CAIRO: A report by the World Bank said that women face many obstacles in entering the labor market in Egypt, and that life after marriage is one of the obstacles that raises unemployment rates among women compared to their Egyptian male counterparts. The report said that companies owned by women in Egypt need an average of 86 weeks to resolve disputes through the judicial system, as opposed to 54 weeks for companies owned by men. Regarding the situation of university graduates in Egypt, the report, released this month and reported by America in Arabic news agency, noted that despite the doubling of the proportion of young women with a university degree from 6 percent to 12 percent from 1998 to 2006, the proportion of women participating in the workforce remained virtually the same during the same period, “while unemployment rose among university graduates from 19 percent to 27 percent.” The report showed a wide gap between the unemployment rates for men and women in Egypt, according to figures in 2009, while rates of unemployment among men, according to the report, was at 10 percent, while they are more than 20 percent among women. The gap between young people increases, the report said, citing surveys made in the labor market in Egypt, “has shown that the rate of unemployment among young people aged 15- to 29-years-old is slightly more than 10 percent among males, with up to about 40 percent in females, while declining to below 10 percent for both sexes aged from 30 to 64 percent, but was still higher among women in this category than those in men.” The preliminary analysis of the reasons for the high rates of unemployment among women in Egypt compared to men refers to new evidence that “to reconcile life after marriage and work is one of the biggest obstacles for women to take the decision to work in a particular sector.” The report also expressed the idea that “the participation of women in the economy will provide a tremendous impetus to improve their participation in public affairs.” The World Bank said that the report of assessment of the gender situation in Egypt in 2003, which was updated this year, indicates the existence of “restrictions on the participation of women in the labor force in Egypt.” The World Bank showed support for the implementation of a program called “model of gender equality in Egypt,” a pilot program promoting equality between men and women in private sector companies in Egypt. BM
