Women at work : burdens or privileges? : a critical analysis of the effect of female labour force participation on the emancipation of women working in the public sector, the private textile sector and the informal agri

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Women at work: burdens or privileges?

A critical analysis of the effect of female labour force participation on the

emancipation of women working in the public sector, the private textile

sector and the informal agricultural sector in Egypt.

Master Thesis Political Science: Specialization Political Economy Marthe Huigsloot

10467041

Supervisor: Dr. Matthies-Boon Second Reader: Dr. Roggeband 23 June 2017

m.huigsloot@gmail.com

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1. Introduction

“In Egypt, women have burdens but no privileges” is the headline of a New York Times article of 2010 (El-Naggar 2010). In it, the author explains that while Egyptian women are working more and more, this does nothing in terms of their rights and privileges on the work floor. “I used to be ambitious, and I had dreams. Now, I just want to get married and stay at home”, says one of the interviewed women (El-Naggar 2010). This is in stark contrast to what policy-makers and NGO’s promote in developing countries. Many development projects focus on getting women to participate in the labour market, based on the idea that it will automatically lead to empowerment and emancipation. Especially since a narrative emerged that emphasized the benefits of female labour force participation (FLFP) for increasing GDP and widening the tax base, female labour force participation is widely heralded as a fix-all method (Corner 2008; Jensen 2017). Policies directed at increasing FLFP, such as stimulating export-led growth, have worked in Latin-America and East-Asia (Karshenaz & Moghadam 2001). In the MENA-region, however, FLFP rates are the lowest in the world, and scholars often attribute this to the presence of patriarchal structures created by Islam. Especially in the West, there is a predominant notion that Arab women are oppressed through this patriarchal order – or ‘contract’ – in both the public and the private sphere (Olmsted 2005b). However, this does not explain why in Islamic countries as Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey, FLFP is rising instead of stagnating as in Egypt (Amin & Al-Bassussi 2004). While it is now widely acknowledged that neoliberal policies promoted by international organizations such as the IMF have led to higher inequality and social disparities globally (see Harvey 2005; Khalil 2016; Heyes, Lewis & Clark 2012), rising inequalities between men and women in the Middle East are still mostly explained from a predominantly cultural or religious point of view. Emancipation is seen as the antithesis to Islamic thought, while the possible effects of socio-economic factors are forgotten. This thesis will try to shed light on this underrepresented side of the coin, to show that religion – Islam in particular, as this religion faces the most prejudice – does not necessarily explain the full story of female labour force participation and the effect it has on women’s emancipation. To be precise, this thesis will try to critically assess the relation of female labour force participation as a neoliberal policy with the true emancipation of

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Egyptian women. It will look at the context in which female labour force participation occurs, in order to show that it is not a straightforward measure in increasing emancipation and that more factors than merely religious or social norms are at play.

Conceptually, this thesis will take a feminist political economy approach. This approach derives from historical materialism, as it takes the class structures into account in which women find themselves and which affect the participation of women in the political economic sphere, and combines this with post-colonial and Islamic feminist theories to define the real concept of emancipation and its relation with labour. This thesis thus assumes a critical perspective on established ideologies, specifically, female labour force participation as a vehicle to emancipation. In doing so, it places itself in the realm of the critical theorists, where power relations, hermeneutics and imminent critique are central. However, the lens that this thesis adopts is mainly a broader feminist political economic one, rather than one rooted in a specific school of thought such as poststructuralism or the Frankfurt School.

First, this thesis will go into the concepts of female labour force participation and emancipation to not only place them in the context of Egypt, but also to be able to operationalize the terms. The method chosen for this thesis is a document analysis, based on statistics published by government organizations, reports based on both state and independent data and on secondary literature from scholars and independent NGOs. This data will be used to analyse female labour force participation in Egypt on the basis of three case studies: public sector employment, private sector employment in the textile industry and informal employment in agriculture. These case studies will be discussed and presented in the Results and Analysis section, after which a conclusion and options for further research will be given.

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2. Theoretical Framework

As mentioned above, the research objective of this thesis is to critically assess the effects of female labour force participation on the actual emancipation of women. Before any claims can be made on this topic, several concepts need to be analysed and defined. The following chapters will delve into existing literature on female labour force participation and emancipation. First, the arguments of the proponents of female labour force participation as a vehicle to women’s prosperity will be discussed and set against the arguments of opponents. Then, the concept of emancipation will be defined and discussed in the neo-patriarchal context of Egypt. Throughout the chapters theoretical insights of historical materialism and post-colonial feminism will be used to provide a framework. Post-colonial feminism and historical materialism might seem completely different strands of political science theory, yet this is not the case. Both have emancipatory theoretical traditions (Moghadam 1992: 217). Historical materialists critically assess the oppression of workers in a class-system; post-colonial feminism looks at the oppression of women in a wider system of imperialist hierarchies (Moghadam 1992). What is more, both strands put the active self-liberation of the oppressed at the core of their analysis (Wright 1993). And so, there are several ideologies that both try to disrupt, by showing that many economic and political policies targeted at the empowerment of workers or women, in effect realize something different. In this sense, an ideology is “a set of ideas […] that is used to justify actions of social and political consequence and that is considered so obviously commonsensical or natural that it is placed beyond criticism, regardless of the course of events” (Friesen 2008, no page number). Furthermore, these legitimized actions are often aligned perfectly, and not coincidentally, to the economic, political or social interests of the proponents of the ideology. For this thesis, the ‘ideology’ behind female labour force participation as a vehicle to emancipation is critically evaluated.

