In 2021, The American University in Cairo launched the ambitious SpeakUp Dialogue Series, which has aimed to support national efforts to improve the lives of women in Egypt. The series is dedicated to deconstructing gender inequality by addressing sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, and the prevention of violence against women.
On May 24th, the AUC invited an impressive group of influential Egyptian employers to speak on a panel moderated by alumna and the current Director of External Communications at Juhayna Food Industries, Passant Fouad. The panel hosted a variety of voices, from influential Egyptian employers to media personalities, to global activists:
- The Managing Director of Unilever Mashreq and Co-Chair of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) Trade and Industry Committee, Ashraf Bakry
- Vice-Chair of the Bishara Group, Marie Louise Bishara
- The Deputy Representative for UN Women in Egypt, Gielan Elmessiri
- Editor-in-Chief of Amwal al Ghad, womens’ rights activist, and TV and radio host, Dina Abdel Fattah
Panelists on the zoom call. Photo Via: AUC website
The four panel members discussed the state of gender equality in Egypt as it stands, evaluated the success of initiatives aimed at empowering female employees, and identified areas of necessary improvement.
Despite the discussion only lasting an hour, it was both insightful and inspiring to see the panelists’ obvious commitment to furthering the cause of gender equality in Egypt.
The Event Moderator, Passant Fouad. Photo Via: AUC website
If you missed the discussion, we’ve summarized the 5 key insights to catch you up!
1. The Rising Rate of Education for Women is not Reflected in Employment Rates
Whilst women remain consistently higher in both completion and achievement of education, their employment rate remains lower than men.
This fact is indicative of the gendered social structures in the labor market that discriminate against women.
Ashraf Bakry, of Unilever Mashreq and AmCham, spoke directly to how Unilever aims to correct these statistics in their hiring process. Bakry insists upon the importance of blind, equal opportunity hiring. As a result, of each application cycle of the 400 fresh graduate candidates, 60-70% of those who receive an offer are female. Bakry insists this is only the first step in his creation of what he has termed ‘an enabling workplace’ that aims to support female employment.
Ashraf Bakry. Photo Via: Daily News Egypt.
In order to build a supportive atmosphere for women, Bakry argues, the company first has to admit there is a problem within the Egyptian working culture. In doing so, Unilever was able to focus its attention towards fixing such a problem, by creating a global initiative that addresses diversity and gender equality. This initiative has implemented mandatory employee training, a written exam about the harm of harassment, and an anonymous hotline for employees to report incidents.
Yet, not all women can work at Unilever.
Indeed, Gielan Elmessiri of UN Woman offered a comprehensive list of reasons that disincentivize women from joining the workforce. This list included the limited types of employment available to women, the distribution of household responsibilities, a lack of safety in the working environment, and the perseverance of gendered stereotyping in Egypt.
2. The necessity of transforming existing Egyptian social norms as they pertain to gendered stereotypes and the difficulty of identifying incorrect or inappropriate interactions in the workplace
Harmful gendered stereotypes are still rife in Egyptian society.
These stereotypes are accompanied by pressure to meet outdated expectations imposed upon women. For instance, Elmessiri spoke about the pervasive belief that pursuing a job will detract from a woman’s assumed purpose: motherhood.
“Girls are brought up to believe their main role in life is to be mothers, which is an important job of course. When they decide to take a career path that conflicts with reproductive function, they will be blamed and shamed.”
Moreover, even if women overcome this pressure and find a job outside the home, they will only be met with further resistance within the workplace.
Fattah explained that most employers believe that women are more docile, less intelligent, and overly emotional. If an employer is unable to recognize women’s ability to operate in a professional setting, they won’t objectively evaluate the performance of their female employees. This often leads to undervaluing the work of women or crediting their male colleagues by default. As a result, Fattah continued, women find it disproportionately challenging to achieve promotions, advance their careers or take on leadership roles:
“At a certain point, they know that ‘this is the maximum we can get, and we can get no more’ – this is the end of the hierarchy that we can go up. So, there is a lack of justice in assessing and evaluating the work of women.”
Aside from the frustration of being constantly undermined, women are also subjected to harassment and lack of protection in the workplace. It then seems pretty fair that many women aren’t rushing to enter the workforce following graduation.
Dina Abdel Fattah. Photo Via: Amwal Al Ghad
Aren’t we past harassment in the workplace? Apparently not. Whether it’s overt or covert, it still exists and is extremely harmful.
Bakry argued that harassment continues to permeate workplaces because it has become so normalized in the outside world. He explains that female employees are so accustomed to being harassed in the streets that they consequently have trouble identifying which situations constitute a reportable offense at work. In short, women have been socialized to tolerate, ignore and accept comments that make them uncomfortable.
Employers, take note: Just because women aren’t complaining, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.
