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This paper illustrates the complementarities between women’s work and their private and intimate choices. The engagements of women in Egyptian labour markets are determined to some extent by their personal life trajectories. The fabled low rates of formal employment for women are a function of the gender roles that women choose to or are compelled to play. Work and marriage choices are linked and have mutual bearings on one another. …

In focusing on Ain el-Sira, a low-income neighbourhood of Cairo, this article challenges development theorists' ideas that civil society as a development partner is best able to promote women's empowerment, community development and justice. This article contests that development can avoid the machinations of the state or ignore the power imbalances that litter the relationships between state, civil society, citizens and donors! In Egypt, where the state relegates its development duties to civil society, women in Ain el-Sira experience service initiatives which are duplicated, microcredit loans they often cannot afford to repay, and benefit criteria which are strict and limiting. Programmes remain unchanged for years and long-term plans to relieve the burdens of disempowerment and destitution are non-existent. To achieve real gendered justice which provides women with the assets and capabilities to make choices requires citizenship rights. …

This chapter examines the development of a pilot conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme which was carried out in the Cairo neighbourhood of Ain el Sira from 2008‑2012 by the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity and its partners, with technical and research support provided by the American University in Cairo and the Pathways of Women’s Empowerment programme. The aim was to test out the programme in one urban setting in Cairo as a learning model for future national-level implementation. CCTs are seen to be efficient, effective, popular and even progressive because they divert resources to women. This programme sought to be even more progressive in that it contested the gender dynamics usually associated with CCTs that validate women’s roles as mothers and ignore their productive roles and agency. …

The aim of this paper, presented at Oxford's Health, Illness and Disease Conferenced held from 3-5 2009 July is to present the findings of an ongoing research project conducted in the Cairene slum of Ain Es-Sira. It examines the effects of financial capacity and conceptions of citizenship on the health-seeking behaviour of mothers for their children. Ain Es-Sira, a slum neighbourhood of approximately 6,000 inhabitants, has been selected to benefit from a pilot study of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme. Implemented in dozens of countries across the world, CCT programmes give families living below the poverty line cash and, in exchange, require that families fulfill certain conditions, which are assumed to facilitate the breakdown of the intergenerational transfer of poverty. …

The researchers have used the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) of 2006 (and its predecessors) to foster both qualitative and quantitative studies on various aspects of gender and work in Egypt, as well as building research capacity in this area. …

The conditional cash transfer (CCT) pilot in the Cairene slum of Ain es Sira started in May 2009 and was scheduled to last for two years. The Social Research Center (SRC) of the American University in Cairo provided technical assistance to the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS) in designing, implementing and evaluating this pilot to inform national social policy decisions. Within the pilot, 380 most vulnerable families with children were registered to participate, receiving monthly cash payments in exchange for fulfilling child development goals related to health and education. …

This bulletin is devoted to exploring what empowerment means in the everyday lives of women in different situations and circumstances. …