Silencing the Practice: Khitān al-banāt, Young
Professionals and Middle-class Aspirations in
Urban Cairo
Author: Maryam Peters Student ID: 10351507
Date of submission: 17/08/2019 E-mail: marjampeters94@hotmail.nl Supervisor: Rachel Spronk
E-mail: R.Spronk@uva.nl Second reader: Rahil Roodsaz E-mail: A.Roodsaz@uva.nl University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Abstract: This article examines young professionals of the middle class in urban Cairo as an aspirational category of analysis. Furthermore, this article explores the silence surrounding the practice of female circumcision (Arabic: khitān al-banāt) and the multiple ways in which the silence that is practiced by the young professionals relates to socio-economic issues that dominate the lives of the participants in this study. This article briefly touches on the history of modernity in Egypt and local and global discourses on female circumcision and shows how notions of cosmopolitanism are central themes in the lives and self-perceptions of young professionals in urban Cairo. Key Words: female circumcision, middle classes, young professionals,
Introduction
‘Why would you study female circumcision?’, asked Rana, one of the participants in this study, when I asked her about her opinion on the practice. ‘That almost never happens here anymore!’, she continued. According to the Egypt Demographic and Health Survey in 2014, nearly 92% of the women in the 15-49 age category have been circumcised. More recent numbers of the Health Survey indicated that his number was reduced to 87% in 2015. The numbers on the prevalence of the practice, document Egypt as one of the countries with the highest percentage of circumcised women in North Africa. The topic of female circumcision became known in international spheres during the UN Decade for Women in 1975-1985. By the mid-1990s, female circumcision was depicted as a practice that caused harm to women’s health by activists, advocates and scholars and thus the practice was classified as an official form of gender-based violence against women (Van Raemdonck 2017). In view of this depiction, female circumcision became a central theme in the global health discourse and the transnational feminist discourse on gender equality. Since then, the opposition and critique raised on female circumcision practices have been addressed in a rich body of literature in the anthropological discipline, which emphasizes the notion of understanding culture-specific practices and its supporters within their particular cultural and historical context (e.g. Abu-Lughod 1986; Walley 1997; Mahmood 2006; Boddy 2016). This line of thought is often met with objections from fellow anthropologists as it is argued that cultural relativism perpetuates the practice and its harmful consequences (e.g. Mackie). Numerous studies have since been conducted that illuminate the possibility of both understanding the practice in its cultural context while supporting its elimination without the marginalization of the voices of its opponents and its supporters.
Within the context of the critical feminist and anthropological debates on female circumcision, I initially set out to Cairo to study intergenerational shifts and motivations that could shed light on why women choose to continue or abandon the tradition. However, once I arrived in Cairo, I found that the alarming global discourse on female circumcision did not mirror how the people I encountered perceived the practice. This was reflected in the response I received from Rana and similar responses from other participants in this study. Upon introducing the topic to friends, relatives, and participants, I was regularly met with a surprised reaction as female circumcision was no longer considered an issue in contemporary Egypt.
The middle-class young professionals in this research, are a recognizable and emerging social group in Egypt that has benefitted from the successful results of postcolonial initiatives and opportunities offered by the state during the Nasser-era. For these young professionals, female circumcision is a topic that does not occupy their thoughts, nor is it a topic
that is openly discussed as it is deemed an ‘outdated’ and ‘backward’ practice. On one occasion, when I was with a friend visiting his family in the 5th Settlement, one of the most affluent districts of Cairo, I was unexpectedly
offered the opportunity to speak to the maid who was circumcised at a young age. Though her short answers implied that she was hesitant to speak about this topic with a stranger, the maid was more surprised as to why I would study a practice that was ‘nothing more than a natural part of life’. These contradictions function as the central paradoxes that I will address in this article. In other words, the unforeseen reactions I received from the young professionals regarding female circumcision do not mirror the dominant global and local discourses that portray the practice as a pervasive issue in Egypt. The silence that is practiced by the young professionals is intriguing as it obscures complex mechanisms and societal issues that occupy their daily lives. More importantly, the conversation I had with the maid indicates that different reasons and motivations behind the silence surrounding the practice exist, and that these can be related to the societal position of the young professionals of the emerging middle class.
Between the months of September-December 2018, I conducted ethnographic research in urban Cairo, which resulted in a discourse oriented data analysis. I analyzed interviews and informal conversations and focused on narratives and statements that constructed female circumcision as a non-issue in contemporary Egypt. My research was primarily conducted among young professionals belonging to middle-class Egypt. At the time of research, the study participants lived in the affluent neighborhoods of Cairo, mainly Heliopolis, Nasr City, Maadi, and the 5th
Settlement. Though I initially interpreted the young professionals’ reactions as a form of denial, I later found that their reactions could more accurately be described as a form of cultural censorship. I am mainly concerned with the relation between the silence surrounding the practice, the social issues that dominate the lives of young professionals and the image of the ideal middle-class life in urban Cairo. This article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I will briefly examine the anthropological, global and national discourses and debates on female circumcision as they have partly informed the opinions and perceptions of the study participants. In the second section, I will illustrate how the silence surrounding female circumcision can be conceptualized as cultural censorship. In the final section, I will examine the key concepts of middle-class aspirations, social mobility, and cosmopolitanism and how these are interconnected with the cultural censorship the young professionals practice in their everyday lives. Naming the practice
The practice of female circumcision carries a variety of names, which are used interchangeably depending on the context and its user. The majority of scholars and authors in the anthropological discipline most commonly
opt for the use of female circumcision or female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). However, critical anthropologists have argued that these terms misrepresent the practice. The term female circumcision assumes the equivalence to the male circumcision practice, while these procedures do not carry the same stigma or physical and psychological implications. The term female genital mutilation/cutting is regularly invoked in the non-academic discourse and implies that the practice is employed as a tool in harming the individuals who are subjected to it (Walley 1997; Darby & Svoboda 2007). To a lesser extent, the term ‘female genital surgery’ is used as a way of comparing the practice to the cosmetic surgeries and procedures that are becoming increasingly more popular in Western societies (e.g. Boddy 2016). In Egypt, the practice is most commonly referred to as khitān
al-banāt or tahara. According to the participants, the latter term translates
directly to “purity” and evokes the symbolic state of purity a woman enters after having the procedure done, which is similar to the male circumcision practice. The former term refers to the actual performance of the practice itself. During my fieldwork, I found that the practice is most commonly referred to as khitān al-banāt by the participants in both informal and formal conversations. Therefore, I will use the terms female circumcision or FGM/C when examining the Western cultural debates of the practice throughout this article. As a way of avoiding the emotional response that the terms female circumcision and FGM/C often evoke, I will otherwise use the term khitān al-banāt when discussing the Egyptian cultural debates and the perceptions of the participants.
