, adopted in 1971 under President Anwar al-Sadat, established a strong presidential political system. Egypt is ruled by the president, who serves as chief of state; the prime minister, who is the head of government; a presidential-appointed cabinet; the majority-elected People’s Assembly (Majlis al-Sha’b); and the partially elected Consultative Council (Majlis al-Shura). Following the assassination of al-Sadat in 1981, Hosni Mubarak became president and declared a state of emergency, which he has since renewed every three years. Lack of competitive elections and the continuation of emergency laws constrain the rights of all Egyptians, including women.

 

The majority of Egypt’s population of 72.1 million[i] is Muslim, while an estimated 6 percent follow the Christian Coptic Church. Together with poverty, overpopulation is the greatest challenge to development. The United Nations estimates that 16.7 percent of Egypt’s population live below the poverty line and that its population increases by 1.8 percent each year. While the country experienced high economic growth in the late 1990s, the economy and foreign direct investment have dropped over the last few years. Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Egypt has experienced declines in some of its principal sources of income, such as the tourism industry, Suez Canal tolls, oil sales, and expatriate remittances. Approximately 30 percent of the population work in the almost entirely privately owned agriculture sector.

 

Freedom of the press is limited, and the right of assembly and association is severely restricted. In 2003, a new law went into effect that regulates the actions of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The National Democratic Party (NDP) has dominated the country’s political system since its establishment in 1978. While the state allows for multiple parties, political parties are required to seek the approval of the Political Parties Committee (PPC), an NDP-controlled body affiliated with the Consultative Council.

 

Egyptian women have made advances during the last few decades through the work of an active civil society, women’s rights advocates and organizations, and the dedication of the president’s wife, Suzanne Mubarak. Highlights of recent achievements include the passing of the khul’ law, which permits women to divorce without a husband’s consent; the establishment of a family court; and the revisions to Egypt’s nationality law, which now extends nationality rights to the children of Egyptian mothers married to non-Egyptian fathers. Egyptian women have enjoyed nearly two centuries of education,[ii] and today women constitute an important part of public and private employment and labor. Egypt has a woman judge at the Constitutional Supreme Court level and a gender-ombudsman office to which women victims of gender discrimination can send confidential complaints. In two years, the office has received 7,000 complaints.[iii]

 

While women’s status has improved to some degree, women’s empowerment in Egypt has faced many obstacles, including the country’s political and economic conditions, its patriarchal social environment, and the efforts of religious extremists. While women have had full and equal suffrage since 1955, the strong legal basis for women’s human rights in Egypt is often limited by a lack of proper implementation mechanisms to ensure women’s equal access to justice and the law. Egyptian women also have limited influence at the national and community levels, despite their having filled leadership positions as ministers, ambassadors, media heads, MPs, and university professors. The state encourages groups that advocate for women’s rights but is not as supportive of groups that associate women’s rights with the call for greater participation in the political system.

 

Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice

 

Egypt has the structure of an independent judiciary, with courts of varying degrees and judicial review by a Supreme Constitutional Court and Council of State. The country’s laws are based on French, English, and Islamic legal codes.

 

The 1971 constitution guarantees equality to all citizens without prejudice based on gender; it confirms women’s rights to inherit and own property, have freedom of movement, and have access to education, employment, and pay.[iv] Article 40 of the 1980 amended Egyptian constitution states, “All citizens are equal before the law. They have equal public rights and duties without discrimination between them due to race, ethnic origin, language, religion, or creed.”[v] Nevertheless, advances in laws to ensure gender equality are often offset by their lack of full implementation and the absence of protection mechanisms against gender discrimination at all levels.

 

Two recent Egyptian laws advanced efforts to eliminate legal gender discrimination and fulfill Egypt’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which it ratified in 1981. First, in January 2000, the Egyptian National Assembly passed Law No. 1, granting women the right to a no-fault divorce within three months without a husband’s consent. Then, in July 2004, an amended nationality law extended nationality rights to children of Egyptian women married to non-Egyptian husbands. However, the nationality law failed to give nationality rights to foreign husbands and forbade the children of these marriages from holding government positions, even though the law extends such rights to foreign wives and children of Egyptian fathers. At present, many women also lack identity cards because they were not registered at birth. The National Council for Women is working to rectify this serious situation in order to assure all women their civil rights.

