This is the time of year when Watani prints roundups of the achievements and failures of various sectors during the previous year. Such roundups serve to assess the performance of public domains on the local or global levels. For this purpose, our teams of journalists and editors, each in their scope of interest, work to prepare overviews of the past year’s events in order to determine what has been achieved and what is carried on into the new year.
In this issue, Watani prints an overview of the Egyptian Woman’s File in 2021. The choice of this specific file to start our 2021 roundups with should come as no surprise, given the significance of women for the development of society and for moving towards full citizenship, equality and a modern State. The file comes under the title “2021 women: tally of a year…achievements that warrant follow up, and failures that await resolution”.
Achievements:
Following last January’s meeting of the Supreme Judicial Council, President Sisi announced a bunch of decisions that focused on providing equal opportunity for men and women in the judiciary, basing only on competence and entitlement, and eradicating gender-based discrimination. Accordingly, as of last October, women were for the first time appointed to positions in the State Council and General Prosecution, putting an end to 80 years of exclusion of female candidates from the judiciary.
Women were also granted a remarkable share of the seats of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) in its new formation last October; 11 seats were given to women, constituting 44 per cent of NCHR seats. A woman, luminary feminist Moushira Khattab who has to her name a long honourable history of public and national work was appointed NCHR President. Ten other prominent women of outstanding achievement were appointed members of the council.
Also in October, during a meeting of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which was held in Geneva, Maya Morsy, President of the National Council for Women, announced that the percentage of women representation in the Egyptian diplomatic corps had risen to 56 per cent.
With the objective of achieving equal opportunity in work environment, Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Hala al-Said, issued a 2021 decision to set up units tasked with ensuring equal opportunity for men and women in authorities affiliated to the Ministry of Planning. These include the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, the National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, the National Planning Institute, and the Demographic Centre.
Women representation of 25 per cent of the seats of Egypt’s Parliament has been redeeming. And for the first time, the constitutional oath taken by MPs made provisions for female MPs, by including the Arabic feminine suffix to be used when sworn by female MPs instead of the usual male oriented wording.
In January 2021, the Cabinet approved a bill to amend provisions of the Penal Code, to include a deterring penalty to the crime of female genital mutilation.
A bill for harsher penalties against crimes of domestic violence against women was presented to Parliament, sending a clear message of the State’s commitment to protect women.
Failures:
Last February saw discussions on proposed amendments to items in the Personal Status (Family) Law for Muslims, amendments which were met with objections by women’s rights activists. These mainly concerned paternal custody and fathers’ hosting rights, and amendments to the Alimony Law. Women activists saw them as trifling with the rights of women and children.
Discussions also focused on the need to review articles in the Divorce Law, so that divorce may no longer be concluded by a marriage notary but would only be recognised if made in front of a judge, in order to ensure that issues relating to alimony, custody, marital home, and suchlike are justly resolved.
There was much talk about a proposal to enact a law against the imprisonment of female or male debtors, but this has to wait for expert opinions by the Ministry of Justice and that of Social Solidarity, as well as the Supreme Judicial Council and the Social and Criminal Research Centre.
This was a glimpse of Egyptian women’s issues during the last year: the achievements realised and needing follow-up, and the failures that still await 2022 for resolution. Watani will be presenting overviews and assessments of other files in upcoming issues.
Watani International
14 January 2022