Anthropology and female circumcision
Since the 1970s, a large and ever-growing body of literature has investigated the topic of female circumcision practices. Traditionally, the majority of scholars and authors have paid particular attention to the practice itself and the normative debates that surround it (e.g. Gruenbaum 2001; Boyle 2002; Shell-Duncan 2008; Boddy 2016). More recent attention has focused on understanding the intricate and contextual meanings and motivations behind the tradition. These works are particularly important as they signify the increasingly critical approach scholars and authors have adopted towards the topic of female circumcision. During the UN Decade for Women, a generation of Western, African and Arab feminists and activists were mobilized to pursue the eradication of the practice and to save the women who were subjected to it (Gruenbaum 2001; Wade 2011). The practice and its harmful consequences became the central theme of the anti-FGM/C discourse that perceived people who engage in the practice as backward and barbaric and portrayed the women who underwent the procedure as passive, voiceless subjects rather than agentic individuals (Walley 1997; Nnaemeka 2005). The emergence of the post-colonial critique criticized the existing dominant discourses that silence subaltern voices and
pose a universalized female subject as a static misrepresentation (Mohanty 1988; Spelman 1989). The influence of the post-colonial critique succeeded in restructuring the debates that surround female circumcision practices and led to the fundaments on which the anti-FGM discourse was created to be questioned and critiqued.
I have found inspiration in the works of critical and feminist anthropologists such as Christine Walley, Lila Abu-Lughod, Janice Boddy and Saba Mahmood, whose critical approaches have shown that it is possible, if not necessary, to understand culture and culture-specific practices in their own context, while simultaneously refraining from either supporting or condemning them. The previously discussed studies and theories provide important insights into the normative discussions surrounding the practice (e.g. Mackie 2003; Wadesango, Rembe & Chabaya 2011) as they have illuminated the ways in which the practice has been perceived, discussed and theorized in academia over the past decades. However, unlike these discussions, I do not aim to describe the practice as it should be understood, but rather the various ways in which it is understood and constructed by the young professionals I have done research with. In view of the scholarly works that have been mentioned so far, one could argue that the majority of the literature on female circumcision discusses how a variety of groups, such as activists, supporters, and victims, engage and view the practice. These studies outline a critical need for the ways in which people choose not to engage in the practice and how this choice can help one expose and understand underlying social issues and mechanisms.
Anthropology, cosmopolitanism and the middle classes
Though an extensive body of literature exists on the middle class and its transformative nature, describing and defining the middle class as an analytical concept is a challenging and elusive task. From the 1960s onwards, many African societies, including Egypt, divorced themselves from colonial rule. This resulted in the works of scholars and authors on the middle class to be mainly focused on class analysis and the unequal social relations between the emerging dominant and elite groups and the subordinate, marginalized groups of societies. Inspired by Marxist influences, many scholars wrote within a framework of a post-colonial Africa with a particular emphasis on the modes of production. Since then, the middle class was often studied through a lens of consumerism and drew bridges between the middle class and mass consumer culture (cf. Spronk 2014a; Schielke 2015). According to Parker, the middle classes have since the age of neoliberal globalization viewed themselves less in terms of “education and stable employment in the public sector” and more in terms of “income and possessions” (2013: 13). Though these analyses have proven to be quite helpful in examining the role of the middle class in society, it has
been argued by fellow anthropologists that narrowing one’s scope to a lens of consumerism offers a limiting view of what it means to be middle class.
Many scholars have questioned what ‘middle classness’ means and sought out to study the continuous transformations this class has been challenged with and the diverse set of individuals who describe themselves to belong to the middle class in Egypt (e.g. De Koning 2009; Schielke 2015). When studying the middle class in Egypt, it has been proven to be useful to study this group as a dynamic aspirational category, rather than a socio-economic one (Heiman, Freeman & Liechty 2012). The concept of the middle class is intricately connected to globalization processes that allow individuals to subscribe to global trends in popular culture, nationalism, consumerism, and religion, without the ability to access the symbolic capital that is associated with the image of cosmopolitanism. Schielke argues, based on his research in the provincial middle class in Egypt, that his interlocutors described themselves as belonging to the middle class “in the aspirational sense of claiming to belong (or at least hoping to belong) to the middle ground of good and respectable people with a reasonable level of education and income” (Schielke 2012: 46). The middle class is not solely a socio-economic unit of analysis, but rather an ideal image of what constitutes a good and respectable life. This ideal functions as a gateway of hope, but may simultaneously increase feelings of frustration, pressure and anxiety caused by the possibility of never being able to attain that life. What constitutes a middle-class life, is then a collective social practice of imagination as it is grounded in an imagined world of promises and possibilities (Appadurai 1996, in Schielke 2015).
To understand what it means to belong to the middle class in Egypt, one must understand what it means to be cosmopolitan. Early theories on cosmopolitanism primarily argued that only particular groups with sufficient economic capital could engage in cosmopolitan activities (e.g. Hannerz 1990). Cosmopolitanism was understood in terms of being able to physically travel in order to engage with different places, cultures, and modes of belonging all over the globe. However, with the rapid development of modern technology, cosmopolitan lifestyles are practiced in almost every social group of society (Ferguson 1990). This is exemplified in the work of Schein (1999) in post-socialist China. Schein argues that “the Chinese who cannot afford to travel or to purchase foreign goods are striving for membership in global consumer culture, one that emerges from the presence of global mediation and satellite broadcasting, and from the mobility of meanings that circulate through these channels” (1999: 358). In the contemporary global society, traveling is then not the only means through which people can acquire cosmopolitan lifestyles because of the emergence of TV, magazines and other forms of (social) media. Cosmopolitanism and globalization have often been understood in terms of the ‘onion model’. Beck and Sznaider (2006) argue against the ‘onion model’
of cosmopolitanism, which compares the inner layer of an onion to ‘the local’ while comparing the outer layer to ‘the global’. According to Beck and Sznaider, “cosmopolitanism happens ‘from within’… cosmopolitanism should be chiefly conceived of as globalization from within, as internalized cosmopolitanism” (2006: 389). Cosmopolitanism should therefore, be understood in terms of ‘multiple modernities’, a term coined by Delanty (2006). The concept of multiple modernities offers an understanding of cosmopolitanism that acknowledges the fact that civilizations are “internally plural and based on frameworks of interpretation which can be appropriated in different ways by many social actors within and beyond the contours of the given society” (2006: 34). In short, I am concerned with cosmopolitanism as an outlook on life, that is rooted in national modes of belonging but allows social actors to involve themselves in transnational modes of belonging (Werbner 2008). This is exemplified by the participants in this study as they consciously orient themselves towards a broader world outside of Egypt, while simultaneously valuing specific practices, traditions, foods and norms and values.