 

Most Egyptian women have equal access to justice, and a woman’s testimony is equal to that of a man’s in court.[vi] However, complaints about male court officials and judges exhibiting patriarchal attitudes are quite common in Egypt. The problems women face in courts are mostly shared by all Egyptians: overburdened dockets, overworked judges, bureaucratic corruption that prevents execution of court decisions, and endless delays in a system badly in need of overhaul. Women do, however, face gender discrimination in the courts in cases involving property disputes, particularly over agricultural land, due to traditions favoring greater male inheritance. The creation of family courts in 2004 and the plan to include women judges are welcomed steps by women activists.

 

While Egypt’s criminal and penal codes do not explicitly discriminate against women, women may face unequal treatment from the police, society, and their families when accused of crimes of adultery or culturally inappropriate behavior. Promiscuity is considered unacceptable behavior for both genders within Egyptian culture. However, while men or boys may be reprimanded, women or girls may be severely punished, or in extreme cases, killed for “dishonorable” acts. While “honor crimes,” or the killing of women in the name of family “honor,” are not prevalent in Egypt and are not specifically addressed within the law, these crimes do occur. Article 17 of the Penal Law gives the judge the right to mitigate a penalty of death to a life-sentence. Unfortunately, this article is sometimes unequally applied in favor of men and is used to discriminate against women, especially in cases involving “honor crimes.”[vii]

 

Another problem is the reporting and investigating of an “honor crime.” Police officials, especially at the local level, often do not investigate such cases with the same rigor as they might for other crimes. Families and villages may collude by not informing or assisting police. Local authorities often close investigations of “honor crimes” by labeling them as accidents or crimes perpetrated by an unknown person.

 

Contradictions and inconsistencies in Egyptian laws contribute to a continuation of violence against women. When applied correctly, the law is severe toward convicted abusers, ranging from three years to life imprisonment for rape, with an added death sentence for the abduction and rape of a woman.[viii] On the other hand, the law does not seriously address violence against women in the home. Marital rape and emotional and verbal abuse are not considered crimes, and wife beating meets with condemnation only when it leads to serious injury.[ix] 

 

The Egyptian government plays an active role in global conferences on women. The country ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)[x] in 1981, albeit with a number of reservations. Nevertheless, a number of Egypt’s national laws still do not adhere to universal standards on women’s human rights or nondiscrimination issues.

 

Egypt has an active and effective women’s rights movement. Egyptian civil society activists from various walks of life have been working for decades and have achieved some success through their challenges to patriarchal systems. They have succeeded in changing Egyptian laws and have improved women’s access to justice and citizenship rights.

 

Recommendations

1. The government should amend all laws in order to bring all legislation in conformity with the principles of non-discrimination.

2. The government should revise the nationality and citizenship laws to be in accordance with the Egyptian constitution, which guarantees equal rights to all citizens.

3. The government should remove all reservations to CEDAW and take steps to implement it locally by bringing national laws in conformity with CEDAW.

 

Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person

 

Egyptian law guarantees full enjoyment of civil liberties to all citizens, and the country’s institutions are legally prohibited from discriminating against women. In practice, however, women face gender discrimination in many aspects of their lives, and their personal security is threatened by both state and non-state actors.

 

Changes in Egyptian law now provide Muslim women the right to divorce without a husband’s consent—the right of khul’. Khul’ law is drawn from Islamic Shari’a and basically grants a woman the right to divorce by court order on condition that the woman forgoes many of her financial entitlements.[xi] The inclusion in the Personal Status Law of Article 20 that grants women the right of khul’ was considered a significant accomplishment by Egypt’s women’s rights activists. 

 

Some have criticized Egypt’s khul’ laws as harmful to women’s financial rights because they force a wife to give up her mahr[xii] (dower payment), alimony, and any gifts provided by the husband during the marriage. Returning the dower and losing alimony are hardships poor women can ill afford, given the overall poverty rates in Egypt, particularly in rural areas. This is, however, a complex issue that involves culture, the law, and the integral financial balance between husband and wife in Egyptian marriages. Traditionally, a husband is expected to pay an advance dower, support his wife and children during the marriage, and pay the wife’s delayed dower, alimony, and compensation if he unilaterally divorces her. Similarly, because khul’ divorce is a divorce without a husband’s consent, it is believed that the wife should accordingly relinquish the dower and alimony to her husband.

