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Pride, Purdah, or Paychecks: What Maintains the Gender Division of Labor in Rural Egypt?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

James Toth
James Toth
Affiliation:
Department of AnthropologyUniversity of New Hampshire
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Abstract

Traveling from al-Minya, Egypt, north to Cairo by train in the mid-1980s, an observer could not help but notice the large numbers of women and children working in the lush agricultural plots adjacent to the railroad tracks. In fact, throughout the northern Sa⊂id and the Delta, too, women seemed to have taken over the fields. Furthermore, upon arriving at the Agriculture Ministry in Giza, a listener frequently overheard remarks referring to the “alarming” rise in the feminization of Egyptian agriculture. Yet Egyptian farm women have always lent a hand to agricultural production. So what, in recent years, has generated such a large-scale “invasion” of women into men's jobs? Particularly in light of the strict segregation of women from men, and their seclusion in the privacy of the home, what has brought about this public display of women?

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 213 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

Notes

Author's note: The author wishes to thank Kathy Adams and Jane Collins for earlier comments on this article, and Dr. Sofia Malvsen for stimulating this research in the first place. It was originally presented as paper at the 1988 conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Los Angeles.

1 Susan, Joekes, “Working for Lipstick? Male and Female Labour in the Clothing Industry in Morocco,” in Haleh, Afshar, ed., Women, Work and Ideology in the Third World (London, 1985), p. 185.Google Scholar

2 The phrase “division of labor” implies sets of complementary skills. Each gender has his or her own sphere of activities, equally important in its contribution to social life. “Hierarchy,” on the other hand, implies the domination of one gender over the other, male over female. Since the latter seems to have become the case with the dawn of the state and class society, the first phrase becomes not only a notorious misnomer but also a smokescreen covering up an imbalanced power relationship. Having said this, however, I will nevertheless continue to use the phrase “division of labor” despite its hierarchical quality, if only because of its common use in the literature.

3 Richard, Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the Accommodation of Traditions,” American Anthropologist, 70 (1968), 682.Google Scholar

4 ⊂Amr, Mohie-Eldin, “The Development of the Share of Agricultural Wage Labor in the National Income of Egypt,” in Gouda, Abdel-Khalek and Robert, Tignor, eds., The Political Economy of Income Distribution in Egypt (New York, 1982), p. 251.Google Scholar

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7 Ester, Boserup, Woman's Role in Economic Development (New York, 1970), p. 26, noted the trend among plough cultures:Google Scholar Because village women work less in agriculture, a considerable proportion of them are completely freed from farm work. Sometimes, such women perform only purely domestic duties, living in seclusion within their own homes, and appearing in the village Street only under the protection of the veil, a phenomenon associated with plough culture, and seemingly unknown in regions of shifting cultivation where women do most of the agricultural toil. See Antoun, , “On the Modesty of Women,” and Helen, Papanek, “Purdah: Separate Worlds and Symbolic Shelters,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15 (1973), pp. 289–325.Google Scholar But not all plough cultures have used a veil to keep women in their place. See John, King Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800–1985 (New York, 1987), pp. 68–73, for a description of the more tortuous custom of foot binding, which physically kept Chinese women homebound.Google Scholar

8 Evalyn, Michaelson and Walter, Goldschmidt, “Female Roles and Male Dominance amon Peasants,” Southwest Journal of Anthropology, 27 (1971), pp. 333–35.Google Scholar

9 Maurice Godelier's critique of Eleanor Leacock–that fertility control universally gave men a dominant position over women–may be less a universal and instead historically conditioned, arising when women's only output was babies, with exchange value and household-use value having declined insignificance. See his “Origins of Male Domination,” New Left Review, 127 (1981), pp. 3–17,Google Scholar and her “Introduction” in Friederich, Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York, 1972; originally published in 1884).Google Scholar

10 See Antoun, , “On the Modesty of Women,” and Nuri, Yalman, “On the Purity of Women in the Castes of Ceylon and Malabar,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 93 (1963), pp. 25–28.Google Scholar

