Lead Researchers: Hania Sholkamy , Ragui Assaad
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.
Great strides have been made towards the realization of gender equity over the past fifteen years in Egypt. Since the last ICPD in 1994, a National Council for Women has been established, a number of prejudicial laws have been changed and over four million women have entered the labour force. This chapter not only documents the achievements but also gauges the distance left towards the realization of gender equity and justice. The case of Egypt illustrates the importance and limitations of formal and structural change. …
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. …
This paper is meant to inform the NWRO on the link between characteristics of work, domestic violence, and personal status as a platform for addressing the gaps in policy that leave women vulnerable. This paper looks at the results of the Working Women’s Characteristics Survey (WWCS) that was carried out as part of the “Understanding Women’s Work and its Empowering Potentials in their Everyday Life” project by researchers Hania Sholkamy and Ragui Assaad. The WWCS looks empirically, for the first time in Egypt, at the relationship between labour-market participation for women and different empowerment indicators, asking whether work is empowering for women in Egypt. Assuming an inextricable link between women’s work and their private lives, the WWCS looks at engagement in different types of labour-market participation, namely formal, informal and from-home employment, in relation to various empowerment indicators that reflect on women’s access to resources, and their agency within the home and outside of it. …