 

Egypt does not have a unified personal status code. Consequently, different laws govern women from different religions. Most often, male religious leaders select a community’s religious laws; women followers of a faith or women’s rights advocates are rarely included in such negotiations with the government. Egypt’s new family courts are expected to help safeguard the human rights of women and children and improve upon some of the complications women face due to conflicting laws.[xiii]

 

Egyptian law prohibits the marriage of girls below the age of 16, but the law is not always implemented, particularly in rural areas. The median age for women to marry is 19 years.[xiv] The Coptic Church does not recognize any marriage outside the church. Egyptian Muslims, on the other hand, permit men to marry non-Muslim women, but Muslim women are forbidden from marrying outside the religion. While Christian leaders in Egypt opted to follow Islamic inheritance laws, divorce options open to Muslim men and women are not available to Christians. The Coptic Orthodox Church permits divorce only in specific circumstances, such as adultery or conversion of one spouse to another religion.[xv] Christian men, like Muslim men, can sue their wives for lack of obedience (ta’a), which if successful, allows the husband to ignore his financial responsibilities to support his wife. Christian women, who have no right to khul’, lose their right to financial support when the courts deem them disobedient. Such multiple codes are particularly discriminatory against Christian women.

 

Violence against women is a serious problem in Egypt. Women victims of violence most often suffer within the home at the hands of family members, such as husbands, fathers, or brothers.[xvi] Egyptian families and government authorities, such as the police, often ignore violent acts against women. Domestic violence and marital rape are not considered crimes in Egyptian law, and women victims of rape and incest have tremendous difficulties prosecuting their perpetrators. Spousal abuse is grounds for a divorce, but the victim is required to produce medical reports of bodily harm as proof. The Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance conducted a survey that reported that 67 percent of women in urban areas and 30 percent in rural areas had been involved in some form of domestic violence at least once during a set period between 2002 and 2003. Less than half of those women who had been beaten sought help.[xvii] The Ministry of Social Affairs have opened 150 family counseling centers to help victims of domestic violence, but many women victims still have limited access to supportive legal, psychological, and social services.

 

Women also face various forms of violence outside the home, ranging from verbal harassment to physical and sexual abuse and rape. The harassment of women in public is a serious problem in Egypt; more serious punishments for verbal harassment should be instituted and enforced. Current statistics on the prevalence of rape, domestic abuse, and “honor killings” in Egypt are rare. Crime pages of daily newspapers show that rape is quite widespread, even if most incidents are not reported or legally prosecuted by the state, victims, or their families. After decades of advocacy, Egyptian feminists succeeded in getting the government to abolish the laws that had previously allowed for the forgiveness of rapists if they married their victims. However, the new law is often undermined by the police, who continue to encourage the marriage of a woman and her rapist and the dropping of charges against the man.

 

Recommendations

1. The government and civil society organizations should initiate a national public education media campaign on the problems of domestic violence, incest, and rape.

2. The government should criminalize all forms of violence committed against women within the family and create supportive services for victims of family violence.

3. The government should establish procedures to inform the public of new laws affecting women’s rights, such as khul’ divorce.

4. The government should facilitate public discussion on issues of women’s security and freedom in the context of Islamic and Christian traditions.

 

Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity

 

According to Egyptian laws, women can own, inherit, and independently use land and property. While no longer prevalent, it is still preferable practice for male heirs to own land so that outsiders cannot inherit through marriage. The Egyptian government does not provide women with legal aid services to help them better understand or protect their land rights. Buyouts, exchange of assets, and outright usurpation are additional factors that contribute to the serious discrepancy between the numbers of women and of men with land tenure.[xviii] The Egyptian government estimated that there were 8,417,962 male landowners and only 341,905 women landowners in 1999/2000.[xix]

 

Egypt’s land-tenure system is based on shuyu’, a collective-property arrangement by which heirs own shares of a property.[xx] Egypt’s system tends to complicate and delay inheritance until all heirs agree to a division or to the alienation of marked-out pieces of land for registration.[xxi] This process can sometimes span generations and tends to favor men. Methods of proving land tenure require documents (i.e. official registration, payment of taxes, delivery of crops, or registration with the local village association in the case of rented property), which are usually issued in the name of the male head of household. Therefore, even though the whole family may rent, work, or buy a piece of land, it will be registered under the father’s name. When the father dies and leaves younger children, the wife usually assumes rights over the land, but if there is an older son, sometimes from an earlier marriage, the son’s rights to the land supersede those of the wife.