11 Boserup points out (Women's Role, ch. 3) that the status of women in agriculture deteriorated under European rule. Her work, however, dwells primarily on African farming systems. For the Middle East, Judith Tucker's ground breaking research on women in 19th-century Egypt hedges on whether women's status actually rose or fell relative to earlier times. Although she contends that the absence of women in the textile industry–their principal craft occupation–reflected their absence in (pre-industrial) textile crafts, she also strongly suggests that their position disproportionately eroded under Muhammad Ali and his mercantilist policies (“Women were not then [re]hired on an equal basis in workshops and industries”). Women were specifically excluded from workshop weaving, machine factories, and domestic service under the Albanian, and from corvée under his successor Abbas, in addition to suffering the declining fortunes faced by men as well: They were excluded from the lucrative European trade, denied the holding of iltizam land titles, endured the debasement of skills and products, and losing control over their labor. As shall be shown, these limitations constitute “channeling,” and while exclusion from corvée gangs may have seemed a blessing, the regulations in effect limited women's employment opportunities. These gender-biased declines occurred after contact with European commercial juggernauts rather than appearing during the preceding Mamluk tributary period (see Judith, Tucker, Women in Nineteenth Century Egypt [Cambridge, 1985], ch. 2).Google Scholar

12 The literature on the evolution of the gender division of labor is enormous. The interested reader can refer to a number of the following sources: George, Murdock and Caterina, Provost, “Factors in the Division of Labor by Sex: A Cross-Cultural Analysis,” Ethnology, 12 (1973);Google ScholarRayna, Reiter, “Men and Women in the South of France: Public and Private Domains,” in Rayna, Reiter, ed., Toward An Anthropology of Women;Google ScholarPeggy, Sanday, “Toward a Theory of the Status of Women,” American Anthropologist, 75 (1973);Google ScholarKaren, Sacks, “Engels Revisited: Women, the Organization of Production, and Private Property,” in Reiter, Toward An Anthropology;Google ScholarKathleen, Gough, “The Origin of the Family,” in Reiter, Toward An Anthropology;Google ScholarJudith, Brown, “A Note on the Division of Labor by Sex,” American Anthropologist, 72 (1970);Google Scholar John Humphries, “Gender, Pay and Skill: Manual Workers in Brazilian Industry,” in Afshar, , Women, Work and Ideology;Google ScholarMichael, Burton, Lillian, Brudner, and Douglas, White, “A Model of the Sexual Division of Labor,” American Ethnologist, 4 (1977);Google ScholarMichael, Burton and Douglas, White, “Sexual Division of Labor in Agriculture,” American Anthropologist, 86 (1984);Google ScholarErnestine, Friedi, Women and Men: An Anthropologist's View (New York, 1975);Google ScholarCarol, Ember, “The Relative Decline in Women's Contribution to Agriculture with Intensification,” American Anthropologist, 85 (1983);Google ScholarEleanor, Leacock, “Interpreting the Origins of Gender Inequality: Conceptual and Historical Problems,” Dialectical Anthropology, 7 (1983);Google ScholarBoserup, , Woman's Role;Google ScholarEngels, , The Origin of the Family;Google Scholar and Martin, and Voorhies, , Female of the Species.Google Scholar

13 The class basis to purdah is pointed out in Nadia, Abu-Zahra, “Inequality of Descent and Egalitarianism of the New National Organizations in a Tunisia Village,” in Richard, Antoun and Iliya, Hank, eds., Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington, 1972), pp. 267–86; Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women,” and Papanek, “Purdah: Separate Worlds.”Google Scholar

14 Emnys, Peters, “The Status of Women in Four Middle East Communities,” in Nikki, Keddie and Lois, Beck, eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge, 1985), p. (336;Google ScholarSanday, , “Toward a Theory,” p. 1695;Google ScholarBurton, and White, , “Sexual Division,” pp. 570–71.Google Scholar

15 This continuum is suggested by comments in Peters, , “The Status of Women,” p. 334;Google ScholarBarbara, Larson, “Women's Work and Status: Rural Egypt and Tunisia Compared,” paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association meetings, 11 5, 1988, p. 13;Google ScholarLucie, Saunders and Suhair, Mehenna, “Unseen Hands: Women's Farmwork in an Egyptian Village,” Anthropology Quarterly, 59 1988), p. 110;Google ScholarSanday, , “Toward a Theory,” p. 1695.Google Scholar

16 Abu-Zahra, “Inequality of Descent”; Fadwa, el-Guindi, “Veiling Infitah with Muslim Ethics: Egypt's Contemporary Islamic Movement,” Social Problems, 28 (1981), pp. 465-85; Safia Mohsen, personal communication; Joekes, “Working for Lipstick”; Peters, “The Status of Women.”Google Scholar

