Despite Harsh Condition, Females Provide Income for 14% of Egyptian Families

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics issued a statement containing a number of analytical studies of the Census of Population, Housing and Facilities data, which include the development of the demographic and social situation of women during the period (2009-2020).

The number of families headed financially by women is 3.3 million families as of the 2017 census, a number that isn’t spoken about much in Egyptian media.

About 60% of the total female breadwinners were illiterate, followed by 18% with an average qualification, and 8% of those with a university qualification.

According to the official study, 70% of the female breadwinners were widows, 16% were married and only 7% were divorced.

Statistics released by CAPMAS reveal that there are 45.9 million women in Egypt, representing nearly half of the population.

 

Suffering in Silence

The official study showed that 76.5 percent of Egyptian women hold permanent jobs and 36.7 percent are part of professional syndicates. Egyptian women also represent 22.9 percent of the total labor force and 25.8 of government employees, according to 2016/2017 statistics.

But unfortunately, although women breadwinners are prevalent as shown by the study, their living conditions are harsh and unjust.

According to the study, a female breadwinner is meant to be every woman who supports herself, her children or family members for the absence of a make breadwinner; whether for a health disability that prevents him from working, for his death, for abandonment, for being in prison, for drug use, or for basically not spending.

In a heavy voice which reveals pain, Safia, a pseudonym, recounts the details of her suffering, as she married at the age of 18, her father has three other daughters and 4 children, and education issues are welfare for the likes of her.

Therefore, Safia married the first man who came proposing to her, hoping that her life will change for the better, but the husband disappointed her, he is a construction worker, works one day and leaves 10 days, and after 7 years of marriage, in which she suffered the hardships and insults, the husband gave up in his life and left her and their children.

She narrates: "I provide income for his mother and children, and I don't want to ask for a divorce".

Like women with breadwinners, she fears society's view of the title of "divorced," in her words: "The word ‘married’ protects women in a society that is cruel to them."

The story of Amina or "Um Mahmoud," as people call her, is not much different from Safia, both of whom suffered from lazy husbands and the cruelty of "providing a living."

Amina’s husband left her after two years of marriage with two children, and dozens of debts.

"I knew that he traveled in boats that go to Italy, before he went away, he told me that people like us should not have kids nor get married, and then he left me and walked away," she said.

Um Mahmoud continues that she suffered a lot in her life before her marriage, she has been working with her parents for 15 years in garbage dumps in Qalyubia.

"I wake up from dawn and return at sunset, just to get a very little amount of money," she says, explaining that what she earns from her work is hardly enough to provide living for her and her children.

She goes to work among the piles of garbage, where she collects plastic and cardboard materials, to sell them, using her hand for exploration, exposing her to serious risks and diseases, "my hand is injured almost every day, other than skin diseases and allergies," she says.

 

Educated Mothers

As the study showed that 60% of Egypt's women breadwinners are illiterate, this suggests that the woman's illiteracy is directly related to her future fortunes, in terms of marriage and family, and having to do both the duties of father and mother, without complaint.

But the term "breadwinner mothers" is not limited to low-educated or illiterate women, as many university graduates and high-profile professionals take care of their families and fall under the umbrella of "breadwinners," where suffering remains the same, even if circumstances and educational backgrounds vary.

Mennah Adel, a 25-year-old mother with a one-year-old daughter holding a Bachelor of Agriculture, split from her husband, she tells Al-Estiklal that she sought job opportunities in the market, but failed to get one.

“I had to make a living to provide the basic needs for me and my children, my alimony isn’t enough, so I learned to tailor children's clothes, took online courses, and founded a group to present my own designs on Facebook,” she said to Al-Estiklal.

Another breadwinning woman is Basant Fadel, a 27-year old graduate from the faculty of science.

Basant is the eldest of her brothers and sisters, her father is on pension and her mother is a housewife, all of her brothers and sisters are still in education phases.

Basant is working in a customer sales call center for a multinational company, with 10-hour shifts daily in addition to transportation hours.

“I hadn’t any luck finding a decent opportunity for work since I had graduated, the Egyptian market is super-saturated with graduates and degrees, and therefore because the supply is high the wages are extremely low,” she said to Al-Estiklal.

“But someone had to support the family financially, my father is ill and needs financial and familial care, my younger brothers and sisters have their education demands which keep rising day by day, and no one has graduated except me, I had to do something other than mere marriage,” she added.

“Eventually I applied for jobs that aren’t relevant to my degree, and I now work in a call center thanks to my self-learned English skills. Sometimes I wonder: Why did I enter college in the first place?” she said.