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Poor Egyptian women learn to speak and act on their own.
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Staying in school
Supporting their family
Opening a shop
Speaking out
Meet the slight and modest, 16 years old Hanan*. She enters the empty aqua-walled room in el-Fayoum, slips off her shoes, pads across a plastic rug and kneels quietly next to Lebanese-American researcher, Jabre Bushra, also seated on the floor.
Not married or engaged, Hanan is a pioneer in her community.
A year or so ago, she attached herself to an adult and attended a series of training sessions on strengthening family and community. Sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and other institutions and based on some basic self-discovery or "empowerment" techniques originated by Paolo Freire, the program first asked the women to identify their problems and then to propose what to do about them. Information about the most likely issues was available - the harmful effects of early pregnancy, multiple pregnancies and female genital mutilation, but also about problem solving, opportunity and negotiating.
The turning point is when women realize the worth of their own experience and opinions.
It happened to Hanan, then 15, who subsequently took it upon herself to share what she'd learned with her classmates. This last year, none of them dropped out of school to marry.
Galila's story is similar. In Egypt, the most important responsibility of a person is to see their children married. While the heavy part of the burden usually falls to the woman, in Galila's family it was the father who pushed for a wedding. Approaching death, he was eager to complete his worldly task, even though the girl wanted to remain in school.
Noting the plates of cracking plaster on the walls, the slivers of light cutting through the cane-covered roof, and the relatively primitive construction of the house overall, you could guess his thinking. If the girl were married, it would be one less mouth for his wife to feed after he was gone.
But his wife went to Arab Women Speak Out (AWSO), learned about the physical and emotional hazards of early pregnancy for mother and child, made a judgment and convinced her husband to leave the girl be. A year later, she is enrolled in vocational school, planning on a job in manufacturing so she can help her mother financially. She thinks 21 is about the right time to think about marrying.
These are small stories, heartwarming for those who believe in self-knowledge, individual responsibility and women's equality. Public health professionals, like the researcher conducting the El-Fayoum interviews, are also gratified: these young women are likely to have fewer and healthier babies; the population of Egypt will continue to move in a more manageable direction; the economy will benefit and so there will be more money to clean the water, provide adequate sanitation, produce higher quality food and so on.
The international community, concerned about an increase in political instability in a nation of more and more poor people with less and less hope, would also applaud.
But the implications of this program - which is estimated to have reached more than 1,000,000 women in 10 countries of the Arab world through NGOs - are far greater.
Opening a shop
Wind further along the Fayoum dirt streets – donkey carts, bicycles, a shiny new motorcycle or two, little boys holding hands and the occasional mud patch - turn left and continue until you reach the marquee of laundry at the end of the street, enter the house with the lavender shutters.
Sitting on the edge of a day bed, behind a small metal table set with a plate of strawberries and tangerines are two of three proprietresses of a local clothing shop.
Nadya, easily the more voluble of the two (her face is busy as spring weather), confesses that she was a miserable, depressed, frustrated housewife. Impatient with her children, blaming her husband, she described a state familiar to many in the situation: Nothing happening; nothing to look forward to but the same walls, the same chores for the rest of her life.
When she and her friends went to AWSO, they concocted the idea of the store, figured out how to share time and responsibility, negotiated with their husbands (who at first said "no"), and mined for capital.
They recently opened a second outlet. While not much bigger than a juice stand, it signifies their rather remarkable return on investment, not to mention their forward thinking.
Speaking Out
There's another return. Women who have participated in AWSO do not just sit symbolically on their community councils as they used to. They express opinions. They speak out. New voices practice for a true people's democracy.
August 2009
*Real names not used