2.1 The origins of Female Labour Force Participation

Many studies have been conducted on the factors that influence female labour force participation to find out what circumstances increase or decrease women’s paid employment. In general, a consensus exists on individual characteristics of women

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that matter, such as age and education (Pfau-Effinger, Schwindt & Schlotterbeck 2014; Grunow, Schulz & Blossfeld 2012), and on household characteristics that matter, such as marital status, number of children and what their husbands earn (Hakim 2002: 432). Furthermore, labour market characteristics can also predict women’s participation. High minimum wages stimulate especially lower-educated women to apply for jobs (Cloïn, Keuzenkamp & Plantenga 2011) and sectors that allow more part-time work can also foster participation (Nätti 1993). These studies have all been justified from an assumption that increasing female labour force participation generally brings about positive outcomes in terms of women’s emancipation. That women should have a more equal part of the productive process in a country gained traction in the 1970s, especially after the groundbreaking book of Ester Boserup, in which she successfully argues that women around the world have been marginalized and disadvantaged in almost all sectors of economic development (Corner 2008). Since then, more importance has been given to increasing female labour force participation and its connection with industrialization. Rau and Wazienski (1999: 505) find support for the U-shaped hypothesis for female labour force participation developed by Scott and Tilly in 1975. This hypothesis posits that as industrialization rises, participation first declines as women are replaced by machinery and then rises as post-industrial service oriented occupations increase (Rau & Wazienski 1999: 505). Bose (1987. In: Rau and Wazienski 1999: 506) counterposes that the U-shaped hypothesis measures a rise in participation based only on measures of formal work and that if informal work had also been classified as a value-adding activity the participation of women – in 19th century United States, United Kingdom and Australia – would have remained constant. This dichotomy between formal and informal work and the general neglect of informal work, is one that remains a problem for all (female) labour force participation related measures and conclusions, which will also be discussed in the Methodology section and the Case study on informal labour.

Both hypotheses on industrialization and female labour force participation assume an automatic relation between participation and emancipation: the terms are almost used interchangeably (Rau & Wazienski 1999; Shorter 1973). Even as early as the 1900s, Max Weber and his wife were avid proponents of the idea that employment for women meant freedom as well, and that capitalism was the perfect opportunity for women to obtain this freedom (see Thomas 1985). Engels (1972. In: Jensen 2017:

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121) also argued that equality among sexes would only be achieved if women would participate in the production process rather than being resigned to do unpaid household work. These scholars thus have a certain idea on emancipation, yet this might not hold for all women. Before we go into this, let us first discuss how exactly these scholars believe participating in production leads to emancipation as they see it.

2.2 Proponents and critics

The scholars who propose female labour force participation as a vehicle to emancipation often seem to conceptualize emancipation as overcoming subordination and achieving independence (Shorter 1973: 615). This is inferred from the narrative they use. This narrative centres around the idea that participation gives women bargaining power to dismiss traditional gender norms which eventually leads to a disintegration of patriarchal structures even at the family level (Yu and Lee 2013; Moghadam 1992). This happens through two processes: commodification and interaction in impersonal environments. Orloff (1993: 318) calls the ‘right to commodification’ a precondition to emancipation as it gives women leverage in the household. The right to commodification in this sense means the right to paid employment. Women who earn their own money possibly have more entitlement to decide what it is spent on, which limits the control men have over women and thus creates independence (Rau & Wazienski 1999). Some scholars have even shown that paid employment creates higher life expectancy ratios for females as it diminishes the bias of intra-family distribution towards men (Dreze & Sen 1989. In: Moghadam 1992: 223). But also working alongside men in impersonal labour environments leads women to develop values of autonomy and a ‘mentality of self-interest’ that can trickle down into the family sphere and overcome structures of subordination and dependence (Shorter 1973: 622). The possible emancipatory effect of female labour force participation thus relies on the increased leverage and independence of women in the family-sphere through paid employment and through new shared values of autonomy formed in the workplace. Inherent to this definition is that the patriarchal structures at the family-level are the main constraints on women’s emancipation. In section 2.5.2, I will go deeper into this particular ordering that seems to define women’s social, political and economic subordinate positions within a country.

However, there are also scholars that regard these conclusions with scepticism. Even Moghadam, a supporter of the thesis that female employment leads to

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emancipation, adds to her analysis that this is only so in the case of ‘genuine development’ rather than ‘distorted development’ (Moghadam 1992: 218-219). This distinction between genuine and distorted development is an important facet of development studies. Often, genuine development is only reached if institutions are inclusive, both at an economic and a political level (see especially Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012; North, Wallis & Weingast, 2009). And so, the context in which female labour force participation is supported matters greatly: only if economic and political institutions are not exploitative but focus on inclusivity can it really bring about emancipation. For example, the existence of a welfare state greatly influences the nature of female labour force participation (Jensen 2017; also see section 2.5.3). By framing it as an issue of good versus bad development, Moghadam (1992) explicitly attributes the failings of female labour force participation to socio-economic factors rather than cultural or ideological. This is an important argument to go into, as the repression of emancipatory processes in the Middle East is often – wrongly, this thesis will later on show – linked to Islamic practices reinforcing patriarchal structures.

Also Molyneux (1985) disagrees with the thesis that increased female labour force participation undoubtedly leads to emancipation. She argues that women are now forced to take up paid work in addition to their work as mothers and housewives, effectively leading them to juggle two full-time jobs (Molyneux 1985: 229). Molyneux’s argument could be countered by arguing that this effect of a double burden simply is the result of an incomplete transformation towards real female labour force participation. However, by framing the problem of emancipation as a lack or even an incomplete form of female labour force participation, the idea arises that women can only achieve full equality and independence through full employment. It creates a social standard where women who work in paid employment are seen as more enlightened while women who stay at home are seen as dependent or subordinate, regardless of the preferences of these women. In all cultures and all parts of the world there are women who actively decide to take care of the children and take a part-time or no job. This does not mean that these women are not emancipated. And so the question arises, again: what exactly is emancipation? Both the proponents and the opponents of FLFP as a vehicle for emancipation base their arguments on a certain definition of what emancipation entails, but never clearly state what this definition exactly is. Emancipation is often a term that implicitly invokes a

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lot of connotations, yet it is rarely explicitly defined theoretically or empirically (Nederveen Pieterse 1992: 9). What is more, emancipation is often defined as liberation and gaining equality, yet these ideas are based in a very liberal strand of thought that claims universality rather than plurality. The emancipation that proponents of FLFP talk of might not be real emancipation at all.