Anthropology and silence
Basso’s (1970) study in the Western Apache is one of the earliest accounts of how silence is culturally and socially constructed, and how an absence of talk can be meaningful. Since then, a large body of literature has been dedicated to silence and has examined the topic within a range of different frameworks, such as the feminist and socio-linguistic framework, focusing on its mechanisms, meanings, and consequences in both the public and private domains. Bourdieu (1991) brought attention to the relation between power, politics, and language and argued that language is not solely a means of communication, but should also be understood as a means that allows different social actors in society to seek out their personal interests. Bourdieu’s analysis of the usage of language has been particularly helpful for other scholars as his analysis linked language and silence to the concept of political censorship and social categories such as class, gender, and race. In the majority of the studies conducted today, silence is most likely to be linked to political censorship, wherein coercion and enforcement are often central themes (e.g. Vivarelli 2012; Selaiha 2013). In these studies, silence is enforced from above by authorities such as the state. In The Power
of Silence, social linguist Adam Jaworski argues that political censorship is
“a kind of macro silence of oppression to a desirable start for all power groups that are afraid that the mere expression and exchange of opinions or the free flow of information will threaten the existing status quo” (1993: 115). Though the mere expression of unwelcome opinions in Egypt, particularly those regarding the current political circumstances, can have grave consequences, when it comes to the topic of khitān al-banāt the study participants were more likely to feel threatened by damaging their
self-image as modern Egyptians. Theories that examine enforced silence as a means to establish and maintain the position of dominant groups, illuminate the social relations and hierarchies between various groups in society. However, they often do not account for the ways in which people practice silence that does not involve coercion from above. Silence and the societal status quo are concepts that have been further explored and critiqued in the post-colonial critique by using global power inequalities as the fundament in understanding how these inequalities establish dominant groups while simultaneously excluding other social groups from society and subsequently silencing their voices (e.g. Spivak 1988; Gramsci 1971). Feminist scholars have questioned the concept of silence and its oppressive mechanisms in the ways in which women’s achievements and voices are silenced on the work floor, in the medical domain and within the family unit (e.g. Etter-Lewis 1991; DeFrancisco 1998; Gal 1991; Houston & Kramarae 1991; Crary 2001). The power of silence, as Houston and Kramarea argue, “is used to isolate people, disempowering by their gender, race, and class, even in the speaking contexts of their daily lives” (1991: 388).
A rich body of literature has investigated the relation of silence to the collective memory of the nation. The notion of ‘collective memory’ is intricately connected to the act of ‘collective forgetting’ or ‘social forgetting’ wherein the act of forgetting is constructed as a strategic, collective, and social act. In her book Frames of Remembrance (1994) Irwin-Zarecka examines collective silence and argues how the act of forgetting has revealed itself within groups who consider events and situations that have happened outside their own social grouping, irrelevant and too insignificant to actively remember. Silence is not always coerced or enforced from above. This was illustrated in the early works of Basso (1970) but has generally been undertheorized in the majority of the literature on silence. Sheriff (2000) offers an account on racism and silence, which provides relatively new insights on silence and how it is discussed within the anthropological discipline. The central theme in Sheriff’s work is cultural censorship and how cultural censorship consists of the “expressive silences that are embedded in conversations and differ in both form and function from lacunae within discourse” (Sheriff 2000: 118). This kind of silence differs from the forms of silence previously discussed, as cultural censorship “does not depend upon explicit forms of coercion or enforcement” (Sheriff 2000: 114).
Cultural censorship cannot be compared to political censorship, where coercion and enforcement are imposed from above, nor is it similar to self-censorship, which is described as an individual process or act. Sheriff demonstrates how cultural censorship is a social act that is performed within a group and is motivated or driven by a particular set of interests within the public domain. Sheriff underlines that in some cases, the possibility of psychologically driven motivations might be the root of this
form of silence, but above all, it remains a form of silence that is socially shared and culturally codified (Sheriff 2000). The majority of studies thus focus on theorizing silence as political censorship or as a tool of coercion in which the relationship between dominant groups, authorities from above, and silence remain fundamental questions. Ultimately, I am concerned with silence as a non-coercive and collectively constructed tool, and what the relationship between cultural censorship and khitān al-banāt reveals about my participants’ current everyday lives and their aspirations for the future. Young professionals and the history of modernity in Egypt The revolution of 1952 introduced a new era of independence from colonial rule in Egypt. The leader of the revolution and the coup d'état, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was officially declared president following the revolution and focused particularly on creating opportunities for Egypt’s economic development. Through state initiatives, an entirely new middle class was fostered, as this group became the recipient of material and ideological investments of the state (De Koning 2009). Nasser particularly invested in the educational system of Egypt by introducing free education for all citizens and a guaranteed government job for all college graduates. This opened the doors for many families from the lower and middle classes and facilitated the idea of education as an aspiration for the majority of Egyptian citizens (De Koning 2009). However, the expansion of the middle class led to an increase in collective aspirational goals and dreams that did not meet the everyday lived realities (Amin 2000). During the Nasser-era, education became the symbol of progression and status, a symbol that remains important amongst the middle class in contemporary Egypt. As a result of Nasser’s investments, a new educated and professional middle class was created and quickly became the new symbolic image of the long-anticipated national independence from colonial rule and modernity in Egypt (Elsayed 2010) After the death of Nasser in 1970, his successor, Anwar Sadat introduced the infitaah, also known as the ‘open door policy’ in 1973. An era of economic liberalization began and brought on new opportunities to import luxurious goods as Egypt allowed private investments. Egypt’s economic and political development and the ideal of the middle-class life was envisioned by Sadat in terms of affluence as he stated that “the goal of every Egyptian should be to have a car and a villa” (Ibrahim 1982:49, in De Koning 2009).
