Feature: Egypt expects females to play greater role in social development

Every morning on working days in Egypt, streets, bus stations, passenger microbuses, female carriages of the underground metro and others are full of women setting out to work in a male-dominant community that ironically prefers housewives to working women.

According to an official survey, made by the Egyptian Cabinet's Public Opinion Poll Center in 2010 and re-released in 2016, 87 percent of males and 78 percent of females in the most populous Arab country prefer a housewife to a working woman provided the family's economic condition is good.

"I prefer my wife to stay at home and not to work outside. Generally, for a wife to stay at home is way better due to the degrading manners nowadays and the disrespect among people, which make a husband worried about his wife's work place," said Ashraf Ibrahim, a 36-year-old married man with kids, in a bus station in Giza province near the capital Cairo.

Ibrahim still believes that woman's work is useful provided she works in a safe environment "such as a school teacher, a nurse at a hospital, etc."

However, Hany Victor, a pharmacist, has a completely different point of view, as he believes a woman has the right to work and not only be a housewife. "Why did she have education? If a woman is educated, cultured and civilized, why does she have to stay at home?"

The survey says that 95 percent of males and 98 percent of females see that it is important for a woman to complete high school education, yet the percentage goes down when it comes to university education as 80 percent of males and 88 percent of females believe a woman should be highly educated.

"My mother was an employee and she raised us all as educated children. A woman's duty is not restricted to kitchen and bed. This is humiliating! A woman has equal rights with a man and she has the right to establish herself," the pharmacist in his 30s told Xinhua.

According to the polls, the majority of Egyptian males reject hiring a woman in a male-oriented job such as a mayor or a marriage official. Also 71 percent of males and 43 percent of females refuse a woman to be a head of state.

"This reflects a state of schizophrenia in a country where women constitute to 30 percent of the official workforce and 70 percent in the non-official sector. Almost every home in Egypt has a working woman," Nehad Abol-Komsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights (ECWR), told Xinhua.

The top Egyptian feminist argued that Egyptians are theoretically against working women but the reality on the ground is different, adding the schizophrenia is represented in a pressuring reality that pushes the society forward and at the same time groups of factors pulls it backward, including old, inherited perception of women.

"Women would not mind relaxing at home, but there are no guarantees for a jobless woman's financial rights if she is divorced. What would a woman do if her husband died in a society that does not provide any rights or guarantees?" said Abol-Komsan.

The ECWR chief added she will not blame this on a "male-dominant" society because there are women who fiercely fight against women's rights, reminding that 78 percent of females prefer a housewife to a working woman.

Clara, a 20-year-old student, was standing with her college mates at the entrance gate of Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, near Qasr Aini Hospital in downtown Cairo, when she talked about her future wishes businesswise.

"I have future ambitions and I wish one day I would work at a renowned advertising company," Clara told Xinhua, arguing there should be no difference between men and women since a woman gets her education and that the survey reflects "backwardness and the narrow-mindedness of the Egyptian male-dominant society."

However, Hala Yassin, a female teacher in her late 40s, said that if a married woman's work will affect her home duties, staying at home is better for her.

"I have been working as a teacher for 22 year, during which I made some balance between work and home to fulfill my duties on both sides," Yassin told Xinhua, pointing out that the law helped her as when the kids were young she worked half the time and got half the salary, taking care of home and still maintaining her position at work.

An old taxi driver at one of the busy main streets in downtown Cairo said that his generation learned from their grandparents that it's best to marry a woman who stays at home rather than a working woman.

"A working wife deals with male colleagues and her husband's mind is always concerned about her. She also works for long hours in return for little money," Ali Abdullah, the 60-year-old taxi driver told Xinhua.

Academically, sociology professor Ali Hassan of Ain Shams University believes that the survey is accurate and its interpretation is simple, as work conditions for women in developing countries are so difficult.

"In poor societies, those children who did not have the chance of their mothers' sacrifices by staying at home are mostly the street children, the drug addicts, the visitors of psychiatric clinics, those leading miserable lives, etc.," the professor told Xinhua.

He explained that poverty, ignorance and other aspects of backward society pressure a family to face life by letting part of the family out to bring life necessities and keep another part at home.

"If the financial return is weak, staying at home is better," Professor Hassan argued, "A woman at home is a kind of security for her children as children of a working woman are socially more subjected to deviation, drug addiction and vagrancy." Endit