2.3 Emancipation: from universality to plurality

Emancipation finds its origins in the liberal thinking of the Enlightenment (Nederveen Pieterse 1992). But through the years, the concept of emancipation has evolved and it means something different now than it did then. In general, emancipation is seen as eliminating oppression (Wright 1993). The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the fact or process of being set free from legal, social or political restrictions; liberation”. But this is vague: how oppression is eliminated is not clear, neither is the kind of oppression and who suffers from it. In the very beginning of the conceptualization of the term, it entailed a certain gift, given by the oppressors to the oppressed, and defining a changing relationship between individuals – e.g. the master who frees his slave (Wertheim 1992). Later, under the wings of the first wave feminists, it became a social movement driven by the oppressed rather than by the oppressors (Wertheim 1992). In the first feminist wave, female emancipation mainly entailed an increase in political rights, with suffragettes leading the struggle, and equal access to education (Wrye 2009). The pioneers of this movement were highly educated, Western women and men, coming from a liberal context (Wrye 2009; Salem 2013). Freedom and equality thus became the hallmarks of the movement (Nederveen Pieterse 1992), yet there was no room for different interpretations of what freedom and equality meant except for the liberal one. Under the second wave, which started in 1960s United States, political equality expanded to include socio-economic equality and reproductive rights (Rampton 2008). Second wave feminism used slogans such as ‘personal is political’ and ‘identity politics’, for the first time picturing emancipation as a class struggle and criticizing the patriarchal and capitalist system (Rampton 2008). Still, just like the first wave, the movement of the second wave feminists remained a universal depiction: although there were many different subgroups that struggled for emancipation – subgroups based on e.g. class position, gender, race – it was seen as a ‘unifying theme’ (Nederveen Pieterse 1992: 8). The ideas, which originated from the US, were universally applied to all struggling women regardless

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of their background. This universal idea of full equality and freedom of oppression is echoed in Laclau’s (1992) definition of emancipation. Laclau draws his ideas from the critical theorists belonging to the Frankfurt School, who see emancipation as freeing “human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Horkheimer 1982. In: Verduijn, Dey, Tedmanson & Essers, 2014: 100). The circumstances Horkheimer talks about are a certain social reality in which these subjects find themselves, created by hierarchical power structures (Horkheimer & Adorno 1944/2002a: 73) and economic progress (Horkheimer & Adorno 1944/2002b: xvii), and which these subjects do not question. Laclau’s concept is inherently utopian, in the sense that emancipation ultimately leads to a better reality (Verduijn et al. 2014).

However, this universality behind emancipation is both too broad and too narrow. By presupposing emancipation to merely be freedom and political, economic and legal equality, there is no nuance in the many different interpretations of freedom and equality of all different women in the world and emancipation as a social movement becomes too exclusionary (Wertheim 1992; Harding 1992; Rampton 2008). Especially since this thesis has as goal to evaluate emancipation of Egyptian women, emancipation as conceptualized by first and second wave feminists – liberal, highly educated classes in Europe and the United States – is not appropriate. There is no ‘universal or typical woman’ (Harding 1992: 175). The third (and current fourth) wave feminists of the 1990s understood this and used these post-colonial insights of intersectionality in their activism at the public and the academic level (Wrye 2009). Emancipation is thus indeed a ‘self-liberation of the non-privileged’ (Nederveen Pieterse 1992: 8), but what must be realized is that it targets multiple hierarchical orders of society that are formed through ‘differences of gender, race, class, ethnicity and sexual orientation’ and that they thus are not ‘parallel to each other, but interlocked and mutually creating and maintaining’ (Harding 1992: 180). Seeing emancipation as a universal social movement, as a common struggle for freedom and equality, clashes with the historical contingency of the meaning of feminism (Vargas 1992: 198). Feminist movements and emancipation need plurality rather than universality: there are many ‘diverse and contradictory realities in which women find themselves’ that need recognition (Vargas 1992: 199; Harding 1992; Jaggar 2005). This insight is especially important if we consider the patriarchal assumption of FLFP proponents talked of earlier. Evidently, the different realities of women are based in multiple hierarchical orders that differ and do not apply solely to the family-level. For

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example, by assuming impersonality in labour environments1, one also assumes that there are no patriarchal structures present on the work floor. This is simply not true, as many studies across several fields, such as management, psychology and politics, have repeatedly found the existence and persistence of specific structures of gendered hierarchies in working environments (inter alia Wright, Baxter & Birkelund, 1995; Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Phelan & Nauts, 2012). And so, the argument that women are able to overcome their subordination by creating new shared norms seems rather weak.

An especially salient example of the problem of universality is the often implied ‘modernity’ of emancipation. The ‘modernizing’ effect of emancipation stems from the ideas of Marxist feminists, who focused on the developing lives of low-wage working women in the Industrial revolution (Harding 1992: 185). But aside from the industrialization, democratization, capitalization and urbanization connotations often associated with modernization, there is also a dichotomous association of modernity meaning progress, and traditional meaning backward. According to Merriam-Webster, an emancipated woman is ‘a woman who is free from old social limitations and customs’ (2017, emphasis added). Apparently, an emancipated woman has overcome old, out-dated notions. But by equating emancipation to modernity, and idolizing the ‘modern woman’, traditional ideas on women’s rights are pictured as backward and detrimental. This is dangerous, as it presupposes that there is only one good interpretation of emancipation: that of modernity. The problem with this lies in the secular underpinnings of what modernization means. Vargas (1992: 197) characterizes modernization as ‘the growing disenchantment with the religious organization of the world, a rupture with transcendental foundations, and the acknowledgment of social reality as an order determined and defined by people’. In other words, modernization is associated with a process of separating the societal order from religious interference. Emancipation thus becomes a secular concept, whereby there is no room for a religious aspect. This might hold in some sense for the Western world, where secular ideas are dominant in economics, politics and culture, but this will not hold for countries such as Egypt where religion, culture and politics are interwoven and cannot be seen separately from

1_{Remember Shorter’s (1973) argument of a creation of shared norms on women’s autonomy}

through working in an impersonal labour environment, discussed in section 2.2.

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each other. Emancipation as modernity thus creates a ‘feminist blindness’ to the importance of cultural or religious factors to many women that fall outside the liberal area of influence (Salem 2013). To be able to understand what emancipation might mean to Egyptian women, we need to look at feminist thought stemming from that region. Jaggar (2005) differentiates between two main views within global feminist theory: global radical feminism and postcolonial feminism. Where global radical feminism is built on the idea that patriarchal oppression is general to all women, postcolonial feminism acknowledges that there are many other factors at play and that especially neocolonialism or lasting imperialism should not be forgotten (Jaggar 2005). By looking at specific feminist theories that originate in the Middle East rather than the liberal west, this thesis adopts a post-colonial approach to defining emancipation and its relation with female labour force participation. Furthermore, we also need to look at the specific socio-economic context of Egypt to understand what the ‘enslaving’ circumstances for Egyptian women could be that female labour force participation is supposed to help overcome. Before, patriarchal structures were mentioned as being these ‘enslaving circumstances’, but as patriarchal structures can appear on many levels and are also context-dependent, we need to look at the specific patriarchal structures present in Egypt and critically assess how these have been established. In doing so, this thesis takes historical materialist theories on capitalism and class structures and adapts them to the specific neopatriarchal context in which the emancipatory struggle of Egyptian women is situated.