Before the revolution of 1952, the everyday lives of Egyptian citizens were heavily influenced by the British and French colonial rule and thus, Western influences have often been connected to modernity and progression by both the colonizers and the Egyptian people. According to Rodenbeck, (1999) a new form of cosmopolitanism emerged in the 1980s with new shopping centers and restaurants, appearing, particularly geared towards the (upper) middle classes. In a post-colonial context, modernity
remained connected to the elite who engaged in ‘modern’ and Western lifestyles and the equally sophisticated equivalent of local lifestyles (De Koning 2009). As Egypt returned to the global economic market again during the infitaah, these lifestyles became increasingly more important in the process of fashioning a cosmopolitan self-image by (upper) middle-class citizens. This process was aided by the rapid development of new media and technology, which made it easier for more people to access global cultural flows (Appadurai 1990). The professional middle class, now represented by young middle-class professionals working in government jobs “seem to have become iconic of new national narratives and projects” (De Koning 2009: 8). Keeping up with the international standards of modernity became a crucial part of achieving the middle-class life as the professional middle class is in constant contact with global flows and metropolitan centers around the world. The luxurious lifestyles disappeared when the state withdrew as a primary agent of national development after the 1970s. The professional middle class was impacted negatively as the economic conditions rapidly began to worsen. The main goal of the professional middle class was now to continue the race to keep up with the global standards of modernity. Being modern now constituted education from a private or international school and working in the private sector (Elsayed 2010).
The participants in this study were often already working at a relatively high-income job at a private or government institution with an income between the 5.000 and 10.000 EGP per month. However, particularly in a post-revolution context, the difficulty of finding and keeping a job has often been said to be a stressful process as the stability of their jobs is dependent on the stability of the job market and the economy. The belief that the revolution failed and that the circumstances have only worsened over the past decade ‘makes the feeling of disappointment even bigger’ according to Omar (M/aged 25) who is currently working a relatively low-paying government job. Omar has obtained a bachelor’s degree in business but feels he was forced to take a government job due to a lack of opportunities in the field of business. Casual conversations and interviews often carried ambivalent undertones regarding the current state of the nation and their position and future within it. This ambivalence comes from the wave of hope that washed over the nation as a rigorous change was expected during the revolution. Yet, almost a decade later, the lack of fundamental and structural change has replaced hope with a deep sense of stagnation among the majority of the participants. The stunted progression has only increased the feeling of frustration and anxiety (Malmström 2013).
To relieve some of the stress and anxiety, the young professionals often spend time at luxury malls such as City Stars where they browse the shops, visit the cinema or drink coffee at upscale establishments such as The Coffeeshop Company, Cilantro or Costa Coffee. On the weekends they
sometimes travel domestically to other cities, go hiking or organize group activities with friends on the weekends, such as Anwar (M/aged 27) who joined a mixed-gender group that cycles a new route through Cairo every weekend. Some of the participants I interviewed were members of AISEC, a global youth-led organization that offers voluntary and professional internships and provides young people with the opportunity to travel outside of Egypt. The recent emergence of these global and local communities underlines the need for young professionals to look for a like-minded community. The young professionals were continuously busy managing their resumes by taking extra-curricular courses that would set them apart, such as courses in photography, programming or Spanish and English language courses. As Noor (F/aged 26) explains, ‘you cannot just do nothing… if you want a good life you have to improve yourself’. Though many of the participants felt that this process was sometimes futile, they also believed that doing nothing would only lessen the chance of being able to start their life.
The global and national discourses on female circumcision Though many anthropologists have proven that the health hazards of female circumcision are often exaggerated or taken out of context (e.g. Makhlouf-Obermeyer 1999; Shell-Duncan 2001), the practice has earned universal condemnation and has been targeted for elimination by the international community, mainly due to the perceived gravity of the health risks. The practice was initially introduced within a health framework as “an impediment to development that can be prevented and eradicated much like any disease” (Hosken 1978: 85). The emphasis that was placed onto the health hazards of female circumcision led to the medicalization of the practice, rather than its eradication (Shell-Duncan 2001). However, the global campaigns failed at mobilizing large scale changes in behavior as they did not recognize the local contexts and core values of the tradition. As a response to the unexpected medicalization of the practice, the global campaign shifted from a health framework to a human rights framework in the 1980s (Shell-Duncan 2008). Prior to these international developments and the opposition, the practice was not a national issue in Egypt, nor was it a subject of public debate (Al Dawla 1999). Al-Azhar, one of the oldest and most important Islamic authorities in Egypt, openly supported khitān al-banāt by issuing fatwas that underlined its religious nature (Kutscher 2011). In 1994, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICDP) was held in Cairo. Cable News Network (CNN) covered the ICPD and as part of its coverage broadcasted video footage of the circumcision of a ten-year-old girl. Following the broadcasting of this footage, and the subsequent negative global media attention the video received, the Minister of Health issued a ban aimed at preventing doctors from carrying out the practice in 1997i. Meanwhile, Al-Azhar promoted khitān al-banāt and used
the practice as a platform to speak out against the Westernization of the Egyptian society as a result of the importance of Western ideas and notions in state policies (Kutscher 2011).
In 2008, following the death of a young girl after the procedure, the Minister of Health fully criminalized khitān al-banāt. As international opposition increased and the Egyptian state kept the legislative changes intact, a shift within Al-Azhar’s discourse on khitān al-banāt took place. In 2006, an international conference on the practice was organized by Rüdiger Nehberg, the German founder of a human rights organization dedicated to eradicating female circumcision. During this conference Muslim scholars, clerics and academics from Africa, Germany, and the Middle East spent two days discussing the practice. The conference was held at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and ultimately led to the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar stating that the practice has neither been mentioned in the Quran nor in the Sunnah (the verbally transmitted record of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed)ii.
With both the state and Al-Azhar renouncing the practice, the discourse that once tolerated and encouraged the practice has now shifted towards a discourse wherein khitān al-banāt is no longer an acceptable practice in Egypt. This shift is particularly important as the global and national discourses on the practice have influenced the ways in which the young professionals chose to disengage from the practice.
Methodological considerations
Due to several unforeseen obstacles, the methodology and the angle of this research have changed over the course of four months. The intricate sensitivity of the initial research topic led me to choose a qualitative approach with in-depth interviews and participant observation, to fully grasp the intergenerational complexity of the practice and the social structures in which it is embedded. I aimed to interview approximately four to five women from different age categories, covering their life courses from infancy to adulthood. This would have allowed creating a bond with the participants wherein minor and major life events could be discussed. However, despite the participants’ willingness to help, it proved to be impractical to build a relationship wherein an exchange of intimate information could take place. This complication was mainly caused by the following two factors.
