Pride, Purdah, or Paychecks: What Maintains the Gender Division of Labor in Rural Egypt?

Abstract

Traveling from al-Minya, Egypt, north to Cairo by train in the mid-1980s, an observer could not help but notice the large numbers of women and children working in the lush agricultural plots adjacent to the railroad tracks. In fact, throughout the northern Sa⊂id and the Delta, too, women seemed to have taken over the fields. Furthermore, upon arriving at the Agriculture Ministry in Giza, a listener frequently overheard remarks referring to the “alarming” rise in the feminization of Egyptian agriculture. Yet Egyptian farm women have always lent a hand to agricultural production. So what, in recent years, has generated such a large-scale “invasion” of women into men's jobs? Particularly in light of the strict segregation of women from men, and their seclusion in the privacy of the home, what has brought about this public display of women?

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