2.4 Secular and Islamic feminism in Egypt

The two main streams of feminism that originated in the Middle East are Islamic feminism and secular feminism. In the Western countries, only secular forms of feminism are present. But in the Middle East, religious texts and interpretations are at the base of feminist activity, including that of the secular form (Salem 2013). This dichotomy is often at the forefront of friction between feminist movements of ‘the West’ and ‘the East’2. Both the secular as the Islamic feminist schools originated as a reaction on colonial practices and have progressive starting points, yet secular feminism appeared a century earlier than Islamic feminism (Badran 2005). The

2_{Quotation marks added to signify the oversimplified delineation used in common language}

between two parts of the world that have as much internal differences as there are between them.

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pioneers of this feminism were highly educated males, but they were soon joined by their highly educated female peers (Kandiyoti 1991). Secular feminism allows a dichotomy between the public and the private: publicly, there needs to be equality but within the family sphere, a certain hierarchy is acceptable (Badran 2005). This is different from the Islamic feminists, who emphasize full social justice and equality on all levels through their focus on reinterpreting traditional texts of the Quran (Salem 2013). Thus, even within the sphere of Middle Eastern feminism there are different perceptions of what emancipation and patriarchy could mean: secular feminism allows for a certain patriarchal division of roles in the family sphere, whereas Islamic feminists push for full equality through the reinterpretation of Islamic scriptures (Salem 2013; Badran 2005). And so, we see that these feminist conceptualizations greatly differ from the fully secular Western feminist waves that contrarily do not allow for any religious or patriarchal influence. Keeping this in mind, let us consider emancipation of the Egyptian woman3 within the specific Egyptian historical context of economic and political development.

2.5 The Context of Emancipation in Egypt

2.5.1 The feminist debate in class structures and a public/private duality

Feminism in the Middle East is often caught between two competing views: that of liberal notions of emancipation and that of the need to conserve the national cultural identity (Kandiyoti 1991). Due to Western imperialistic associations, liberal values are seen as a threat to Egyptian identities, creating a high aversion to anything that might be an extension of cultural imperialism (Kandiyoti 1991). However, the idea that the feminist debate in the Middle East is a battle between liberal modernists on one side and Islamic traditionalists on the other is faulty (Cole 1981; Kandiyoti 1991), just as emancipation is not the equivalent of modernity (see section 2.3). Rather, instead of only looking at the cultural aspects we must look at the broader socio-economic context it is rooted in to understand feminism in Egypt (Cole 1981). The issue of female emancipation is also conditioned by a wider process of economic advancement, growing secularism and nationalism, and the different reactions these developments brought about in the Middle East (Kandiyoti 1991). In effect, this

3_{Of course, there is no such thing as ‘the Egyptian woman’: there are too many internal}

discrepancies to be able to make such a categorization. However, for the case of clarity it is sometimes necessary to use more general terms.

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translates into not only a different interpretation of emancipation between more secular or more Islamic supporters, but also in a difference between economic or social classes (Cole 1981). As Western capitalism spread along Egypt, there were clear winners and losers. The winners were new upper and middle classes and they welcomed more liberal ideas and even adopted these – what Cole (1981: 391) calls ‘status usurpation’. The losers were the older, petty bourgeoisie who felt threatened by the new developments (Sharabi 1988). These older class was generally favourable to increasing access to education for women, but also were afraid to lose even more of their economic opportunities and thus also argued for strict veiling and seclusionary practices (Cole 1981: 391). Especially under Sadat, when economic failure lead to rigorous structural adjustment programs enforced by the IMF and the WB – the association with these Western-based organizations is often one of imperialism, further aggravating conservative feelings – and a lack of political legitimacy due to the loss of the Six Day War, Islamist movements gained tractions and worked in more conservative interpretations of shari’ah law (Moghadam 2005; Badran 1991). A duality arose between shari’ah law relevant to personal status codes and secular civil and penal legislation: while the civil and penal codes confirm equality for all citizens, personal laws on for example divorce and custody have a clear bias towards male family members (Kandiyoti 1991: 5). Indeed, the 1971 constitution states: “the state guarantees a balance and accord between a women’s duties towards her family on one hand and towards her work in society and her equality with man in the political, social and cultural spheres on the other without violating the laws of the Islamic shari’ah” (In: Badran 1991: 223). And thus a clear dichotomy was formed between the public and the private sphere of action.

2.5.2 (Neo)patriarchy in Egypt

The above outlines the importance of class structures and of the public/private divide to women’s rights. How does patriarchy fit in all this? As mentioned before, the patriarchal structure within a society is seen as the main factor in creating women’s subordination and dependency which female labour force participation is meant to disrupt. Indeed, patriarchy is often an engrained hierarchical and gendered ordering of society whereby men are at the top of the food chain and women are systematically and discriminatorily positioned below (Olmsted 2005a; Joseph 1996). Walby (1990: 143, emphasis added) goes even so far as to call it ‘a system of social relations

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through which men oppress and exploit women’. It can be both informal through norms and social rules of engagement and formal through actual law and legislation. Furthermore, it can appear at both macro- and micro-levels (Olmsted 2005a; Sharabi 1988). For Egypt, it is important to understand that both levels are heavily intertwined, and thus the patriarchal order in society – influenced by legislations – trickles down to the patriarchal ‘contract’ of the family and vice versa (Joseph 1996; Olmsted 2005b). It is not entirely possible to take public patriarchy and private patriarchy as two separate sides of the same coin. What is more, patriarchy is different for every society it is present in (Walby 1990). In Western societies, such as in Europe, the demise of patriarchy is often linked to rising capitalism (Sharabi 1988: 15). In this context, it seems more logical that female labour force participation has a part in this. But in Egypt, this connection does not hold.