17 Peters (in his “Status of Women”) points out that in south Lebanon, the seasonal mix of ploughings, plantings, weedings, waterings, and harvestings, coupled with farming's capital-intensive character, supports the requirement that both genders work in agriculture either as workers or managers. However, in a bedouin economy such as the one he studied in the Cyrenaica, agriculture requires ploughing, herding, watering, and harvesting. Men perform all four tasks. Women serve a secondary role of transforming and adding value to existing products. Relegated to the domestic sphere, women create an iron grip on their domain since they are unable to apply leverage in other, more important spheres. Where women produce, their status is high. As their contribution declines, their social position suffers likewise. Although Susan, Dorsky wrote in Women of ⊂Amran: A Middle Eastern Ethnographic Study (Salt Lake City, 1986) about other issues, and only tangentially raised the issue of agricultural labor, she nevertheless confirmed that Yemeni women help their husbands and kinfolk with farming (see pp. 60, 64).Google Scholar

18 Peters, , “The Status of Women,” and the Cyrenaica; Susan, Davis, “Working Women in a Moroccan Village,” in Keddie and Beck, Women in the Muslim World, pp. 416–33,Google Scholar and rural Moroccans; Elizabeth, Fernea, Guests of the Sheik (New York, 1965),Google Scholar and the recently settled al-Shabana in Iraq; Larson, “Women's Work,” comparing Tunisians and Egyptians; Carol, Pastner, “The Status of Women and Property on a Baluchistan Oasis in Pakistan,” in Keddie, and Beck, , Women in the Muslim World, pp. 434–50,Google Scholar with the Baluchis; but notice the gender equality found among the al-FadI and alHassanna pastoralists of Lebanon-Syria (Dawn, Chatty, “Changing Sex Roles in Bedouin Society in Syria and Lebanon,” in Keddie, and Beck, , Women in the Muslim World, pp. 399–415)Google Scholar and among the Qashqa⊃i (Lois, Beck, “Women among Qashqai Nomadic Pastoralists in Iran,” in Keddie and Beck, Women in the Muslim World, pp. 351–73), where in both cases women productively contribute to the household economy.Google Scholar

19 Let me thank Nawal Amman and Richard Adams for pointing out at the 1988 MESA meetings that places in Egypt like Silwa in Aswan province and isolated villages in the middle Sacid of aI-Minya province still practice female seclusion. The matter may be resolved, I hope, by pointing to the differential development experienced by various regions of Egypt, ostensibly those further away from Cairo to the south, which are experiencing the least degree of capitalist agricultural development. In the northern Delta, the cities of Alexandria, Tanta, and Cairo more easily urbanize all the villages since they are not so far from these economic metropoles.

20 First of all, a preliminary caution is necessary in approaching non-male participation in agriculture. In the 1960 census, the ratio of females to the total agricultural labor force was 6.2 percent, while in the 1973 Labor Force Sample Survey, it was 2.3 percent (Mohie-Eldin, , “The Development of the Share,” p. 241).Google Scholar Yet Egyptian census data notoriously underestimate the amount of female labor and overestimate the amount of child labor used in agriculture. The problem may be situated in the very generation of census data itself: in the inquiry about individual female family member activities by outside male enumerators. A peasant household head may be reluctant to confess that women bring in incomes when confronted by the local middle-class school teacher who frequently serves as enumerator. Census estimates of female participation (3–10%) and child involvement (upwards to 90%) are commonly considered too scarce and too intense, respectively (James, Fitch, Sinia, M. Aly, and Add, Mostafa, “Recent Trends in Agricultural Policy,” unpublished manuscript of the Ford Foundation, Cairo, 06 6, 1980, p. 15).Google Scholar Saunders and Mehenna, “Unseen Hands,” provides four reasons for unusually low estimates of female participation: the seasonality of women's work, its casual character, its low prestige, and its inclusion in what is normally considered “housework.” Lourdes, Beneria, “Accounting for Women's Work,” in Lourdes, Beneria, ed., Women and Development: The Sexual Division of Labor in Rural Societies (New York, 1982), concludes that the absence of reliable data is a major problem in evaluating the female contribution to domestic economies. Agreeing with Saunders and Mehenna, Beneria also adds that the conventional definitions of labor and its contributions need rethinking, not only because what constitutes marketable labor becomes questionable, but also because “housework” comes to include productive and reproductive tasks essential to carrying on income-generating farm work. For Egypt, participation rates need critical revision before analyses can be judged dependable.Google Scholar

21 Lucie, Woods Saunders, “Umm Ahmad: A Village Mother of Egypt,” in Elizabeth, Fernea and Basima, Bezirgan, eds., Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak (Austin, 1977), p. 222.Google Scholar