Firstly, setting up (follow-up) interviews with possible participants was a challenging process that included many cancellations, no-shows and miscommunications. Secondly, the increasing traffic congestion in Cairo forced me to limit my activities and interviews to one a day. Ultimately, the short duration of four months combined with the logistical obstacles I encountered, prompted me to reflect on the workability of this methodology and to alter it where necessary. As the fieldwork progressed, I decided to limit interviews to one or two interviews per study participant and to
disregard the life narration approach. The life narration approach had proven to be a challenging task as it took participants, particularly participants in older age categories, longer to reveal personal and sensitive information. In addition, considering my positionality in the field, it proved to be easier to access social networks of young professionals in the age category of 20 to 35 years. Thus, instead of focusing on the intricate lives of the study participants and attempting to link this to the complexity of the practice, I turned my focus to ways in which the participants, acquaintances and family members chose to disengage from the practice. Ultimately, my methods mainly consisted of one group interview and twenty-eight individual interviews involving a total of 32 participants. The participants are between the ages of 20-35 years and come from Islamic or Christian religious backgrounds. With several participants, more than one interview was carried out. In addition, informal talks and conversations also formed a solid basis next to my interviews. The majority of the interviews were conducted in a mix of English and colloquial Arabic. With regard to ethical considerations, I have anonymized the profiles of the study participants.
Positionality in the field and the writing process of this article require a brief examination. As a half-Egyptian, half-Dutch and Muslim anthropologist, my position in the field was complex to navigate at times. As Ohnuki-Tierney argues, the native anthropologist often finds him- or herself in an “advantageous position to understand the emotive dimensions of behavior” (Ohnuki-Tierney 1984: 584). In her earlier works, Abu-Lughod coins the term ‘halfie’, which refers to her own background as a half-American and half-Arab researcher and in general refers to anthropologists who represent two different communities and thus have a unique positionality in the study on their own native culture and the ways in which they produce both partial truths and positioned truths as they relate and position themselves to two different communities (Abu-Lughod 1986 & 2005a; Geertz 1986). The advantage of speaking the Egyptian colloquial language and being familiar with customary knowledge and the routines of daily life in Egypt have certainly facilitated this research. Though these elements have proven to be useful, I was often perceived as a ‘Western visitor’, a term which was lovingly coined by one of the study participants. It was often joked by participants, friends, and relatives how my Egyptian nationality could not take away the foreign cultural, social, physical and verbal mannerisms that so clearly differentiated me from native Egyptian citizens. One of the participants explicitly articulated that I should keep in mind that people might be hesitant to speak to me about the practice as they might feel uncomfortable when speaking to a Western researcher about a practice that is perceived to be backward and barbaric. As a white woman in my mid-twenties, I was aware of how my appearance has influenced the trajectories of the interviews and conversations I have had with the study participants. Here, it must be noted that I have attempted to write an
‘ethnography of the particular’ wherein the focus of the analysis has been on the participants in this study, and thus aims to understand these particular individuals, rather than the entire society in which I have done research (Abu-Lughod 2005a).
Silence as cultural censorship
One of my first encounters was with an old acquaintance named Rana, a young Muslim woman of 25 years old. Rana lives in Heliopolis but suggested that we meet up in City Stars, which is located in the affluent Nasr City, a district near Heliopolis. Rana explained how she enjoys browsing the expensive name-brand shops and regularly drinks coffee with her friends at Costa Coffee, which is located inside the mall. I introduced the topic of my research to Rana, after which she initially argued the following:
Rana: Really? Why would you study that [laughter]? You won’t find anyone here who does that anymore!
Maryam: Really? How so?
Rana: It is very backward. And it is a very old practice, it was very common at the time of my grandmother and her mother, but now people know better, of course.
Before setting out to Cairo, I was aware that speaking publicly about topics that are related to sexuality, could be deemed inappropriate and immoral. Rana, however, was not surprised that I was inquiring about a sex-related topic. Rather, the statement ‘you won’t find anyone here who does that anymore’ implies that the practice is simply no longer issue in contemporary Egypt. Intrigued by Rana’s response, I pressed the issue by mentioning the numbers that are documented on khitān al-banāt in Egypt. Rana then hesitantly admitted that khitān al-banāt might still happen in Egypt, but that it most commonly engaged in by peoples and communities in the underdeveloped regions of Egypt. The rural outskirts of Cairo and the South of Egypt bordering onto Sudan, also referred to as the sa’id, are viewed and articulated by the participants as the underdeveloped regions in Egypt and play a crucial role in the process of distancing from the practice. ‘Of course, you hear of stories happening but when you look closer you will see that those stories only happen in specific places, like in the sa’id or the rural places of Egypt’, Rana explains. ‘Cairo is more urban and progressive than those places, so you will not see it happening here’, she continued after I asked her why she thinks it does not happen in Cairo anymore. Two weeks after my interview with Rana, I conducted an interview with Mina, a 25-year-old woman who lives in Zamalek. Similar to Rana, Mina was quite surprised to hear about my research topic:
Mina: Khitān al-banāt, really [laughter]? Maryam: Yes, why are you laughing?
Mina: I am not laughing at you of course. I didn’t expect your research to be about khitān al-banāt.
Maryam: Why is that such a surprise?
Mina: Well… I don’t know… I think people don’t really do khitān al-banāt anymore. It is a ridiculous practice, and an outdated one as well. You should time-travel and go back in history because it happened a lot back then. But now, I haven’t heard of anyone circumcising their daughters, to be honest. For men, yes we circumcise. For women we don’t.
On the 21st of October, two weeks prior to my interview with Mina, news
broke of a father who reported his wife to the police for circumcising their two daughters without his knowledge. One day later, the two daughters testified against their father and claimed it had been him who had taken the girls to be circumcised as a way of taking revenge on the mother for filing for divorceiii. This incident took place in Qena, a city located in Upper Egypt.
I asked Mina if she was aware of this incident, which prompted the following response:
Mina: Honestly, I can’t believe this stuff. But you know, this happened in Qena. You know where Qena is? It is in the South of Egypt. Of course it is not unsurprising that this stuff happens there, because these people are known to be less educated and progressive. They are farmers, you know, from the country side. You will not see something like this happening in the city [Cairo], because people are educated.
Maryam: So it does still happen, you just mean that it doesn’t happen in Cairo?
Mina: I guess, yes. Nowadays khitān al-banāt happens in places outside of Cairo. I have heard stories about khitān al-banāt, but these are stories from Upper Egypt and even the series we used to watch were about Upper Egypt and the campaigns that are against it, they show the way it is being done in Upper Egypt.
Mina and Rana’s reactions consist of two elements that require further examination. Firstly, both women distance themselves from khitān al-banāt by relocating the practice to the past, or by relocating it to a different space. This form of distancing is not uncommon and could be seen with the majority of the participants. As the conversations progressed, it became clear that their initial reaction shifted towards the acknowledgement that khitān al-banāt does happen in Egypt, but should not be considered an issue. This argument was based on the perception that it does not occur in
their direct environment, but in places and communities that are far removed from Cairo. It was often argued that the practice originated in Sudan, where according to two of the older participants, the practice is even more pervasive than in Egypt. As the conversation between the two older women, Muna and Malika, aged 65 and 55 respectively, illustrates:
Malika: No! It comes from Sudan.