 

The same system of shuyu’ applies to all forms of real estate. Most often, women are neglected, denied, or bought out by the male head of family. Despite some positive steps, the government has made very little progress in addressing the problems of women, especially rural women, in regard to land and property ownership. There is a serious need to overhaul Egypt’s property system.

 

According to international human rights standards, Egyptian inheritance laws, which are derived from Islam, discriminate against women; Muslim female heirs receive half of a male heir’s share. Christian widows of Muslims have no inheritance rights.[xxii] While inheritance laws allocate unequal shares for men and women, the system is supposed to balance the traditional financial responsibilities of males and females. The male may inherit more, but it is the male who must pay his wife’s dower and provide financial support to his family, parents, younger siblings, and in some cases, grandparents. This model, however, is not without flaws. Considering the current decline in economic conditions and the increase in women’s workforce participation, this model is increasingly problematic and outdated; today, both married and unmarried women contribute their income to the home and family. Furthermore, the government has not made sufficient efforts to invest in a social welfare system to take care of women, children, and the elderly in vulnerable conditions.

 

Egypt has a long history of women’s education in arts and sciences,[xxiii] and other than due to economic and practical limitations, there is little resistance to educating girls. Education at all levels is free for Egyptians and is compulsory up to 15 years of age; however, there is a general lack of enforcement. Wealthy families traditionally send their children to private foreign-language schools and universities, while poor families often need the income from a daughter’s labor and prefer to educate sons in hopes that they will later support the family. Early marriage in rural areas is a large contributor to female school dropout rates.[xxiv]

 

In 2002, women’s literacy rate of 43.6 percent lagged behind men’s rate of 67.2 percent, but this is still quite an improvement from women’s rate of 38.8 percent in 1995.[xxv] Women’s literacy is expected to improve still further as women today constitute nearly half of the students in Egypt’s 13 public universities.[xxvi] Nevertheless, wide discrepancies persist between the illiteracy rates of rural and urban women.[xxvii]

 

World Bank data show a marked improvement in female student enrollment in Egyptian primary and secondary schools from 1980 to 2000, rising from 61 percent in 1980 to 93 percent in 2000 for primary school and from 39 percent to 82 percent in 2000 for secondary school (compared with 88 percent for males).[xxviii] Nevertheless, the quality of Egypt’s educational system has deteriorated significantly as a result of overpopulation.

 

Considering the number of female students graduating from Egypt’s universities and the percentage of women in the workforce, the representation of women in leadership positions is very poor. Patriarchal discrimination is at the heart of the disequilibrium. Promotion in government is based on date of hiring, merit being secondary, up to the leadership level, where selection is left to the ministers, who often exclusively select males. For example, male and female university professors follow similar hiring, tenure, and promotion procedures, with selection of deans and presidents being left up to the Minister of Higher Education. With the exception of the rare symbolic appointee, there are almost no female deans or presidents. Such selection procedures have a direct impact on gender power relations at the very level of the educational system, where there should be absolute equality of opportunity.

 

During the period 1995 to 2000, 35 percent of women in the workforce were employed in agriculture, 9 percent in industry, and 56 percent in services.[xxix] Working women in Egypt come from different economic and social backgrounds. Women in the higher economic classes are active as modern professionals, including doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, scientists, and university teachers. Women open businesses, invest money, manage shops, work in retail, and own housing. A few women manage successful international consultancies, clothing manufacturing, and textile workshops. Particularly active in the informal market, many women are penny-capitalists investing small outlays of funds. Most women in this class have their own private transportation, such as a personal car.

 

According to the UN (FAO), more than 50 percent of rural women are actively involved in tasks such as fertilizing, weeding, harvesting, sacking, marketing, and storage of crops. About 70 percent of women’s working time in agriculture is devoted to animal husbandry.[xxx] Rural women are industrious and, when able, will take out loans to invest in raising cattle or chickens or rent small patches of land to grow cash products. NGOs help women through micro-finance projects, but these NGOs have limited outreach, resources, and capital.