22 Saunders, and Mehenna, , “Unseen Hands,” p. 108.Google Scholar

23 Larson, , “Women's Work,” p. 4.Google Scholar

24 Bent, Hansen and Mona, El-Tomy, “The Seasonal Employment Profile in Egyptian Agriculture,” Journal of Development Studies, 1 (07, 1965), pp. 405–7. The horizontal axis is the calendar year; the vertical axis is the number of working days per month. Two calculations were made, one including Friday, the Middle East sabbath, as a workday, and the other excluding Fridays. Piercing the shaded portion means using up all non-sabbath workdays; going beyond it means that, even including Fridays, the work month is completely occupied.Google Scholar

25 Bent, Hansen, “Employment and Wages in Rural Egypt,” The American Economic Review, 70 (06, 1969), p. 300.Google Scholar

26 Sonja, Zimmermann, The Women of Kafral-Bahr, trans. Rosemary, Risseeuw (Leiden, 1982), ch. 4.Google Scholar

27 Alan, Richards and Philip, L. Martin, “Rural Social Structure and the Agricultural Labor Market: Sharqiyya Evidence and Policy Implications,” Economics Working Paper No.9 (Cairo, 05 1981).Google Scholar

28 Mona, Hammam, “Capitalist Development, Family Division of Labor, and Migration in the Middle East,” in Eleanor, Leacock and Helen, Safa, eds., Women's Work: Development and the Division of Labor by Gender (South Hadley, Mass., 1986), p. 171.Google Scholar

29 See note 20.

30 Mohamed, Nazem Hanafi, “Surplus Labour and the Problem of Disguised Unemployment in Egyptian Agriculture.” Memo No. 1054. Cairo: Institute of National Planning (Cairo, 12, 1973).Google Scholar

31 Boserup, , Women's Role, p. 15.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 35.

33 Peter, Doeringer, “Determinants of the Structure of Industrial Type Labor Markets,” in Alice, Amsden, ed., The Economics of Women and Work (Middlesex, Eng., 1980), p. 211.Google Scholar

34 Michael, Reich, David, Gordon, and Richard, Edwards, “A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation,” in Amsden, Economics of Women, p. 232.Google Scholar

35 Peter, Doeringer and Michael, Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Mass., 1971).Google Scholar

36 Reich, , Gordon, , and Edwards, , “A Theory of Labor,” p. 235.Google Scholar

37 The crowding hypothesis was first developed in post–World War I England. Millicent, Fawcett (“Equal Pay for Equal Work,” Economic Journal, 28 [1918], 1–6)Google Scholar suggested that women's low wages were a result of restricted access to occupations, and this observation was elaborated on by Edgeworth, F. Y. (“Equal Pay to Men and Women for Equal Work,” Economic Journal, 32 [1922], pp. 431–57). Recently, the Edgeworth analysis was updated and expanded by Barbara Bergmann (“Occupational Segregation, Wages, and Profits when Employers Discriminate by Race or Sex,” mimeograph [College Park, 12 1970],CrossRefGoogle Scholar cited in Mary, Huff Stevenson, “Wage Differences between Men and Women: Economic Theories,” in Ann, Stromberg and Shirley, Harkness, eds., Women Working: Theories and Facts in Perspective [Palo Alto, 1978], p. 96).Google Scholar

38 Gary, S. Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago, 1957).Google Scholar

39 Men's and women's domains are separate, and at one level may not necessarily be unfavorable. Yet Rayna Reiter pointed out that From inside the village, it is possible to see the two domains [men's and women's] as separate but equal, but it is precisely the confinement of village women to the village itself that makes this notion of distinction and equality possible. When the arena is enlarged that notion of equality is challenged, for all the institutions which influence or control regional and national social structure are male-dominated (Reiter, , “Men and Women,” p. 272).Google Scholar

40 That is, in the immediate sense. In the longer term, the shame of farm women working in public, according to Susan, Davis (“Working Women”), would impinge on a family's honor. A mixed-gender agricultural work crew–which would fulfill Becker's (Economics of Discrimination)Google Scholar prediction of labor equality–could set up circumstances where what Papanek calls “impulse control” would threaten family prestige. Besides Papanek, , “Purdah: Separate Worlds,” pp. 316–18, see also Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women.”Google Scholar