Muna: Yes, but Egypt and Sudan were one country at one point in history.
Malika: Yes, but in Sudan now it is worse I think than here. And yes, we were one country. So unfortunately, there was this stupid thought… of course you know it, right? Because they want to reduce sexual desire for the girls. That’s what they [emphasized] think it does!
The South of Egypt is constructed as the ‘Internal Other’ as a way of spatializing difference wherein “certain regions become repositories for undesirable traits as part of a dialectical process of region and nation-building” (Johnson & Coleman 2009: 2). The South in particular, but also the rural outskirts of Cairo, become crucial markers in the symbolic distancing of the practice and functions as the space that reinforces the dichotomy in development between what is considered ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ in Egypt (Van Raemdonck 2019). Khitān al-banāt is then labeled as a practice that belongs to the outdated norms and values of Egypt that are passed on from generation to generation automatically. Ultimately, by re-locating the practice to a different time (‘it is an outdated practice’) and to a different space (‘it only happens in the South’), the participants effectively distance themselves from a practice that they associate with traditional norms and values.
Secondly, the surprise that is expressed upon the introduction of my research topic could initially be interpreted or described as denial or an attempt to cover up a practice that they consider to be backward. However, this argument trivializes the views and opinions of the majority of these young professionals. The participants often assumed that because I was studying khitān al-banāt, I was looking for women who had been circumcised themselves. Though I emphasized that I simply wished to gain an insight into their perspective on the practice, my request was often met with hesitation and incomprehension. The participants did not understand why I wanted to speak to them, as they had nothing to do with the practice and thus often quickly shut down the subject of khitān al-banāt by stating how they had no experience with the practice and therefore no knowledge of it. This was exemplified by Ramy, a 25-year-old man who lives in Nasr City. I asked Ramy if he had any knowledge of the role fathers play in the decision-making process when it comes to khitān al-banāt. ‘I do not know.
I have never been in that experience before. I did not know that the mother makes the decision usually. Like…this is just my opinion in the matter’, he replied with an uncomfortable laugh. ‘I have not heard anything about this before, but I wonder if this generation, my generation, is well informed about this’, he continued. A second example comes from a conversation I had with Doha, a 23-year-old woman who lives in Maadi, who regularly mentioned that she is not circumcised and that she ‘won’t be of any use for this research’.
The participants initially claimed that they did not have any knowledge of the practice, however, the conversations eventually proved that they do have some knowledge on khitān al-banāt. The majority of the participants knew of the various ways one could refer to the practice, the possible consequences and the legislative framework surrounding khitān al-banāt. When asked where their knowledge came from, they often argued that it was from news segments, articles they had read online and TV-shows that portray incidents of khitān al-banāt. Yet, incidents they hear about in the news are perceived as isolated and rare incidents, and thus do not make khitān al-banāt a pervasive issue in Egypt. In a similar vein, Sheriff (2002) describes how her study participants would often refrain from having an opinion on racism in Brazil. Sheriff uses the term ‘race evasive discourse’ first coined by Ruth Frankenberg in 1993. This concept explains how people would often avoid making any kind of reference, both direct and indirect, to racism as a way of remaining politically correct. If one had something to say about racism, one also fell at risk of being labeled a racist, “simply by virtue of having something to say about it” (Sheriff 2000: 121). A similar process can be seen in Egypt, as references to khitān al-banāt are avoided because they might label the one voicing an opinion as engaged with the practice.
What Frankenberg refers to as race evasive discourse, Sheriff reconceptualizes as cultural censorship. Similar to the topic of race in Brazil, the topic of khitān al-banāt in Egypt is “not only circumscribed by evasive rhetorical strategies but also by historically rooted, customary silences” (Sheriff 2000: 121). In Egypt, the silence surrounding khitān al-banāt should therefore also be understood from a distinctive, yet interconnected perspective. To understand why the young professionals practice silence regarding the topic, one must first understand that speaking of these topics publically is made to believe that one is immoral as it is embedded in the framework of a sexually tinted subject (Sheriff 2000). Despite the participants’ lack of direct and indirect contact with khitān al-banāt in their personal lives, an underlying sense of uneasiness and discomfort could be felt when speaking of the topic. The discomfort, and in some cases even feelings of embarrassment, could particularly be felt during conversations with male participants. This is exemplified during a conversation I had with Ramy, who regardless of his belief that khitān al-banāt is a non-issue in
Egypt, still experienced a sense of embarrassment when speaking about it to me:
Ramy: People here do not talk about sex in general, alright? Or about their sexual experiences. The whole concept of [lowers voice] khitān al-banāt is put under the category of ‘sex’. People don’t talk about things related to sex, especially if it is two different genders here in Egypt. Like, it is not forbidden, but people are going to judge you. Even if two people talk it about, they always talk about it in lower voice. As you can hear me talking to you right now in a lower voice. Of course, I don’t care about what people think [laughter], but I am kind of embarrassed to speak about this.
In the previous generations, where khitān al-banāt was considered to be a common and necessary practice, it was rarely openly spoken about or debated. The following interview with Sanaa, a 50-year-old woman living in Nasr City, indicates that the uneasiness and embarrassment when speaking of khitān al-banāt is also rooted in their religious beliefs:
Sanaa: We are shy to talk about it. And also the religion says that it is haram to talk about this. The Islam says that it is forbidden for a woman to speak about her marital relations with anyone but her husband. Or that she talks with her friends about what she did with her husband. But again you know… you should talk about this topic with a doctor. Because if I had a problem like this, I would go talk to a doctor or to my sister, but not with my friends. So, we don’t talk about this [laughs].
For Ramy and Sanaa, the experience of uneasiness is rooted in the importance of modesty and morality in both the public and the private domain. Even though modesty is typically considered to be a virtue that is particularly important for women (e.g. Mahmood 2012), modesty is also a virtue that dictates the ways in which men conduct themselves with regards to women (e.g. Abu-Lughod 1984). The concept of modesty is invoked both explicitly and implicitly as an important virtue. The sexual propriety that determines the social interactions between women and men in both the private and the public arena is then crucial in understanding the social morality in Egypt that is highly gendered (Abu-Lughod 1984; Mahmood 2006). This moral system is distinctive in that it is supported by the importance that is placed on morality and modesty in the Quran and the Sunnah. The silence that the young professionals practice regarding khitān al-banāt should therefore not be understood or studied as an entirely new phenomenon. Rather, as demonstrated by Sanaa, the silence surrounding
khitān al-banāt that is practiced now, draws on a form of silence that has always existed. Though feelings of uneasiness and discomfort can occasionally still be felt in conversations with participants and can be related to long-standing notions of modesty and morality, the silence that is practiced by the young professionals is particularly related to larger, structural societal issues and self-perceptions of modernity.
