Cairo, 9 November 2025
As part of its ongoing monitoring of parliamentary elections from a gender perspective, the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) has issued its new analytical report titled: “2025 House of Representatives Elections: Where Do Women Stand on the Map of Candidacies Under the Individual System and the List System?”
The report presents a gender prospective of the candidacy landscape, emphasizing that women’s presence remains confined to a largely symbolic commitment to the minimum required representation.
The total number of female candidates reached 315, out of 2,904 candidates running for individual seats and on the main electoral lists, representing 10.8% of all candidates.
The Challenge of Individual Seats: Male Dominance and Weak Party Support
The analysis shows that candidacy for individual seats remains the area with the lowest level of women’s representation:
- Women’s representation: Women accounted for only 6.6% (173 female candidates) out of a total of 2,620 candidates running for individual seats.
- Independent candidacy: The vast majority of female candidates (134 women) ran as independents, compared to only 39 women who received support from political parties.
- Party support:
- 37 political parties supported male candidates for individual seats.
- Only 20 parties supported female candidates for individual seats.
- Complete absence: Five governorates saw no female candidates running for individual seats: Red Sea, Port Said, North Sinai, South Sinai, and Luxor.
The following figure illustrates the total number of female candidates running for individual seats and their party affiliations.
The Lists Dilemma: Between Legal Text and the Spirit of Empowerment
The report observed that the National List for Egypt—the only list running for the elections—has adhered to the legal minimum required for nominating women without exceeding it, raising questions about the real priority given to women’s empowerment:
- Legal minimum vs. reality: The number of women candidates on the main lists reached 142 women out of a total of 284 candidates, reflecting a largely formal compliance with the legal text that mandates a specific quota for women.
- High representation of women in reserve lists: By contrast, the reserve lists included 164 women out of 284 candidates, confirming the availability of qualified female cadres within the participating political parties.
ECWR emphasizes that limiting nominations to the legal minimum on the main list, despite the surplus of qualified women on the reserve lists, highlights the problem of political parties merely responding formally to the law. This approach raises a fundamental question about the extent to which political forces are genuinely committed to going beyond the minimum and placing women’s competencies in the main competitive arena.
Nehad Abuelkomsan, ECWR’s Chairwoman, believes that while the law has proven capable of enforcing formal representation standards through the list system, real representation and genuine competition continue to face major challenges in individual seats. She adds that party support for women in the competitive field remains limited and geographically imbalanced.
To view the full Arabic report, please click here