Firstly, as mentioned before, some feminist thinkers allow for a certain level of patriarchy (Badran 2005). This is because patriarchy is also a form of security for women and doubles as a social safety net when state organized welfare policies decline (Olmsted 2005b). Within the family, there are strong bonds of kinship between parent and child and between siblings: there is a ‘construction of a more fluid self’ where ‘children are socialized to think of themselves not only as a continuation of their parents, but also of their siblings and other family members’ (Olmsted 2005b: 54). This legitimization of the patriarchal contract of dependency within the family through kinship strengthens and perpetuates it (Joseph 1993: 468).

Secondly, the form of capitalist development was entirely different for Egypt than it was for Europe. Through its colonial history a dependent form of capitalism was created. Sharabi (1988: 4) calls this particular form neopatriarchy, in which the aspect of dependence is in uneasy marriage with a false sense of modernity. Under neopatriarchy, a positive discourse of capitalism is used to obscure strengthening patriarchal aspects in society and instead gives the appearance of a weakening patriarchal contract. In Sharabi’s words: “material modernization, the first (surface) manifestation of social change, only served to remodel and reorganize patriarchal structures and relations and to reinforce them by giving them ‘modern’ forms and appearances” (1988: 4). In effect, neopatriarchy defined the new class relations between old petty bourgeoisie and new elites – which take on different ideas of emancipation as discussed above.

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2.5.3 Female labour force participation and neoliberalism

In this particular context of dependent (neo)patriarchy in both the public and the private sphere female labour force participation as emancipation becomes problematic. The capitalist structures in Egypt were aggravated by neoliberalist measures implemented especially during the 1990s under the auspices of the IMF and World Bank. Mubarak took over the policy recommendations laid out in the Washington Consensus with rigour: public expenditure on social welfare and subsidies was severely cut, trade barriers were taken down, state enterprises were speedily privatized and flexible employment became the norm – making Egypt the poster child for the rest of the region (Abdelrahman 2017). However, as most neoliberal projects in developing countries, the structural adjustments made matters worse, in particular for the most vulnerable of society: the women (Harvey 2005). Real wages dropped below a living wage, unemployment rose and the poor became dependent on benevolent philanthropists or mosques (Mitchell 1999; Olmsted 2005b). Furthermore, the informal economy expanded immensely, resulting in missing data on real economic growth or decline (Mitchell 1999). This all made patriarchal structures important to women as they provided them the social welfare that the state lacked. What is more, as unemployment soared it became clear that women were most likely to be left behind. And the emancipatory objective of female labour force participation lost its relevance as it was framed more and more as a way to increase GDP and widen the tax base so desperately needed by the increasing illiquid state (Jensen 2017). This uncovered the reality that women are really more of a reserve army to fulfil the accumulation requirements of capitalists (Humphries 1983). In short, female labour force participation in the Middle East has seemingly become a way to serve the interest of the ‘crony capitalists’ as Joya (2016: 5) so aptly called them, rather than the actual interests of women seeking independence from the structures they only became more entrapped in.

And so, emancipation in Egypt is not merely a matter of increasing labour force participation to overcome cultural norms: there is a lot more to it. Cultural norms are more likely to sustain current patriarchal structures rather than create them; the actual creation is done by socio-economic developments over time. This thesis will look at three specific sectors of the Egyptian economy. By analysing three completely different sectors – along both the formal versus informal and public versus private

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axes – some generalizability is possible. However, as stated before, we must keep in mind that emancipation is not a universal concept and is interpreted in many different ways across Egypt. Regardless of the outcome of the analysis, there will be both women whose emancipatory situation has improved due to female labour force participation, and there will be women who are worse off. Yet, some general trends can be observed that will apply to at least a significant number of women, and this thesis’s objective is to add more critical nuance to the currently uncontested notion of female labour force participation, not to completely disregard it as a positive policy-option. Let us now turn to the method this thesis will employ.

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3. Methodology

As mentioned before, the lens used in this thesis derives from Critical Theory yet does not fit specifically within one particular school of thought. In the theoretical framework, concepts of post-colonial feminism and historical materialism – such as class-structures and intersectionality – have been applied to the specific context of Egypt to be able to fully interpret the possible effects of female labour force participation on emancipation as it is experienced in Egypt. We need to unpack the ideologies on female labour force participation and emancipation as conceptualized in the Western, liberal states to be able to research these related processes in the Middle East. In doing so, this thesis uses concepts derived from critical theorists. Critical theorists dissect ideologies using the concept of immanent critique – also called ideological critique (Thompson 2015). Immanent critique as a method compares the ideological claims with the actual outcomes using historical or social contexts based on more marginal sources of knowledge (Friesen 2008). In doing so, it tries to get an understanding of civil society ‘from within, rather than imposing on it from without’ (Thompson 2015: 3). This process of looking at the world from within is inherent to the ideas of critical theorists, and makes it possible to make sense of ‘the totality of individual and social life as well as the social processes that constitute them’ (Thompson 2015: 1). This core idea of a subjective totality is central to the political economic feminist lens this thesis adopts. While this thesis does not use immanent critique per se, multiple sources will be used to critically assess and compare the claims of proponents of female labour force participation on emancipation to reality. But to do this, we first need to concretely define both female labour force participation and emancipation to operationalize the terms. This section will first go into these definitions. Afterwards, it will outline the research design and explain the case selections, discuss the limitations and provide an overview of all sources used with a focus on external and internal validity.

3.1 Operationalizing the concepts

3.1.1 Emancipation

Women in Egypt, in the Middle East and across the globe all interpret their ideas of emancipation differently. While it is impossible to find a universal definition, even for

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Egyptian women, by looking at the full political economic context of a specific country some universality might be found – at least enough to be able to assess the possible effects of female labour force participation. As discussed in the previous section, the liberal proponents of female labour force participation see emancipation as overcoming subordination and dependency. This definition can still be used for emancipation in the Middle East, as long as it is realized that subordination and dependency mean very different things to women in this area of the world as they are situated in very different circumstances.