As Sanaa argued, and as became clear by Ramy’s demeanor and statements during our conversation, the notion of modesty invokes the idea that topics related to sex(uality) are religiously prohibited to speak of when they are not discussed in an appropriate context, for instance between a doctor and a patient, or between a husband and wife. Gruenbaum argues how the topic is only discussed on occasions and in settings where it is common to speak of it – for instance, between a mother and the person who will carry out the procedure (Gruenbaum 2001, cf. Vestbostad 2014). Similar to Gruenbaum’s argument, in her work on Somali women in Norway, Talle argued that the practice was never mentioned or debated, not even in the rich body of Somali poetry that was produced (Talle 1993). On one occasion, I spoke to Nawal, a 70-year-old woman who was circumcised when she was eleven years old. Nawal’s story illuminates how the only ones who are involved in the process are the mother, the child that is about to be circumcised and the person who will carry out the procedure:
Maryam: Your mother didn’t tell you about the procedure beforehand?
Nawal: Before? No! But after it is done every tells you that this is for your own good. This is clean.
Maryam: Was your father aware of the procedure?
Nawal: Yes of course he knew. Like I said, because it was normal. Every girl gets circumcised.
Maryam: Was he involved in the decision to have you circumcised?
Nawal: My father? No, it was my mother. By the way, I got circumcised at my aunt’s house. It was me and my older sister together.
Maryam: So your father wasn’t involved in the decision making process?
Nawal: No, there was no decision making process. We all knew it was going to happen, it is just a matter of when. While I was circumcised my father was working, after that he went to a
qahwa [traditional coffee house] with the husband of my aunt.
People feel shy to talk about this issue openly and their experiences of embarrassment and discomfort partly the reason why the participants remain silent on this topic. However, this is not the only reason behind their silence as “the answer to their silence is powerfully conveyed in the reference to silence as a “form of forgetting, or trying not to remember” (Sheriff 2000: 124). The following exchange with Ramy shows how different forms of silence, and the logic behind them, can be expressed. Ramy explained how the topic of khitān al-banāt was never discussed in his environment, not within the family unit nor his group of friends:
Ramy (M/24): No, of course not. Why would we talk about it? It’s not that important to talk about really… No I mean, important for us. Like I’m not going to ask my friend ‘Should I marry a circumcised woman or not’? Get it? That’s why it is not that important. I mean I’m not going to make a big deal about it. If we mentioned something like that, it would be in the context of an accident that happened before. Like we talk about it normally, otherwise no.
Ramy argues how this practice is simply ‘no longer important in today’s society’ and therefore is not worth talking about. This is motivated by an “etiquette that is unspoken and yet pervasive notions” amongst his group of friends, who come from similar backgrounds (Sheriff 2000: 120). Ramy and his friends assume a rationale wherein silence concerning khitān al-banāt is perceived as nothing more than the consequence of the insignificance of the practice, which in turn perpetuates the silence that surrounds it. During a group interview, I spoke to Yasmin, a 40-year-old Muslim who lives in Nasr City. Yasmin explained how an incident involving khitān al-banāt has caused a major rift between her and her sister. Both Yasmin and her sister have not been circumcised, nor were other female relatives in their immediate family. However, Yasmin’s sister and her husband had decided that they wished to circumcise their 17-year-old daughter prior to her wedding. Her sister’s decision caused feelings of confusion and anger for Yasmin. ‘I was so angry! I couldn’t believe it. How could they do that?’, Yasmin exclaimed angrily. I requested an opportunity to sit down with Yasmin’s sister for an interview, however, this request was dismissed as Yasmin stated her sister lived far away and would not be able to speak with me. The reactions of Yasmin in regards to her niece’s circumcision, and her subtle, yet no less noticeable, reaction to my request for an interview with her sister, indicate how Yasmin did not wish to speak of this topic as a way of avoiding giving off a negative impression, but also as a way of masking a sense of embarrassment that comes from the idea of a close relative engaging in the practice. In this particular case, even though we spoke of her sister, Yasmin did not want to be seen as someone who sympathizes with
another individual who engages in this practice, because to be categorized as sympathizing the practice and its supporters, may be an indication of a more ‘enduring characteristic of people’ and is a threat to one’s self-image (Van Dijk 1992).
The act of me asking questions about khitān al-banāt, causes a disruption and reveals the friction between a practice that exists in a society, but not in the young professionals’ imaginations. On certain occasions, the confrontation of the existence of the practice causes them to remember a practice that they chose to disengage from. The general negative perception of the practice and its association with backwardness causes uneasiness and manifests itself in a sense of embarrassment. This was often mentioned during interviews on how the global and local climate towards khitān al-banāt has changed over the decades. The majority of the respondents find that as khitān al-banāt has gotten more negative attention, not just in the international sphere, but also on a national scale in Egypt, it has become a highly stigmatized and politicized topic as both the state and religious authorities have explicitly spoken out in favor of its elimination. An argument was made by 27-year-old Mansour, who argued that citizens have become increasingly aware of how this practice is presented within the national Egyptian discourse:
Mansour (M/27): People are starting to see that such a practice, it is backwards. And even the government they are speaking against it and imams are speaking against it. So people have no excuse to not know that it is a bad practice. If the government puts a punishment on it, who is going to support it? You are going to think to yourself… Maybe this is a bad practice after all.
Mansour’s argument was mirrored during a conversation with Dalia, a 25-year-old woman who lives in Nasr City. Dalia explained that it might be taboo for a man and a woman to talk about khitān al-banāt, which became clear during my conversation with Ramy, but that the topic for her brings along a sense of embarrassment for different reasons:
Dalia (F/25): People are going to feel ashamed when they talk about it, because people have been doing this for such a long time to their daughters, hurting them in such a way, and now they find out that it is bad. Wouldn’t you feel ashamed? It is about the ignorance of some people.
Maryam: Do you feel embarrassed even if you had nothing to do with the practice?
Dalia: It does not matter if you had anything to do with the practice! I mean, now they don’t do it anymore, but everyone did
it in the past. There are people walking around now that have been circumcised. It is embarrassing to think that such a thing was so normal once in Egypt.