 

While the constitution guarantees equal hiring, firing, and pay for men and women, serious discrepancies exist in reality. There are large gender gaps in income and a basic trend of feminization of unemployment.[xxxi] According to UNDP estimates, in 2000 the average earned income of women was US$2,003, while that of men was US$5,227.[xxxii] The majority of women workers in the second and third income groups do not have health care, pensions, or other state-provided or subsidized benefits. Labor laws require employers of 100 women or more to provide a nursery, maternity leave at full pay, two daily breaks to breastfeed a child for two years after birth, and the right to take two years off from work to care for the family. Employers often react to such laws by placing a glass ceiling on promotions for women, hiring women on a temporary basis, or firing them when they marry or become pregnant in order to avoid these costs. The private sector is not in favor of hiring women.[xxxiii] There are no sexual harassment laws that protect working women in Egypt, even though sexual harassment exists at all levels of labor.

 

Women’s employment and education have served as focal points for women’s rights and civil society groups, particularly in villages and low-income areas. Women’s civil groups are encouraged by the state to work on these issues and to work in cooperation with government agencies.

 

Recommendations

1. The government should provide low-interest loans, financial management training, and equal opportunities to women engaged in small businesses.

2. The government should hire personnel to assist and advise women on the legalities of inheritance, land registration, and other agricultural land and real estate issues and make loans available for women to cover land registration and legal fees in property cases.

3. The government should overhaul the educational curriculum and remove gender stereotypes from textbooks. 

4. The National Assembly should enact a sexual harassment law for enforcement at all levels in the public and private sectors.

5. The government should facilitate public debates through the media, syndicates, and universities on women’s legal rights, including inheritance rights.

 

Political Rights and Civic Voice

 

Many contradictions exist between Egyptian law and its implementation in the field of political and civil rights. While in theory, Egyptians can freely elect their representatives, in practice, men and women have very limited access to the country’s political process and structure. Egypt’s political system itself is seriously flawed. The emergency laws in effect since 1981 and the government’s slow reform strategy exacerbate its undemocratic nature.

 

While the system appears outwardly multi-party and democratic, it is actually a clone of Egypt’s earlier Arab Socialist Union, in which interrelated combines controlled all politics. In reality, Egypt’s political system is closed and contradictory; all state facilities and powers rest with the National Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP dominates the People’s Assembly and Shura Assembly, the civil service, provincial authorities, and the public industrial sector. Opposition parties have little say in the political process. Any possible future opposition can be curbed by law and by security forces that have license over the activities of Egypt’s press, NGOs, and citizens in the name of national security.

 

While freedom of speech is guaranteed in the constitution, in practice, certain subjects are taboo, such as criticism of the president and the military and views considered anti-Islamic. Article 48 guarantees freedom of the press and also states, “Censorship of newspapers is forbidden as well as notifying, suspending or canceling them by administrative methods. In a state of emergency or in time of war a limited censorship may be imposed on the newspapers, publications and mass media in matters related to public safety or purposes of national security in accordance with the law.”[xxxiv] Government permission is needed to open or publish a newspaper.[xxxv] The government and its committees (including the religious committee of the al-Azhar) may forbid particular types of journals and close newspapers through executive action.

 

Women have little say in the political process and have limited access to participation in the political structure. While women have had full suffrage since 1956, the political system tends to work against their efforts to run successfully or win election to public office. In many cases, women are unable to afford the high costs required to mount a political campaign. The proportion of registered voters who were women in 2003 was just 37.4 percent.[xxxvi]

 

The patriarchal structure of the political system is reflected in the number of women who participate or who are selected to be included in the system. Women’s participation in the People’s Assembly is just 11 out of 454 elected representatives. The number of female parliamentarians is just 2.2 percent in the First House and 5.7 percent in the Second House.[xxxvii] The cabinet has only two female ministers, with no women serving in any significant way in the crucial ministries such as defense, economic, or the interior. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, does include a large percentage of women, who hold positions as ambassadors and who work in such locations as New York and Tokyo.

 

One female judge now sits on the Supreme Constitutional Court, and the government has indicated that it plans to place two more women in the family courts. Nevertheless, women’s opportunities for advancement within Egypt’s judicial system are highly restricted. Graduates of law schools enter into the legal bureaucracy of the Ministry of Justice and are promoted through the system based on date of hiring and merit. Both men and women rise in the system, but whereas men are promoted to be district attorneys and judges, women are not. Some years ago, two women sued the government for the right to be promoted to district attorneys, but their efforts continue to be blocked in Egypt’s courts under various pretexts.

