Cairo, January 1, 2026
The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights issued its comprehensive annual report on the status of women for the year 2025, reviewing the reality of Egyptian women as violence escalates and indicators related to basic, political, and economic rights decline.
The report sounds the alarm that 2025 represents a new chapter in the record of violence against women, as a noticeable rise was recorded in both the pace and severity of crimes directed against them, extending from the private sphere into the public one. This was not limited to the murder of wives and family disputes that claimed the lives of newly married brides; rather, it went beyond that to systematic attempts to impose male guardianship and intimidate women in public spaces, as was clearly embodied in the incident of the assault on a young lady inside the metro due to the way she was sitting.
A Massive Gap Between the Legal Text and Political Reality:
The elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate revealed a profound structural gap between legislative provisions that mandate a quota for women and the lived political reality. Women’s presence in the Senate was confined to closed party lists, while no women won any individual-seat races at all.
In the House of Representatives, only three female candidates won individual seats system out of a total of 173 female candidates, whereas women’s victories on party lists were “guaranteed” and non-competitive due to the nomination of only a single list in each constituency. The report draws attention to the behavior of political parties, which limited their commitment to the legal minimum required for women’s representation. This raises a fundamental question about the extent to which these entities truly believe in women’s leadership capabilities, or whether women’s presence remains merely a formal response to a legal obligation.
Ongoing Economic Exclusion:
On the economic front, women continue to suffer from a wide gender gap in the labor market. According to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), women’s participation in the labor force did not exceed 16.9% compared to 70.3% for men, while the unemployment rate among women reached 17.1%—equivalent to four times the unemployment rate among men (4.2%).
Low International Ranking Raises Alarm:
The convergence of these challenges has negatively affected Egypt’s standing in international reports. In the 2025 Global Gender Gap Report, Egypt ranked 139th out of 148 countries, and was near the bottom in the Economic Participation and Opportunity subindex (145th). The 2025 Human Development Report also showed that Egypt loses 22.8% of its Human Development Index value due to inequality, placing it in a low position (101st) on the Gender Inequality Index.
The Rule of Law Crisis: The Beating Heart of the Crisis
The report highlights a core connection between the deterioration of women’s status and the erosion of the rule of law and fundamental rights in the country. Egypt ranks 135th globally out of 143 countries in the 2025 Rule of Law Index, after having ranked 88th in 2015. An analysis of the index reveals extremely poor performance in factors related to good governance: Egypt ranked last globally (143rd) in the “Open Government” index, and very low in both “Constraints on Government Powers” (141st) and “Fundamental Rights” (141st). This confirms that relative improvements in security and stability have not translated into real protection or empowerment for citizens, especially women.
Monitoring throughout 2025 reveals a widening gap between official discourse on women’s empowerment and the lived reality of women. The report affirms that protecting and empowering women cannot be achieved in isolation from comprehensive reform of the justice system and the strengthening of the rule of law and fundamental rights for all.
The report concludes with a set of recommendations, including:
- Issuing and enforcing a unified and comprehensive law to combat violence against women, addressing all its forms and providing adequate protection for survivors.
- Reviewing and reforming electoral mechanisms to ensure genuine and effective participation of women in political life, moving beyond tokenism and quota-based representation toward substantive empowerment.
- Developing and implementing effective economic policies to close the gender gap in the labor market, including access to decent work opportunities, protection from discrimination, and the provision of safe working environments.
- Undertaking serious institutional and legal reform to strengthen the rule of law, transparency, accountability, and fundamental rights, as a foundation for any real progress in the status of women and the future of development in Egypt.
To access the full report, please click here
