Report on Egyptian Women’s conditions in 2013
By The Egyptian Center for Women’s rights
Edited by Nehad Aboul Qomsan
Introduction
Women’s conditions’ report for this year will be different somehow, because Egyptwas under the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) command, where the ousted President, Mohamed Morsi ruled the countryat the first part of 2013, then Egypt became ruled by the Interim President, Judge Adly Mansour, after the 30th of June revolution, which is considered to be a milestone in every Egyptian Woman’s life, as women were subject to continuous threats regarding her rights in education, work, participation in public life and personal security, also results of the Thomson Reuters Foundation poll about life conditions of women in 22 countries showed that Egypt is the worst for women to live in.
The report stated that Egypt, the sole of revolution, is the worst between the 22 countries of the Arab league that was included in the poll;experts say that Egypt today is the worst country regarding women’s expectations after the revolution, women who were standing side by side with men during the revolution, demanding social changes, at Tahrir square, they are expected to go back to their roles being mothers and wives as they used to do during the revolution, and they are now suffering much more than they used to suffer before the revolution.
All these unfair conditions contributed in women’s unprecedented protests against the MB and the ousted President.
These protests did not change much about Egyptian women’s conditions, as Egypt still comes in the 125th rank between 136 countries in the discrimination between the two genders issued by theWorld Economic Forum for 2013, and although Egypt had a progress in this forum compared to the 2012, as Egypt came in the 126th rank in 2012, but also the degree of discrimination against women is decreasing.
As for the number of women in the Egyptian Parliament, came in the 129th rank among 132 countries in 2013, which is one rank higher than the precedent year.
Also women were subject to unprecedented violence which caused many experts to say that rape became a weapon used in Egypt to silence women, in addition, rapists get away with what they do, this refers to group rape reports that took place on the second annual celebration of the January revolution which took place in Tahrir Square.
Women also sufferedmany aspects of violence in the political field during the first half of this year,which included sexual harassment that could reach rape sometimes for those women who participated in the second anniversary 25th of January revolution; also women were used as human shields in MB protests.
Although women’s representation in the 50-member committee was not equivalent to women’s participation in many aspects of life, the new constitution that had many articles that protected many women’s rights, such as full citizenship, which came in the Egyptian constitution for the first time in history, where the constitution states that Egyptian women are entitled to inherit their nationality to their children according to the 6th article, also the 11th article of the constitution gave women seven rights, in addition to specifying the legal age for marriage to be 18 years old, this makes early marriage for women to be considered as a crime, also it made education until the age of 18 obligatory, in addition to obligatory care for old women and the poorest women, preserving seats for women at local councils of cities with a percentage of 25 percent, this percentage came after a struggle with political powers who refused to allocate a quota for women in the Parliament, but despite that, having such percentage for women in local councils gives a great chance for women to start impacting decisions and making women accountable to compete in Parliamentary elections.