 

The state encourages the establishment of NGOs; an estimated 17,000 organizations are active and involved in social and educational programs, human rights, micro-finance, and other issues. The activities of NGOs, however, are strictly controlled by the state. An NGO law that became effective in 2003 acts to restrict NGO activity through licensing, security regulations, and the interference of the Ministry of Social Affairs. The Ministry of Social Affairs now has the authority to dissolve NGOs by decree and has the right to put its own representatives on the NGOs’ boards.

 

Egyptian human rights groups have condemned the new NGO regulatory laws, but the state continues to use what it calls security reasons to limit, constrain, and ultimately control all activities that focus on women’s human rights or political rights and civil liberties. A select few women currently wield the hegemonic power to determine the agenda of women’s rights advocates, the formation of and membership in civil groups, and their access to government financing and international aid.

 

The NCW was established in 2000 as a government institution with the aim of advancing the status of Egyptian women. By registering, as required by the new law, women’s NGO’s are virtually forced to accept the hegemony of the NCW and the Ministry of Social Affairs. Those groups who refuse to conform are denied registration, as was the case with The New Woman Research Center (NWRC). The NWRC, active since 1984, was denied registration on security grounds, but took the matter to the administrative court and won a judgment against the ministry in late 2003.[xxxviii] However, the ministry has yet to comply with the court’s orders even though the judiciary has declared the 2003 NGO laws to be in direct conflict with Egypt’s constitution.

Women’s ability to access information has improved with the expanding diversity of media programs in Egypt resulting from the growth of satellite television. Greater literacy programs have also increased women’s awareness of their rights.

 

Recommendations

1. The government should abolish the Emergency Law to ensure that national security interests do not override fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution.

2. The government should permit open, direct elections with free competition between political parties to increase participation and to give Egyptians, both men and women, a stake in the country’s politics and future.

3. The government should promote more women to judgeships and district attorney positions and open all positions currently closed to women within the legal system.

 

Social and Cultural Rights

 

Many women in Egypt suffer from a basic lack of access to adequate health services and health insurance. While government hospitals theoretically provide free services, available health facilities are poorly equipped. Top-quality hospitals can be found in major cities but tend to be very expensive and serve only the rich, or particular sectors like the army, air force, or police. Egypt’s wealthy, who can afford such hospitals, prefer to travel overseas for better-quality medical services. Together with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Egypt launched a successful campaign to improve health facilities in 1975, and infant mortality declined by 65 percent between 1976 and 1997.[xxxix] Nevertheless, demographic and health surveys published in 2000 revealed that while there was an overall improvement in maternal care, postpartum care services are not widely utilized. Maternal mortality rates outside metropolitan areas are almost double those in metropolitan areas.[xl] 

 

Studies prepared by USAID indicate that 96 percent of women live within 5 kilometers of a source of family planning.[xli] Contraceptive use increased from 24 percent to 56 percent between 1980 and 2000, and the Ministry of Health began addressing the reproductive health of adolescents for the first time in 2003.[xlii] Articles 260 to 262 of the Egyptian penal code prohibit all abortions, with the exception of abortions performed to save a mother’s life. Despite the laws, abortions are frequently performed in hospitals for the rich and at home for the poor.

 

Perhaps the most harmful traditional practice experienced by a majority of Egypt’s women, Muslim and Christian alike, is female genital mutilation (FGM). This practice was outlawed in 1996 and is forbidden under articles 241 and 242 of the penal code, which punish the deliberate infliction of bodily harm.[xliii] FGM, as practiced in Egypt, commonly involves either Type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) or Type II (commonly referred to as excision).[xliv] Popularly known as tahara (purification), the practice is viewed as a positive physical cleansing for women and is most often performed on girls between the ages of 7 and 10 years.[xlv] Egyptians widely believe FGM to be an Islamic practice, even though it is also performed by Egyptian Christians and is not practiced in most Muslim countries outside the Nile valley. While the leadership of the al-Azhar, the central authority on Islam in Egypt, condemned the inaccuracy of this information, clergymen continue to confirm FGM as religiously mandated, which is one reason for its continuation. Both the state and NGOs have made serious efforts to eradicate the harmful practice. The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood launched an extensive program to combat FGM in 2003.[xlvi]

 

Most Egyptian families rent small apartments or continue to live with grandparents. Owning a house is a dream for the millions of homeless poor families who live in places of refuge like Cairo cemeteries or as squatters in garages.[xlvii] Poverty has led many families to exploit the labor of their female members. Daughters and sisters may be sent to work in urban homes or in other countries while families directly pocket their earnings. Fear of violence and laws that place daughters under the power of male family members tend to perpetuate these conditions.

