Egypt's "Spinsters" Fight Against Stereotypes and Discrimination

By Manar Ammar and Joseph Mayton, Women News Network. Posted May 6, 2009.

A female friend of Mokhtar, who is over 30, has turned down a number of possible suitors, which has left a mark on her village. A number of men have even taken the step to come to the friend's house, pretending to ask for her hand in marriage in order to glimpse the woman who refuses marriage past 30. Mokhtar believes this is part of the issue surrounding Egyptian society's continued wrongdoing against women.

"It shows how our society looks at women as wives and baby makers. She is born to get married and give birth no matter what kind of marriage she is in. Happily married or not, the point is to [get] married," Youmna added. The concept of a wife as "property" in marriage spans centuries in Egypt, but ancient history may point to a different story.

According to the Annenberg Foundation project, Bridging World History, the concept of marriage as a "family" identifier for parents and children in ancient times should be questioned.

"It is highly debatable whether there was a concept of [Egyptian] ‘marriage'; the sole significant family-establishing act appears to have been cohabitation for reproduction. The concept of fertility was important to social and political orders that evolved along the Nile… Like many other societies, ancient Egyptian society was patriarchal: men and their male heir controlled the majority of relationships. In the realm of the household, elite Egyptian women controlled property, business, ritual, and family matters. This is not always obvious from the surviving records," said the project.

Dr. Abdel-Halim Nureddin, professor of ancient language at the Faculty of Archeology at Cairo University, agrees that women in Ancient Egypt had numerous rights. "Ancient Egyptian traditions and laws gave much attention to women's rights in marriage, divorce, inheritance, as well as in cases of selling and buying," said Dr. Nureddin in a recent lecture.

In spite of a more liberal trend in ancient history, a majority of people view Egyptian marriage and divorce today with the belief that women are discriminated against in modern Cairo.

In Egypt an overwhelming majority (80%) thinks that divorced women are mistreated (a great deal, 38%; some, 42%), though interestingly a substantially lower number (48%) perceive this level of discrimination of widows," says WorldPublicOpinion.org, a respected global consortium of research centers from 25 nations (23 June, 2008).

Statistics prove, a greater percentage of citizens in Egypt today see marriage and women's rights under a very tight lens of societal rules and regulations. Others, like journalist, Youmna Mokhtar, see the limits of "acceptable" roles in Egypt placed constantly, and without merit, on the shoulders of women as the "barriers" to a better society.

As Mokhtar describes her recent group discussions, "Later many men joined [my] group and presented superficial cliché comments in which they blamed women for being unmarried. One man said that "girls are too romantic and they want to marry a knight or someone who looks like a movie star."

The idea goes further than simply marriage. The group addresses the discrimination against divorcees as well as unmarried women. It attempts to show the error in society's obsession with social patterns.

"People treat unmarried woman with pity all the time, praying for then to get a good man and a good home, very similar to the way they treat the disabled: with prayers and pitiful eyes," said Asma Abdel Khalek, a 30-year-old single Egyptian woman.

"In reality, women are viewed as dependents whose primary duty is to the home and the family," said a May 2008 EUROMED study on cultural perceptions of women's productive and reproductive roles in Egypt.

Youmna Mokhtar revealed that a number of people, women and men, are increasingly excited about the idea of Spinsters for Change, which has them thinking of targeting a larger audience outside the Internet. The group is planning meetings to share their experiences and hold lectures to discuss the merits of marriage in order to re-examine why people "get married in the first place."

"The label [of a'anis] shames those who fall under it no matter if it was her decision not get married or it just happened. Either way, why shame her?" explained Mokhtar, on woman's right to choose marriage.

"Another important message we try to deliver to society is please leave the a'anis alone. Let her be and don't pity her," added Fairouz Omar, an Egyptian educational and social advisor for the group.

See more stories tagged with: gender, discrimination, marriage, stereotypes, egypt, spinsters

Joseph Mayton is a Cairo-based journalist whose work regularly appears in the Middle East Times, World Politics Review and other region-focused publications.

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