Bakry clarified that Unilever even though attempts combat this problem through extensive training. Employees are given extensive examples of office impropriety that aim to showcase which behaviors are unacceptable and give women the confidence to report incidents that make them uncomfortable. Even with this emphasis in training, Bakry explained it had taken 6 years for the company’s employees to understand what constitutes a safe and supportive working environment for women.
In order to fight the lack of understanding surrounding workplace safety, UNWomen has launched an awareness campaign for women to know their rights and released 7 principles for employers to implement to support their female employees.
In the face of this, Bakry affirmed fight for gender equality and elimination of sexism in the Egyptian workspace was far from over:
“Is the Egyptian culture going to win over the initiative, or is the initiative going to win over the Egyptian culture?”
3. The Legal Framework Intending to Protect Women is Solid, but on-the-ground Implementation is Lacking
Panelists discussed the true efficacy of existing laws for the protection of women.
Each panelist was quick to praise the government’s focus on gender equality. In particular, Bishara enthusiastically spoke of her optimism surrounding the progress of fair treatment for women in Egypt. She was keen to dismiss the narrative that women had been victims of history and circumstance and wished to highlight the active role they had taken in the nation’s progression:
“I do not see Egyptian women as overwhelmed by obstacles, but I rather see strong women who search and fight for their rights […] I would like to say also we are in the best era that Egyptian women have been through in so many years. In the past five years, Egyptian women assumed a number of Ministerial functions, and that was something we had never had in Egypt before! […] I can see that Egyptian women have started to get laws to support them – like the law for the protection of girls from FGM. […] I believe that the current time, the current era is very important and decisive for Egyptian women.“
Mary Louise Bishara. Photo Via: Ahram Online
However, others – such as Fattah – were more measured in their praise of recent legal reform.
She argued that although the laws are well-intentioned, the public continues to work around them. Fattah shared a pertinent example from her work with the Women on Boards initiative to illustrate her point:
Following the attempted appointment of a woman onto the board of the Financial Control Authority, the 13 filed a lawsuit that claimed gender discrimination.
It’s therefore clear that we need to change people’s attitudes, in addition to legal reform.
Fattah, therefore, reminded us to begin conversations within our own communities that will change harmful attitudes towards women, rather than relying too heavily on the law to do the work for us:
“We need to change the social norms in order to change how women are treated.”
4. The treatment and protection of women is contingent upon their chosen career path and social class
Bishara conceded that within her sector of garment manufacturing, women represent over 65% of the company’s employees.
In Egypt, that would be considered an extremely unique work environment. Therefore, the positive change that she describes within her company cannot be comfortably extrapolated to the rest of the country.
Egypt during a protest against harassment in 2015. Photo Via: Amr Sayed
Not every company in Egypt has shown such dedication to supporting women – these privileges are only afforded to certain sectors of the Egyptian workforce. Fattah shared
“Yes, there is a bright positioning for women in Egypt, but still, it is only in particular sectors where there is a dominant number of women or […] in an international institution that […] have to meet particular [global] standards, or it is taking place on the high levels like Ministers, Parliament, local councils where the President made sure there will be a representation of women.”
Moreover, the ability for women to react to and overcome such workplace injustices, according to Fattah, is contingent upon their social class.
For instance, women in a “higher” socioeconomic class are uniquely able to create their own opportunities outside of the home that are less affected by sexism or workplace harassment. In contrast, a woman belonging to a lower socioeconomic class has far fewer options.
Therefore, positive change and the promise of social mobility is not available to everyone. There is still work to be done within our communities to ensure that progress is inclusive of all women, regardless of their chosen sector or social class.
5. Unpaid and informal labor doesn’t afford women the legal protections that they deserve
Women are still responsible for keeping the household running, even if it comes at the expense of their careers.
That includes time-consuming household chores, and care-taking for young children and elderly relatives. Elmessiri succinctly stated the extent of the problem:
“The UN Women produced a report about gender equality and this report shed light on the time that women spend on performing unpaid work, and domestic work. […] it showed that the time spent by married women to perform these tasks is 7x the time that men spend to perform the same roles. This means that women will have double roles – they will work twice, inside the home and outside the home! […] The burden of unpaid care work prevents them from pursuing paid work.”
Gielan Elmessiri. Photo Via: Egypt Petroleum Show
According to Elmessiri, not only does this curtail the potential for women to explore careers of their own unhindered by familial obligation, but also limits the employment opportunities that a woman is able to pursue in order to earn money.
“75% of women’s work participation – in Egypt and globally – remains informal, meaning that women don’t have a contract, they don’t enjoy the protection of the labor laws. So, when we talk about ‘safe workplaces,’ a lot of the work remains informal.”
A large majority of the female workforce in Egypt remains unprotected by existing labor laws.
Therefore, not all women are being provided for professionally, and the fight for gender equality should remain at the forefront of national consciousness.
