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This paper shifts the focus from male paperless migrants to the women who stay in their country of origin. My analysis of the discrepancy between borderless economics and the bordered movement of people explores the representation of the women left behind in Ayman Zohry's novella 'The Mediterranean Sea', which describes irregular migration from Egypt to Italy. This paper investigates the intersection between the forces of patriarchy and globalisation in the lives of the women who are left in the sending countries. The article starts by shedding light on the writer, who is an expert in immigration studies. The second section of this essay focuses on the wives' struggle against the glocal masculine and geopolitical dictates. The third part of the paper analyses the juncture of gender and global capital in the lives of the mothers left behind. My investigation of the hardships endured by migrants' wives and mothers demonstrates that immigration torments those women who stay in the homeland as much as it afflicts the spouses who travel to 'Hopeland' (Obi, Cyril. 2007. "From Homeland to Hopeland? Economic Globalization and Ogoni Migration in the 1990s." In The Cultures of Economic Migration: International Perspectives, edited by Suman Gupta, and Tope Omonyi, 115. Burlington, VT: Ashgate). My main argument is that the Egyptian women left behind have to strive against both the contradictions induced by globalisation and the subordination generated by male domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 25 January 2011 revolution in Egypt was the stage upon which both the people and new political subjectivities made their appearance, under the slogan 'we, the people'. Regardless of social class, gender, or age, the Egyptian people were affected by the revolutionary events as they experienced a revolution of the self. Using the theoretical framework of childhood studies and adapting a macro-structural approach, this paper explores how the process of memorialization of children killed during the protests and clashes of 2011–2012 ascribes them the status of martyrs of the revolution, like adults. In so doing, the paper intends to demonstrate that the recognized child martyrdom proves that children represent a new political subjectivity group which has emerged in the Egyptian revolutionary context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a comprehensive assessment of the effect of different trade barriers (tariffs, non-tariff measures and services restrictions) on wage disparities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We look at wage disparities from three dimensions: industry premia, gender-based and skill-based disparities. We use three Labor Market Surveys for Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia to directly assess the effect of trade policy on wage disparities using the human capital model. To which different trade barriers are added. Our results suggest that, in general, the effect of services restrictions and non-tariff measures is much stronger than that of tariffs on wage premium. When we look at different segments, we found that females are more affected by non-tariff measures than their male counterparts. At the skill level, given the abundancy of blue collars in the MENA region, production workers are less affected by both non-tariff measures and by services restrictions than non-production workers but more affected by tariffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the differences in employment probabilities and their changes over time for the different tranches of Egyptian society. For this, I simulate probabilities for four labour market states (inactivity or unemployment; government sector; private sector and, self-employment and unpaid work) separately by marital status and level of household wealth. Then, I follow these probabilities over time using the three rounds of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Surveys of 1998, 2006 and 2012. The findings of this research, and unlike what the previous literature established, confirm that the gender gap in employment Egypt differs according to the economic and the social circumstances. For instance, if both a man and a woman come from 'relatively good' economic and social circumstances, they showed relatively equal employment chances. The findings of this research show that the gender gap in employment aggravates with the deterioration of the individual's economic and social characteristics. For instance, education and income in addition to a number of other individual and household characteristics would allow women to attain a better position of gender equality in employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Middle East and North Africa region has the lowest level of women's land ownership in the world, yet little research has explored the barriers and opportunities women face in land ownership in the region. This paper identifies patterns, opportunities, and constraints of ownership of land and other assets (houses, livestock, poultry, and gold) by women and men in the Old and New Lands of Egypt. Based on a survey complemented with qualitative interviews, the study finds that both women and men viewed land and houses as the most economically and socially important assets, but they differed in what assets they considered to be valuable for women. The findings highlight the importance of implementing policies that optimize women's property ownership, even if they own non-land assets. The study concludes that while legal and economic interventions aid in accomplishing gender-equity goals, consciousness-raising initiatives are as crucial as pro-women policy reforms. HIGHLIGHTS Women are disadvantaged in land ownership in the New and Old Lands in Egypt, though not to the extent the literature has assumed for the MENA region. Patterns of asset ownership and control are similar to other regions: men own and control more land and housing; women own and sometimes control (liquefiable) livestock and gold Men underestimate women's preferences for owning immovable property (land and housing) even in the New Lands, where 20 percent of land titles are distributed to women. Women who acquire land remained hesitant or unwilling to enable their daughters to inherit land at par with their sons. While pro-women policy reforms