| Attitudes Toward Women
Rural and lower-class Egyptians generally
believed that women were morally inferior to men. Women were expected to
defer to senior male relatives, to avoid contact with men who were not
kin, and to veil themselves in public. As children women learned to accept
dependency on their fathers and older brothers. After marriage women
expected their husbands to make all decisions. Early married life could be
a time of extreme subordination and insecurity. The new wife usually lived
with or near her husband's family and was expected to help her
mother-in-law with household chores. A young wife was under considerable
pressure from her husband and his family until she bore a son. Barrenness
was a woman's worst possible misfortune, and not giving birth to a son was
almost as bad. Women who had only daughters were derogatorily called
"mothers of brides." Most families continued having children until they
had at least two sons. As the length of a woman's marriage increased, and
her sons matured, her position in the family grew more secure. A woman was
at the peak of her power when her sons were married because she could then
exercise influence over her sons' children and wives.
Patrilineal families valued honor (ird). The sexual behavior and
reputation of the women of a lineage were the most important components of
a family's honor. A bad reputation for one woman meant a bad reputation
for the whole lineage. Honor was essential to social life; without it even
a minimal social standing in the community was impossible. Men were
especially interested in maintaining honor. Women were always on their
best behavior around men from other families because they were afraid of
getting a bad reputation. A bad reputation could disgrace the men of her
family. A disgraced husband could restore his status, however, through
divorce. Most disgraced fathers and brothers in rural and lower-class
urban families, however, believed that honor could only be restored by
killing the daughter or sister suspected of sexual misconduct. Family
members who murdered the women were prepared to accept legal penalties for
their actions.
Women have traditionally been preoccupied with household tasks and child
rearing and have rarely had opportunities for contact with men outside the
family. But since the 1952 Revolution, social changes, especially in
education, have caused many women to spend time in public places among men
who were not related to them. To limit women's contact with these men,
practices such as veiling and gender segregation at schools, work, and
recreation have become commonplace. Furthermore, lowerclass families,
especially in Upper Egypt, have tended to withdraw girls from school as
they reached puberty to minimize their interaction with men. Lower-class
men frequently preferred marriage to women who had been secluded rather
than to those who had worked or attended secondary school.
Egypt's laws pertaining to marriage and divorce favored the social
position of men. Muslim husbands were traditionally allowed to have up to
four wives at a time in accordance with Islamic religious custom, but a
woman could have only one husband at a time. A Muslim man could divorce
his wife with ease by saying "I divorce thee" on three separate occasions
in the presence of witnesses. A woman wishing to dissolve a marriage had
to instigate legal proceedings and prove to a court that her husband had
failed to support her or that his behavior was having a harmful moral
effect on the family. The laws required men to support their ex-wives for
only one year after a divorce, and the fathers gained custody of the
children. A man faced few or no penalties if he refused to provide equal
support to his wives or if he refused to pay alimony to his divorced wife.
Divorce was much more difficult for Copts than it was for Muslims. Common
law regulated the marriages and divorces of Copts.
After decades of debate, the government amended the laws relating to
personal status in 1979. The amendments, which became known as the
"women's rights law," were in the form of a presidential decree and
subsequently approved by the People's Assembly. The leading orthodox
Islamic clergy endorsed these amendments, but Islamist groups opposed them
as state infringements of religious precepts and campaigned for their
repeal. The amendments stated that polygyny was legally harmful to a first
wife and entitled her to sue for divorce within a year after learning of
her husband's second marriage. The amendments also entitled the first wife
to compensation. A husband retained the right to divorce his wife without
recourse to the courts, but he was required to file for his divorce before
witnesses at a registrar's office and officially and immediately to inform
his wife. The divorced wife was entitled to alimony equivalent to one
year's maintenance in addition to compensation equivalent to two years'
maintenance; a court could increase these amounts under extenuating
circumstances such as the dissolution of a long marriage. The divorced
wife automatically retained custody of sons under the age of ten and
daughters under twelve; courts could extend the mother's custody of minors
until their eighteenth birthdays.
In 1985 Egyptian authorities ruled that the amendments of 1979 were
unconstitutional because they had been enacted through a presidential
decree while the People's Assembly was not in session. A new law reversed
many of the rights accorded to women in 1979. A woman lost her automatic
right to divorce her husband if he married a second wife. She could still
petition a court to consider her case, but a judge would grant a divorce
only if it were in the interests of the family. If a divorce were granted,
the judge would also determine what was an appropriate residence for the
divorced woman and her children.
The changes in divorce legislation in 1979 and 1985 did not significantly
alter the divorce rate, which has been relatively high since the early
1950s. About one in five marriages ended in divorce in the 1980s.
Remarriage was common, and most divorced men and women expected to wed
again. Seven out of ten divorces took place within the first five years of
marriage, and one out of three in the first year. The divorce rate
depended on residence and level of education. The highest divorce rates
were among the urban lower class, the lowest rates among the villagers of
Upper Egypt. Throughout the country, as much as 95 percent of all divorces
occurred among couples who were illiterate.
Changing Status of Women
Since the early 1970s, women's status has
been changing, mostly because an increasing number of women have joined
the nonagricultural workforce. According to government estimates, the
number of working women doubled from 500,000 to 1 million between 1978 and
1980. By 1982 women accounted for 14 percent of all wage-earning and
salaried employees throughout the country. Although substantial numbers of
women were in the professions, particularly education, engineering, and
medicine, most women held low-paying jobs in factories, offices, and
service industries. Half of all employed women held jobs such as street
cleaners, janitors, hotel and domestic servants, and hospital aides. In
1990 women accounted for more than 12 percent of all industrial workers;
most female factory workers were in textiles, food processing, and
pharmaceuticals.
Data as of December 1990
Sources:
Entry from: "Egypt: A Country Study" published by the Federal
Research Division of the Library of Congress: |
