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Egypt 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
(see The Limits of Incorporation: The Rise of Political Islam and the Continuing Role of Repression
, ch. 4). 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.
Data as of December 1990
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