should be implemented, consciousness-raising initiatives are equally crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a material culture approach in order to explore multiple dimensions in the production of denim in an export dominated assembly plant in Port Said, Egypt. Ethnographic data are analyzed to highlight the interplay between the surfaces and tools used in garment making and the skills and strategies deployed by factory workers, so elucidating some of the less immediately visible nuances in the turbulence of daily life on the production shop floor. Contrary to the common view that dismisses production tasks as repetitive and boring, these processes reveal the technical structures, skill hierarchies and uses of shop-floor language that give shade and variation to the skills attributed to different stages of "made-to-order" garment assembly work. These dynamics become more significant within the specific context of global and local competition for orders in which denim is established as the definitive fabric and brand through which reputations are made and sustained-for workers, for firms and for the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of personal hygiene and domestic cleanliness occupied Protestant missionaries working in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century. Remarks on hygiene can be found not only in writings published for the interested public but also in personal documents such as diaries. This article illustrates that, in missionary sources, descriptions of cleanliness appear mainly in the female sphere, implying a deficient domesticity. The causes of this shortcoming were seen in the crisis of the Egyptian - and in particular the Islamic - family, in which, in the missionaries' perception, the husband ruled despotically over his wife and impeded a healthy family life. Missionaries tried to impart a new female role model - their ideal of a competent housewife and wise mother - and thereby aimed to empower women by teaching them habits of cleanliness. This paper examines the missionaries' methods and arguments for spreading ideas and practices related to hygiene and shows how cleanliness was closely linked to values such as orderliness, discipline and punctuality. It also explores the role of cleanliness in missionary accounts of Egyptian converts and examines how conceptions of personal hygiene and domestic cleanliness were linked to moral and religious purity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does political Islam impede gender-based mobilization? An affirmative answer to this question is held by many scholars and feminist activists alike. From the Taliban in Afghanistan to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the various political Islamist organizations spreading throughout the South are often cited as anti-gender mobilization, if not anti-women altogether. The widespread and exponential support of political Islamism in the South, coupled with the decline of non-religious-based women's movements, warrants an examination of this assumed correlation. Using Egypt as a primary site of investigation, this paper argues that this correlation is spurious, if not ideologically biased and ahistorical. Looking at a recent initiative for building a non-religious-based women's movement in Egypt -- 'Women for Democracy' -- as a microcosm, this article argues that the lack of such movements in the South should be understood through a historical-structural analysis of post-colonial state-society relations, in addition to agency-related factors of professed 'feminists' in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Egypt, girls' work primarily takes the form of domestic tasks, which are not considered in many studies of child labor. This paper investigates the effect of girls' work on their school attendance. It uses a modified bivariate probit approach to estimate the effect of work on schooling while allowing for the simultaneous determination of the two outcomes. It presents evidence that the substantial burden of girls' domestic work leads to lower rates of school attendance. Policies that attempt to ban the labor-force work of children will have practically no effect on girls' education in Egypt, while interventions reducing the drudgery of household labor through, for example, improved water and sanitation infrastructure, have better prospects for success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the influence of gender, sibling characteristics and birth order on the schooling attainment of school-age Egyptian children. We use multivariate analysis to simultaneously examine three different schooling outcomes of a child having 'no schooling', 'less than the desired level of schooling', and an 'age-appropriate level of schooling'. Estimation results show strong evidence of gender, birth order and sibling characteristics on schooling attainment, with female and rural children particularly disadvantaged. Interestingly, our results show adverse effects on the schooling outcomes of first-born male children. Finally, we show that an improvement in parental education has large, positive and significant effects on the schooling attainment of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine if there are gender differences in schooling attainment and the extent to which these differences are exacerbated for rural children in Egypt. Using a nationally representative cross-sectional survey, our estimation results find strong support for the hypothesis that being male and living in urban areas significantly improves child schooling. We show that relative to a female child who is "never enrolled" in school, a male child is over twice as likely to be currently attending school, and over two-and-a-half times more likely to have some schooling. These positive effects are particularly strong for rural male children. There are also regional variations, with a child (male or female) living in Upper Rural Egypt having a significantly lower likelihood of being currently enrolled. Finally, our estimation results point to large positive effects of father's education on the probability of current enrolment for all children. Mother's education, however, improves only the likelihood of current enrolment for female children, with no significant effect on male children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]