Egypt – Spinsters Fight Against Society Stereotypes

Cairo Correspondents MANAR
AMMAR and JOSEPH MAYTON – Women News Network – WNN

Journalist, Youmna Mokhtar, asks questions about
marriage that do need discussion in Egypt.
Image: Manar Ammar /WNN

Cairo, Egypt
– It is a challenge to be unmarried in Egypt
and even more so if the woman is “growing old” according to Egyptian customs.
This means any unmarried woman past her mid-twenties is seen negatively through
society’s lens, leaving many questions to be answered. However, a group of
Egyptian female activists are speaking out against the “A’anis,” or spinster,
concept, calling for a re-examination of how the country views women.

Youmna Mokhtar is a young Egyptian journalist
who became fed up with the use of this word in everyday life. So she founded
the social group called “Spinsters for change” that aims to educate people on
the use of “A’anis.”

In Arabic, “A’anis” has at least three
meanings – none of which have a relationship to its understood social meaning.
The first is: a dull tree branch, the second is: one who looks at the mirror
more often and the third is: a strong female camel. In Egypt
and across the region, socially, it refers to a woman who has reached a certain
age and is still unmarried.

“I started the group to initiate a dialog
between women to discuss how we can change that social look,” said Youmna. The
group is outspoken against the social labeling and ill treatment of unmarried
women. Although the word is commonplace in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, it
remains a derogatory word.

Women feel the negative attachments to the
word, which they argue attracts rumors, suspicion and pitying looks, as if
asking; “what’s wrong with her if?” (if she hasn’t yet married). But, with the
average marriage age continuing to rise, Mokhtar believes it is time to
evaluate how language plays a role in societal perceptions.

“Although the group is called “A’anis for
change,” I am against the label, yet we used it to name the group [because] it
is the term people use,” Mokhtar explained. “First, we thought of calling it
“girls for change,” but it was not going to deliver the same meaning,” she
added with a chuckle.

“There are more important things than the
name, it is the pattern of behaviors that comes with it,” Mokhtar continued.
The openness of the group is attracting more than just unmarried Egyptian
women. Married couples and bachelors are also joining in as they explore the
concepts of marriage and the intense pressure to marry cast today on a majority
of Egyptian youth.

“First, in the family a lot of pressure is
put on the girl to get married. Then the pressure turns into insults and
condescension and they ask her why are you being snobby for refusing these men.
And if that doesn’t work, they use the fear factor, saying ’so what are you
going to do? We are not going to live forever.’ And then comes friends. All of
her friends got married and she didn’t, so in their eyes, she becomes the one
who is going to envy them for getting married and she could even find herself
not invited to one of her friends’ weddings.”

“A deeply rooted belief exists in the
Egyptian culture that early marriage is better for girls,” said a 2006 USAID
report, “Preventing Child Marriage: Protecting Girls’ Health.”

From a very young age schoolgirls in Cairo
are pressured toward marriage. Image: Ed Yourton

“Pressure on women to get married often
begins immediately following university. Some women have the luxury of waiting
one or two years before the nagging begins. By the time a woman reaches
30-years-old, parents stop trying to force their daughters to get married,
Mokhtar admitted. However, not because they don’t want to see their children
wed.

“They would justify it using the idea that it
becomes unsafe for women to get pregnant after 35,” Mokhtar said.

“Women who seek divorce in Egypt
have two options, fault-based or no-fault divorce (khula),” said Cairo
public prosecutor, Hassan Osman, during a 2004 interview with Human Rights
Watch. “Unlike men, women can only divorce by court action (tatliq).
Regardless of which system they choose, a number of government officials are
involved in the process, including judges, attorneys for both parties, and
arbitrators involved in compulsory mediation between the couple. Public
prosecutors are also often present in divorce cases, exercising considerable
influence on these proceedings and the outcome of the case.”

“What happens to women who refuse to marry in
the first place?

“Many women in Egypt
are married without their consent, often before they become adults,” outlined
Human Rights Watch. Women who do not marry, though, are often looked upon
negatively as complete outsiders.

Although marriage in modern Egypt
is seen as an equal contract between husband and wife, in practice it’s not
that easy. Many women on the edge of marriage are hesitant to ask for equal
rights in the contract itself because of fear their suitor may decide to “back
out” of the arrangement.

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.

The definition of “family” in ancient Egypt
may not have anything to do with “marriage” as we know it today.

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 recently. “

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.

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