Do the present campaigns for women's rights really reflect what the majority of Egyptian women want? Shereen Moussad investigates "What a crazy idea to demand equality for women," said Napoleon Bonaparte in words that crossed my mind as I was watching an advertisement on television recently. A famous brand of shampoo, the same that has begun a new ad campaign across Egypt using high-profile billboards, was pitching its new product at the "modern successful woman", suggesting that her success, or a good part of it, was due to her hair and the fact she used the right shampoo. Putting the absurdity of the message aside, the advertisement seems to highlight the important point that the women targeted by such products are nevertheless pioneers in the traditionally male-dominated area of having successful careers. Intrigued by the link between hair care and success in business, I decided to seek answers from the kind of women that the advertisement seemed to be targeting. "I think career women are women who are either single, or who have been 'unlucky' in their marital lives. Either that or they are 'masculine' women." This extraordinary remark was made with great confidence by Soheir, one of the women I met, who is 38 years old and married with four children. Though she has a qualification in commerce, she works as a maid in an affluent household where she earns LE1,000 a month. Her husband, on the other hand, has a position in a company in which he earns only LE800 a month. Soheir says that she would immediately leave her job were her husband able to earn LE2,000. Though she soon qualifies this by saying that she might think about opening a small business, such as a small shop or mini- supermarket, that could help with the family's bills were her husband to be laid off from work, Soheir's views are the "traditional" ones that see a woman's place within the household and not necessarily in the workplace. When she talks about her daughters, for example, Soheir asks, "if they get married and their husbands can support them, why should they work?" In recent years women in Egypt have been exposed to a veritable tidal wave of feminist discourse, from talk about the "emancipation of women" and the "role of women in the workplace" to the "status of women in society" and "women's rights". The media is full of articles about women, and there have been many television programmes about women and women's achievements. Have women, then, finally broken through the barrier between the sexes and raised a female flag on traditionally male territory? Is this, in any case, what the majority of today's women want? According to another young woman, Magda, 25, interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly, being a career woman, though important, is less important than a woman's role in the household and in bringing up children. "I never really thought about being a career woman," Magda says, though, recently married, she now works as a school administrator and sees her job as a way of keeping busy and staying up to date with what is going on in the world. However, Magda also stresses that though it is important for women to have a satisfying activity outside the home, particularly since starting a family can be a financial strain for many young families and a woman working can give the family a head start, she is adamant that she would leave her work if she felt it was affecting her family life. She is planning to stay at home when she has children, at least until they are old enough to start school, she says, and she is resolute in her view that "it is right for a woman to give financial support to her husband if he needs it, but this cannot be an on-going situation, or one that is simply taken for granted." Magda's views are shared by many other young women of a similar age and circumstances, and they may also reflect a larger unease in society that though demands for women's rights are justified, and should be supported by both the legal and the religious authorities, in our society women's rights have too often amounted to the issue of women's employment outside the home and have become a kind of "mortal combat" between the sexes to gain ground on the employment front, while leaving other crucial issues, such as issues of personal status, the problem of domestic abuse against women and the continuing problem of male chauvinist or patriarchal attitudes towards women, untouched. However, another young woman talked to by the Weekly, Iman, 32, and currently single, has a very different point of view. "I am not waiting at home for Prince Charming to come along," says Iman with conviction. Iman is a working woman, and work, she says, gives her the opportunity to meet people, to keep busy and to have a meaningful life. The money she earns is also an important incentive for her to keep on working, since although her family is capable of supporting her financially, they do not always see eye to eye on her expenses. Although Iman works for a multinational company and is rising fast in her job, she claims that "I never planned on being a career woman. It's something that just happened." Iman is also representative of a segment of today's generation of Egyptian women, who, though they seem to have lost a sense of the reasoning behind the demands for women's rights have certainly capitalised on the idea that women can gain financial and social independence from men by working. Indeed, for some this has itself changed into the vague conviction that women can only be considered "worthy" if they are working. Amany, for example, a 46-year-old married woman with two young daughters, says that a good part of her life is bound up with her job as a bank employee, a position she took some 15 years ago when her husband became ill and could no longer work to support the family. However, Amany, unlike some other women, does not consider her work to be essential to her sense of herself, and she even stresses that were she able to do so she would quit her job, or work part time. " I can still be a productive person in the community by being a housewife," Amany says, "by doing volunteer work, for example, and I can still keep abreast with current affairs." Amany is keen to defend women who do not work from the charge that they are not fulfilling themselves, and she says that women who do not work suffer from fewer health problems and have more time to take care of their families. "I want my daughters to finish their education, but I hope they will be lucky enough not to need to work after that," she says. For Amany, as for some other women, there is a conviction that today's emphasis on equal rights for women in the workplace may even have "cornered" women into feeling that they have to work in order to earn their places in society and be measured by the same yardstick as men. This ignores the fact that women are physiologically different from men, and though today there is increasing pressure on a woman to work this does not exempt her from her more traditional duties in the home. Hoda, for example, a 43-year-old engineer in a large company, shared her experience with the Weekly, noting that "although I work to help support the family, I am still expected to be a full-time housewife and mother at the same time." Hoda started work immediately after her graduation, and she continued to work after getting married as her husband's income alone was not enough to support the family. Ten years later circumstances had improved, and Hoda left work in order to look after the children. However, with two teenage sons financial commitments started to build up again, and last year Hoda went back to work. "I hope that once we have finished paying the exorbitant university bills I can go back to a more leisurely life," she says. For Dalia, a 40-year-old mother of two children also interviewed by the Weekly, Egyptian women today are feeling the effects of the campaign for women's rights "forcing" them to go to work even when they would rather devote themselves to their homes and families. Dalia does not work, but, she says, "I sometimes feel embarrassed about meeting new people, as the first question they ask is where I work. I answer, at home!" Nevertheless, she says that she often feels left out of the conversation when other women join men in what she describes as "office talk". Another point sometimes made is that while women today have moved into areas traditionally reserved to men, remarkably few men have been ready to undertake work traditionally done by women. There are very few male nursery school teachers, for example, and whole professions, such as nursing, are still dominated by women. In conclusion, in Egypt today women work for a variety of reasons, stemming from different individual needs and aims. One commonly held belief -- that women today work to fulfil themselves, to reinforce their identities, or to achieve self assertion or empowerment -- may be true, but it is true only of a percentage of women and may even be contradicted by empirical investigation and the facts on the ground. Many women, on the contrary, do not work to fulfil themselves, but instead do so out of financial need, or to fill the roles that men today no longer fill, either voluntarily or involuntarily, in the social contract. Others may work to fulfil what they see as an obligation, or may so do because they think everyone else is working and of a vague worry about "what people would think of me if I stayed at home". However, one thing that today's women have maintained is a woman's traditional right to change her mind. As a result, there is little way of knowing what the future might bring.