Dependency of women in the Middle East is often interpreted within a religious and cultural context. But the idea that women are independent if they have free choice and autonomy4 is mainly a secular idea, and should not be haphazardly applied to religious women (Salem 2013). Just because religious women choose to be part of religious norms that secular women see as oppressive and thus impossible to understand, this does not mean that these choices do not have any feminist value. And so, emancipation as free choice from social or cultural norms as Western feminists see it does not necessarily apply to religious Egyptian women who make choices within a different context. To be able to look at how dependency affects women in their emancipatory struggle, we have to look more towards a broader structure of dependency conditioned by the full socioeconomic context, rather than merely dependency conditioned by cultural norms. In the following analysis, the effect of female labour force participation on the dependency of women will be examined through data on for example household decision-making and wage inequality.

Subordination of women in the Middle East is part of a broad structure of neopatriarchy, rather than solely a result of religious interpretations. And so, overcoming this subordination does entail overcoming patriarchal structures but not necessarily all of them: sometimes, it is in a women’s better interest to have patriarchal kinships (Olmsted 2005b). To assess the effect of female labour force participation, this thesis will look at how patriarchal structures are altered. In doing so, it emphasizes the transformative power of emancipation (Nederveen Pieterse 1992). This transformative power is either on a cultural basis – where new cultural understandings are accepted through emancipatory movements – or on a power basis – where the whole power structure is definitively restructured into an at least equal

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distribution of political, economic and social power (Nederveen Pieterse 1992). This transformative aspect is what distinguishes emancipation from empowerment. Empowerment is an often used term in the context of feminist movements, where it is almost seen as a synonym for emancipation. Empowerment focuses on power: it implies that certain subgroups obtain higher economic, political or social positions through collective action. Yet empowerment does not problematize power the way emancipation does (Nederveen Pieterse 1992). The higher positions that are obtained can signify a mere shift of power rather than an equal distribution of it. And so emancipation is empowerment but empowerment does not necessarily mean emancipation. For FLFP, this distinction is especially important. This thesis will analyse a transformation of patriarchal structures by for example looking at wage gaps or employment per industry to fully assess if female labour force participation has really contributed towards a full dissolution of neopatriarchal structures or merely has relocated them.

3.1.2 Female Labour Force Participation

Just like the many connotations of emancipation, labour force participation also has varying interpretations and computations – though decidedly less complicated. The International Labour Organization defines labour force participation as either being employed, or actively looking for a job. Female labour force participation in this sense means all women who are contributing or seeking to contribute to market activity. However, some definitions use an extended one where labour force in the informal sector is also counted (Assaad & El Hamidi 2008; Beneria 1981). Female labour force participation then would also include e.g. women’s agricultural work used for a household’s own consumption. Leaving out this use value production would lead to an undervaluation of women’s participation (Moghadam 2005; Beneria 1981; Bose 1987. In: Rau & Wazienski 1999). In Egypt, using the extended definition would greatly alter the results, as many Egyptian women are active in the informal sector (Assaad & El Hamidi 2008).

The problem with informality is that it is difficult to measure. And so, statistical yearbooks of countries often only publish the market values. For this thesis, this means that the published unemployment rates are underestimates of the real levels (Duboc 2013), skewing some of the results. This is why also secondary literature will

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be used to provide some counterbalance and why there is a specific case study on informal labour in agriculture.

3.2 Research Design

This thesis is an exploratory qualitative one, using document analysis to research three specific case studies. As the current situation in Egypt is not favourable to conducting research on such a sensitive topic, it is not possible to conduct interviews. Interviews would have enabled me to actually go to the source of emancipation, Egyptian women, and ask them what they feel, rather than having to base my arguments on secondary literature. Analysing documents is a second-best option, but by keeping in mind that secondary literature might not always paint the true picture and continually reflecting on this process, it still holds academic relevance and validity. Another limitation is that I myself am a Western woman, whose ideas on emancipation and the Middle East are formed within a liberal, European context. This subjectivity will not allow me to fully understand the Egyptian woman, and will not allow me to make any generalizable statements on what an Egyptian woman feels – aside from the fact that there is no typical Egyptian woman, just like there is no universal one. Luckily, I have been familiarized with some customs in Egypt during my time as an intern in Cairo, and have thus already rejected many prejudices that often prevail among Westerners on the Middle East. But I will need to stay reflective and conscious of this bias at all times.

3.2.1 Case Selection

A multiple case-study design allows me to not only go deeper into specific sectors of the Egyptian economy, but it also allows for cross-case analysis to support the theory better and to allow for a broader generalization (Perry 1998). It creates a comprehensive, contextual account (Yin 2013). This will strengthen the external validity. Egypt as a country is chosen due to it being a predominantly Islamic country, and one of the objectives of this thesis was to provide a much needed counterbalance to the predominant narrative of Islam being oppressive. But it is also an interesting case, as it seems to have stagnant female labour force participation over time (Hendy, 2015). As mentioned before, FLFP is increasingly framed as a way to increase GDP and widen the tax base, and thus the government – and NGO’s, as much as the government will let them – will undoubtedly start focusing on this issue soon. It is

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thus important that the real effects are well-researched, so as not to produce backward effects for women. This thesis hopes to contribute to this.

Three sectors are chosen: the public sector, the formal private textile industry and the informal agricultural sector. These sectors are all among different axes of private/public and formal/informal to allow as much as possible for the big internal differences between these settings and to provide a comprehensive account of the status of women in the Egyptian economy. For each sector, the specific political economic context is examined and the specific figures relating to women’s participation.

The public sector is a sector that historically employed many women due to the guarantee that it would hire everyone who completed a higher education. However, it is also a sector that under recent neoliberal austerity measures has faced cuts and a hiring freeze, most likely affecting women’s job security.

The textile sector is very interesting in Egypt, as it was the stage of many women-organized protests. It will be relevant to check if in this sector, where apparently emancipatory organization is possible, this activism resulted in any lasting change.

The informal agricultural sector is one that is historically very important to Egypt and remains one of the biggest employers due to a relative low rate of urbanization of women. Women used to be involved in agricultural work a lot, as it was part of their household jobs. Due to its being informal, it adds to the analysis by setting female labour force participation as paid employment against unpaid employment and the consequences this might bring towards women.

3.2.2 Document selection

Triangulating data from different sources, ranging from independent to state-provided, will provide internal validity. Data is taken from government sources (CAPMAS), mixed sources (WorldBank reports; ELMPS; Demographic and Health Survey) and independent sources (New Woman Foundation; ILO). Also some secondary literature is used to provide context and to overcome the limitations of merely statistical data, example being the underrepresentation of informal work in official statistics. Most primary data is used from the year 2014, as this is the most recent translated CAPMAS yearbook available. However, data from the ELMPS is from 2012 as this is the most recent publication.