As Dalia’s case exemplifies, the fact that both the global and the local discourses on khitān al-banāt have openly and adamantly condemned khitān al-banāt as a practice has a significant influence on the ways in which citizens perceive a private matter such as khitān al-banāt. Despite the majority of the study participants claiming to have little knowledge of the practice, they are aware of the fact that Al-Azhar and the Egyptian state have spoken out against this practice. For Fatima, a 26-year-old Muslim woman living in Maadi, it feels as though ‘the world is looking over their shoulder’:
Fatima: You know it feels like an open wound. It is a fadi7a [a shameful event or action that has become public]. I believe people are trying to get away from this practice nowadays, but people insist that this defines us. It doesn’t define us. You know in Islam they say, when you commit a sin you have to cover it up and if God doesn’t ‘out’ you to the world, you should be content. With khitān al-banāt is seems like that is the case, we keep being ‘outed’ based on a backwards practice that is no longer important for the majority in Egypt.
Ultimately, the silence surrounding the topic of khitān al-banāt should not be understood as denial or unwillingness to speak of a topic, but rather as an act that requires an agency that enables the study participants to ‘forget’ or attempt to ‘not remember’ (Sheriff 2000). Besides the perceived immorality that comes with the open discussion of the practice, the practice of silence also confirms the notion of khitān al-banāt being a non-issue and is therefore too insignificant as feature or marker of this groups’ idea of what identity is (Sheriff 2000). Many scholars such as Comaroff & Comaroff (1993) and Gramsci (1971) understand silence as the naturalization and normalization of dominant discourses and cultural hegemony, wherein silence is conceptualized as a form of false consciousness. However, the concept of silence as Sheriff defines it, involves the element of agency, as cultural censorship should be considered an attempt to forget that which does not fit within their self-perceptions of modernity.
Many of the study participants that I interviewed did not seem to understand what the purpose was of me asking questions about khitān al-banāt as they did not see khitān al-al-banāt as a political or social issue in Egypt. Though khitān al-banāt is widespread in Egypt and can be considered a practice that transcends class, the cultural censorship that is practiced by the study participants relates to their positionality in society and their personal interests, goals, and motivations. In the following section
of this analysis, I demonstrate how “cultural censorship is heavily subjected to the influence of economic, political and social influences in society” (2000: 127). I am concerned with how the study participants perceive the preoccupation with social mobility and cosmopolitanism as issues that are more pressing than khitān al-banāt and how this occupation with other social issues relates to the cultural censorship the study participants practice.
Middle class aspirations: the image of an ideal life
‘Life here can be suffocating in Egypt… it suffocates you completely. You want to make something out of your life, you want to work, you want to start your life, but it almost seems impossible to do here!’, said Aziz, a 27-year-old man while we were discussing the current state of the job market. Aziz, like many other young professionals, still lives with his parents in Heliopolis. At the time of our conversation, Aziz was unemployed and spent every day looking for a job through social media and his social network of friends and relatives. Aziz felt disappointed and angered by the fact that even though he had a bachelor’s degree, he could not find a job that fit his qualifications. He explained to me during one of our conversations that as long as he did not have a job, he would not be able to live an independent life. The expression ‘start your life’ that Aziz uses is an expression that is often used in Egypt and constitutes specific elements. Higher education and a high-income profession are prerequisites in the ideal image of a good life for young professionals like Aziz. According to Armbrust, “the middle class does not correlate with a material standard of living. There are, however, certain attitudes and expectations commonly associated with a middle-class ideal. Egyptians who have at least a high school education and familiarity with how modern institutions work, generally consider themselves middle class. Egyptians who think of themselves as middle class expect a lifestyle free from manual labour” (1999: 11). Since the Nasser-era, young professionals have become particularly invested in their educational trajectories and often have parents or other close relatives who provide for them by paying for their studies or investing in extracurricular courses and activities. This is exemplified by Nawal whose fear of her 19-year-old nephew not being able to get into a good university has led her to spend thousands of pounds on private tutoring. Education is seen by young professionals, but also by the generations that came before them, as a crucial way of increasing one’s chances of finding a respectable job, but it also functions as a mechanism of social distinction. This became clear in the majority of the conversations I have had with the participants as they regularly argued that only the lower class, and therefore uneducated, people still practice khitān al-banāt. As Yara, a 24-year-old woman argued referring to the practice, ‘We are not like those people. When you become educated, you are enlightened, you know that these things are wrong!’
The majority of the young professionals in this study have all obtained a degree from a college or university, but due to the current economic circumstances, struggle in finding a job that matches their academic trajectory. The shift from the importance of government jobs during the Nasser-era to the current importance of private companies is a development that can still be seen in contemporary Egypt. Noor (F/aged 26) argues that working a government job is ‘working endless hours, without the pay and the respect you deserve.’ Working at a private company is associated with status and the high-income that is needed in order to build a respectable life. Prior to starting his job at a private company in Cairo, Ghaly (M/aged 26) who was unemployed after finishing his bachelor’s degree in accounting, was pursuing further education in Germany. Ghaly was overjoyed with his new job, because not only was he going to earn a significant amount of money, he could also propose to his long-term girlfriend, something that was not possible while he was unemployed. Similar to Ghaly, many other young professionals are confronted daily with the challenge of finding a job. As De Koning argues, new lines of inclusion and exclusion have emerged for a new generation of young middle-class professionals who have entered the job market over the last ten years. Like Ghaly, some young professionals can enjoy the middle-class comforts that the international and private companies offer. However, at the same time, a significant number of young professionals who have obtained higher education have difficulties succeeding in the job market and are now unemployed. Many young professionals are then forced to postpone the dream of starting their ideal life and starting a family (De Koning 2009).
Marriage has often been expressed as part of the ideal of their ideal life. Particularly for men that belong to the middle class, the idea of having to start their life is crucial. As Schielke argues, beginning and building a life in Egypt constitutes the conventional and customary responsibilities, assets and qualities that make a respectable man, such as an apartment, a respectable and stable standard of living and the ownership of a private car (Schielke 2012: 49). Few of the male respondents in this study enjoy the privilege of having their parents provide them with their own cars and apartments. For the majority of the young professionals whose parents do not have the ability to provide for them in the abovementioned fashion, an increased sense of anxiety becomes dominant in their everyday lives. This was earlier exemplified by Aziz, who had plans to ask his girlfriend’s hand in marriage but was not able to do so because he did not have a good job and his own apartment yet. For middle-class women, aspirations may constitute different elements. Eligibility for marriage and maintaining personal honor, and by extension, the family’s honor, through dress and other social actions are crucial elements in social mobility for women (Schielke 2015). Though social mobility has been, and remains up to this day, a highly gendered concept in Egypt, young women are now increasingly experiencing the
