Women's empowerment
04 Feb 2011
Egypt’s Constitution guarantees equality of men and women and many of its laws and policies ensure women's equality, in principle. In practice, however, the persistence of patriarchal attitudes and stereotypical behaviour towards the role of men and women in the family and in society often deny women's equal rights. Egypt is also signatory to a number of important conventions on women and child protection such as CEDAW and CRC.
Egypt is on track to achieving MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women. Tangible progress is evident with respect to the health and education indices. At various levels of education the gender gap has steadily narrowed.
Nonetheless, the recent 'Survey on Young People in Egypt' revealed that about 2 million young people have never been to school. Female illiteracy is generally more common in rural areas than urban areas and at 69% it is more than two times higher higher than male illiteracy (31%).
Women's labour participation remains low and they are underrepresented in parliament and other decision making bodies. Most women work in the government or non-market, subsistence activities. At 18.6 percent of the labour force, female unemployment rate is four times higher than male unemployment.
The embassy focuses in particular on those indices within the MDG 3 where Egypt is facing challenges. Its projects and programmes focus on promoting girls education, introducing tools for gender budgeting within the National Budget, eradicating female genital mutilation (FGM), promoting women's political representation in, among others, national bodies.
NICHE will contribute to these objectives by investing in areas such as institutional capacity building in the field of:
- a knowledge centre for gender studies;
- microfinance (currently on hold);
- child protection (currently on hold).