 

Female-headed households are more likely to be disadvantaged than male-headed households. Government services, including social security and welfare, are available to women, but the numbers of homeless children, abandoned newborn babies, beggars, and destitute elderly of both genders are increasing, and shelters are hardly adequate. It is estimated that while educated women hold 25 percent of senior government and managerial bank positions, 12 million women live in slums. Social class must be the focus of any effort to end gender discrimination in Egypt, for women are the first to suffer from poverty.[xlviii]

 

While social security and pensions do not discriminate between men and women as a matter of law, women experience discrimination in their implementation. Widows represent a forgotten group in discussions of gender discrimination; rural women lose tenure rights to land leased in their husband’s name, and widows of white-collar employees suffer incredible hardship upon their husband’s death. Pensions are tied to the cost of living and are rarely adequate for subsistence. Inherited pensions are divided according to Islamic law, with a widow receiving no more than one-quarter or one-eighth of the pension if there are children. Wives in polygamous marriages must share this one-quarter or one-eighth with the other wives, often resulting in a life of severe impoverishment. Furthermore, the government becomes the beneficiary of pensions not paid out.[xlix] In contrast to women, the husband always receives his full share of the wife’s pension, as legally she is not allowed to have other husbands.

 

Social security is an aspect of a modern state system whose regulations can easily be changed by the state. Social security is not an inheritance but a system of benefits into which a person pays while he/she is alive. Assigning Islamic inheritance laws to social security is one way of denying widows and women what they desperately need and deserve. Yet, in this case, Islamic laws of inheritance are not even fully applied. Unlike social security benefits, under Islamic inheritance law, women may still inherit past the age of 21 and after they are married, and relatives are eligible to inherit in cases in which there is no longer an immediate family. Under social security regulations the government is the beneficiary in these cases.

 

Female journalists and TV producers have some influence on the content of media programs, but overall media content is predominantly male-controlled, particularly Egypt’s political and news programs. Independent TV channels, on the other hand, present excellent programs on which women lead courageous discussions of women’s rights issues. While steps are being taken to improve the image of women in the media,[l] programs emphasizing polygamy, the roles of dominant men and submissive women, and the virgin/whore dichotomy dominate public television and perpetuate societal patriarchy. The NCW has created a Media Watch Unit to monitor the content of media messages relating to women and to recommend corrective measures to further enhance the status of Egyptian women.[li]

 

Many domestic and international groups of men and women are currently involved in rethinking women’s issues. The success of the campaign on the khul’ law in Egypt was partly due to open discussions about the law in the media and dialogue among the public. Increased advocacy and information on the seriousness of the problems facing women seeking to leave abusive marriages, as well as the other complications involved in divorce, helped to make the law more acceptable to the majority of Egyptians, notwithstanding the organized opposition. Continuing research is needed to tie today’s struggle for women’s rights to the Islamic teachings of equality.

 

The most effective argument that has been used by conservative forces to block women’s rights in Egypt has been the employment of religious discourse as an instrument of confinement for women and of empowerment for men. The use of Islam to discriminate against women contradicts the universality of Islam and Islamic dogma, which emphasize the equality of all people. This contradiction needs to be tackled directly so that principles of equality can be established from within an Islamic framework and universal principles of human rights can gain acceptability among Egyptians.

 

Recommendations

1. The government should appoint monitors to ensure that women have non-discriminatory access to pension and social security benefits. Special measures should be adopted to protect single mothers, widows, rural women, and women living in extreme poverty.

2. The government should prioritize women’s access to health care services by allocating needed resources and providing health facilities for women, especially women living in rural areas.

3. The government should encourage policies to change the negative portrayal of women in the media and expand its public education campaigns against FGM and other harmful traditional practices.

 

AUTHOR: Amira El-Azhary Sonbol is Professor of Islamic Law, History, and Society at The Edmund G. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, Washington D.C. She specializes in women’s history, Islamic history and law, and history of modern Egypt. Her publications include Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History (editor); Beyond the Exotic: Women of the Islamic World and the Deconstruction of Patriarchy (editor); Women of the Jordan: Islam, Labor and Law; The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism; and Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt: 1800–1922.