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Governmental sources

In Egypt, and in the MENA region in general, information gathering on gendered economic activities is sparse and can entail many differences across sources due to the different definitions or measures employed, especially on informality (Moghadam 2005). It is also not always recorded how governmental organizations calculate or categorize their findings. This might make comparisons difficult. For example, in the CAPMAS Statistical Yearbook of 2014 it was reported that women had a workweek of 63 hours in the public sector. Yet no information was given on if this included household work or only paid work. However, within the formal and public sector the coverage is overall relatively reliable (Moghadam 2005). The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) is the main provider of economic statistics in Egypt. For this analysis three documents were used: the Statistical Yearbook Labour of 2014, Egypt in Figures - Labour of 2016 (but with data on 2014) and Egypt in Figures – Population 2014. CAPMAS often uses the ISIC4 classification of economic sectors as determined by the UN (UN 2008). Most parts can be found online, but translated versions were provided by Ms Heba Khalil, researcher at the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. All original, translated tables referred to in the Results section can be found in the Appendix. All computations can also be found in the Appendix.

Mixed sources

The Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS) is a longitudinal household study conducted by the Economic Research Forum, an independent organization, in cooperation with government organization CAPMAS; making it a mixed-source. The ELMPS tries to incorporate information on informal activities as much as possible and has a special focus on more vulnerable groups such as women and children (Assaad & Kraft 2013). The ELMPS also covers a wide range of subjects not only related to labour markets, but also things such as migration and marriage patterns (Assaad & Kraft 2013). The sample size is 12.060 households and 49.186 individuals. Some reports from the independent Economic Research Forum were also used, which are based on the ELMPS. These can be found in the Bibliography under Hendy and Said.

The Demographic and Health Survey from 2014 is a survey conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Health and Population by a private research company called

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El-Zanaty and Associates. It is a yearly survey and part of a global project of USAID and the UN, who fund it. It is generally seen as a reliable and objective source, however, as the Ministry of Health and Population is involved, this source is still categorized as a mixed source. The sample size comprised of 29.471 households. The World Bank is obviously an independent organization that provides reliable data. However, in its 2014 report ‘More Jobs, Better Jobs: A priority for Egypt’ it combines findings from the ELMPS and from CAPMAS, making it a mixed source.

Independent sources

The New Woman Foundation is an NGO based in Egypt that focuses on feminist advocacy. It brings out regular reports on the state of women in society. This thesis uses their report on the state of women in the industrial sector, published in 2016, which is based on two earlier published documents of the New Woman Foundation. One was a survey done in 2006 on a sample of 600 female workers, the other a 2009 report on sexual harassment, which included 40 case studies. In the analysis, there is a certain overreliance present on this particular source. However, there are not many NGO’s that focus on subjects like the New Woman Foundation present in Egypt. This report is a rare insight to actual qualitative data accumulated from in-depth interviews and specific surveys. Thus, it is one of the few reports that actually give an idea on what women themselves really feel and think, rather than a report based on interpretations of statistical findings. A certain overreliance is thus unavoidable.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) publishes many reports on labour-related subjects on almost all countries. In this thesis, two reports are used. The ILO report ‘Women at Work’ from 2017 has an approximate sample size of 1000 respondents for Egypt which is relatively little. Furthermore, the results might be slightly skewed to more liberal outcomes as Egyptians who answer to these surveys might already be more open towards sharing opinions with international organizations. Yet, it is a fully independent source and thus still valuable to this research. Also the ILO report on ‘Decent work in Egypt’ from 2016 is used, in which the ILO provides some context to the projects they support in Egypt to increase labour market participation.

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4. Results

This section will discuss the results found. All original tables can be found in the Appendix. First, a general overview on data not specific to a certain sector (public, private or informal) will be analysed, such as the traditional attitude of both men and women towards paid employment and roles of women, wage inequalities and hours worked. Then, the analysis will go more in-depth in three specific sectors that are very important to the Egyptian economy: public employment, private formal industrial employment in the textile sector and private informal employment in agriculture.

4.1 Cross-sectoral findings

See Table 1, which shows the total working age population and total work force of Egyptian men and women. As explained in the Methodology, the female labour force participation rate can be calculated by dividing the female labour force over the female working age population. We can see that female labour force participation in 2014 was 24,35%, lower than the 25% average of the rest of the MENA-region (World Bank 2014: 103). However, this official number reports a lower participation than is actually the case. As many women work in the informal sector, which is not included in the official census, a lot of productive work done by women goes unrecorded. Over time, the absolute female participation has increased: from 3,9 million in 1990 to 6,6 million means a 2,1% annual growth rate5 (3,9 million found in Duboc 2013: 32). However, in 2014 total population has increased as well with 2,2% which offsets this absolute growth rate. What is more, from this female labour force only 76% is employed. Unemployment for women is at 24%, considerably higher than that of men (9,6%) (CAPMAS 2014: Table 4-2, in Appendix). For men, the unemployment rate has considerably gone up due to the political and economic crisis: from 5,9% in 2004 to 9,6% in 2014 (CAPMAS, 2014: Table 4-2, in Appendix). For women, however, the unemployment rate is much more constant, with an average of 22,9% over 2004-2014. This means that the high unemployment rate for women

5_{The growth rate (x) of female labour force in 1990 (A) to female labour force in 2014 (B)}

over (2014-1990)+1 years (n), is calculated using the following algebraic formula: A * xn₌

B. Filling this in gives 3,9 * x25_{= 6,6, which ultimately gives x = 1,02127 or a growth rate of}

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cannot be explained through the crisis of 2012, but points towards a structural problem in both supply and demand of women in the labour market. This structural problem is also evidenced by the constant low parity rankings of the World Economic Forum (2016). Egypt is ranked as 132nd out of 144 countries with a parity of 0,614 (World Economic Forum, 2016). However, this overall parity is brought up by their relatively high parity levels of educational attainment and health and survival: 0,952 and 0,971 respectively (World Economic Forum, 2016). The parity in political empowerment is lowest, at 0,087, and the parity of economic participation and opportunity is 0,444. This shows that there is still a lot of disparity between men and women in Egypt, especially at the political and economic level.

Female Male Working age population (15-64yrs) 27,228,000 28,100,000

Labour Force 6,629,100 21,315,400

Labour Force Participation Rate 24,35% 75,86%

Table 1 Computation of Labour Force Participation Rates, based on data of 2014 found in CAPMAS

2014b p.6 and CAPMAS 2014a Table 4-2. See Appendix.

4.1.1 Traditional roles and burdens of women

One explanation of this structural problem might lie in the negative attitude in society towards women working. The ILO conducted a survey in 2016, asking both women and men the question: should women work at paid jobs, care for their families and homes or do both? The result is found in Figure 1.

We can see that while the majority of women at least thinks a paid job is possible, even if combining it with family work, the opinion of men is far more negative: 55% think that women should only focus on the household. This shows the pervasiveness of traditional gender roles in the Egyptian society, that undoubtedly has an impact on women’s decision to go and find work. What is interesting, is that younger men under the age of 45 are more likely to have a negative stance towards women working than older men (around 60% against 47% respectively), while for women this trend is completely reversed (around 26% for women under 45 against 41% for women older than 45) (ILO 2017: 28-29). This shows that for men, attitudes towards female labour force participation are not likely to change anytime soon and seem to be worsening. What is important to note here, is that should NGOs and

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governmental organizations start to focus on FLFP, taking these negative attitudes into consideration is vital for success. Only if these attitudes are changed will FLFP actually be able to have an emancipatory impact. Otherwise, if FLFP is forced upon the society a backlash can occur: something that has already been observed after the intruding forces of Western liberal ideas (Moghadam, 2005), but also more locally after the women-led strikes in the textile sector (see the Case study for more particulars).

Figure 1 ILO, 2017: Should women work at paid jobs, care for their families and homes or do both?

The pervasiveness of traditional roles is also attested by the per sector employment of men and women. See Table 2, based on data from the CAPMAS statistical yearbook 2014. This ranking is a combination of both private and public sector. Only for the public sector a separate division per sector is available, which can be found in the case study on public employment below. The ranking uncovers several important points. In the Health and Social work sector the majority of employees are female and in Education the portion is almost half. These sectors are traditionally associated with women, as they emphasize the nurturing qualities of women as opposed to men, and this reinforces the idea of gender-specific types of jobs often prevalent in masculine societies. Sectors usually associated with strength and thus with men, such as construction and mining, are at the bottom of the ranking. In theory, a traditional, gendered allocation of jobs does not necessarily mean emancipation is low and could be a result of differences in skills or preferences among men and women. However, in practice, this gendered allocation is often a result of prejudices towards men and women that are often installed in boys and girls from a very young age, and lead to discriminatory hiring practices. Especially if we consider the wage differences per industry the inequality becomes clear: the sectors that employ mostly women are also

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the sectors with the lowest salaries (see Table 8 in section 4.2: The public Sector and Table 9 in section 4.3: The Private sector).

The second ranking on the right shows us the distribution of all female employees among the sectors. It is broadly comparable to the left side ranking: education and health are among the top 4. The most remarkable difference is that agriculture moves to the top. Apparently, of all females who seek work most end up in the agricultural sector, and they thus constitute 32,51% of the total employment within that sector (left side ranking). The fact that this number is not higher is probably due to the size of the sector. Agriculture is one of the biggest sectors in the Egyptian economy, employing about 28% of all employment (CAPMAS, 2014: Table 4-4). Comparably, the Health and Social work sector comprises only 2,8% of all employment (CAPMAS, 2014: Table 4-4). The problem with the agricultural sector is that most work is actually informal and thus not properly recorded. This means that there are probably more women active in the agricultural sector than the numbers show, and, more importantly, that these women are not paid for it. This important facet will be discussed in the case on the informal market.

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Table 2 Female employees, 2014 ranking per economic sector according to the ISIC4 classification.

Source: CAPMAS statistical yearbook, 2014, table 4-4.

Data found on the hours of domestic work of women also corroborate the traditional attitudes that permeate throughout Egyptian society and family-units. For married working women in 2012, the hours spent on domestic work were on average 29.3, in addition to an average 36.9 hours of work spent on their formal jobs (Hendy 2015: 6). For married unemployed women, the hours spent on domestic work are almost the same at 29.6 hours, showing that if women want to take on a formal job, their duties in the household do not diminish (Hendy 2015: 6). This shows that female labour force participation is not a vehicle for women’s emancipation in terms of the

dual-Ranking of %F of total sector •  Health and social work: 58,48 •  Education: 49,07

•  Agriculture: 32,51

•  Home services for private households: 28,25

•  Insurance and financial intermediation: 24,18

•  Public administration, defense, social solidarity: 23,68

•  International organizations: 21,62 •  Information, telecommunication:

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•  Amusement, arts: 17,41

•  Specialized technical, scientific activities: 13,62

•  Retail and repair vehicles: 12,77 •  Administrative activities: 10,77 •  Real estate: 8,15

•  Water supply, basin & recycling: 7,84

•  Manufacturing: 7,55

•  Electric, gas, steam, air condition supplies: 6,79

•  Food, residence services: 5,27 •  Other services: 4,32

•  Mining: 1,66

•  Transportation and storage: 1,60 •  Construction: 0,58

Ranking of %F of total Female Workforce

•  Agriculture: 43,22 •  Education: 22,35

•  Public administration, defense, social solidarity: 9

•  Health and social work: 7,74 •  Retail and repair vehicles: 6,88 •  Manufacturing: 4,06

•  Specialized technical, scientific activities: 1,12

•  Information, telecommunication: 0,80

•  Insurance and financial intermediation: 0,76 •  Home services for private

households: 0,67

•  Food, residence services: 0,57 •  Transportation and storage: 0,56 •  Other services: 0,52

•  Amusement, arts: 0,42

•  Electric, gas, steam, air condition supplies: 0,33

•  Water supply, basin & recycling: 0,33 •  Construction: 0,32 •  Administrative activities: 0,31 •  Real estate: 0,05 •  International organizations: 0,02 •  Mining: 0,02

Women at work : burdens or privileges? : a critical analysis of the effect of female labour force participation on the emancipation of women working in the public sector, the private textile sector and the informal agri