41 See Hopkins, , “The Social Impact.”Google Scholar

42 Lester, Thurow, Generating Inequality (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

43 Edmund, S. Phelps, “The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism,” American Economic Review, 62 (1972), p. 659.Google Scholar

44 James, Toth, “Piece-Rate Wages and Labor Resistance among Egyptian Migrant Workers,” paper delivered at the Middle East Studies Association conference, 11 1988.Google Scholar

45 For a similar argument among African–Americans in the United States, see Elliot, Liebow, Tally's Corner (Boston, 1967), ch. 2.Google Scholar

46 Boserup, , Women's Role, p. 80.Google Scholar

47 This occurs even while village employers greet incoming labor gangs recruited from other villages, especially from the Sa⊂id. This “bumping out” effect rids the village of potential troublemakers while fulfilling the need for strength with male workers who can be fired and removed if they step out of line. Since 1973, Sa⊂idis–more so than their Delta counterparts–have taken advantage of the expanded Middle East economy and have rejected migrant work. Migrants have been replaced in part by machines, and in part by local women.

48 Reich, , Gordon, , and Edwards, , “A Theory of Labor.”Google Scholar

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50 Egypt's work force is divided by religious differences. Early on in the Delta, soon after the Arab Muslim conquest, rural Christians were herded into nearby cities. In the Sa⊂id, rural Christian villages continued to exist next to Muslim ones. While most laborers work for a co-religionist within their own village, cases do arise where (1) employers and workers are from different religions or (2) a work crew is religiously mixed. While outside the scope of this article, such religious discrimination may take place but is less well documented.

51 Joekes considered this power relationship as the root of mixing the genders together in the new textile, carpet, and food-processing manufactories that are directed exclusively at the export market in Morocco (see Joekes, , “Working for Lipstick,” pp. 208–9).Google Scholar

52 See Jane, Fishburne Collier, “Women in Politics,” in Michelle, Rosaldo and Louise, Lamphere, eds., Woman, Culture and Society (Stanford, 1974);Google Scholar and Erica, Friedi, Women of Deh Koh (Washington, D.C., 1989).Google Scholar

53 Hansen, , “Employment and Wages,” p. 308. Judith Tucker pointed out that in early 19th-century Egypt, female workers received less pay. Her figures conform to the range of one-half to two-thirds the wages of male workers. See her Women in Nineteenth Century Egypt, pp. 89f.Google Scholar

54 Andrea, Rugh, “Women and Work: Strategies and Choices in a Lower-Class Quarter of Cairo,” in Elizabeth, Fernea, ed., Women and the Family in the Middle East (Austin, 1985), p. 281.Google Scholar

55 Hammam, , “Capitalist Development,” p. 163.Google Scholar

56 Saunders, and Mehenna, , “Unseen Hands,” p. 109.Google Scholar

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59 See note 20.

60 Boserup, , Women's Role, p. 273.Google Scholar

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64 Wage figures for Minufiyya province are based on the author's field notes and unpublished Agriculture Ministry statistics.

63 The data for this diagram come from the government-operated migrant Employment Office only. Workers also went on privately recruited work trips, which paid two to five times the public-sector wage. This would Create an even larger exodus than depicted here.

66 Little direct data can actually be uncovered to support precise claims for labor-induced production problems. Rural labor has never received its proper recognition for any significant role in production, whether compliant or disruptive. Employers of farm workers dare not admit that labor has any efficacy for fear that such admissions will acquiesce to potential demands for improved wages and working conditions. The source of such a view is difficult to pinpoint; the author has read and heard numerous citations and conversations which belittle “fellahin” and Egyptian peasants. Disparaging remarks and comments are commonplace among musaqafin, or educated Egyptians. Nathan, Brown touches upon many of the rhetorical associations used to denigrate Egyptian farmers and farm workers (see his Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt [New Haven, 1990]). In 1961, the evidence is circumstantial, yet it fits the facts: a major demand for unskilled tarahil labor in land reclamation in the 1960s pulled enough workers out of agriculture that subsequent production suffered.Google Scholar

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77 They have since been advanced to the spring.

78 Lewis, W. Arthur, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” Manchester School Economic and Social Studies, 22 (05, 1954), pp. 139–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Saunders, and Mehenna, point out (“Unseen Hands,” p. 106) that many workers went into producing construction brick, an observation which agrees with activities in Minufiyya.Google Scholar

80 Saunders and Mehenna, “Unseen Hands” Bent, Hansen and Santir, Radwan, Employment Opportunities and Equity in Egypt (Geneva, 1982), pp. 56–60;Google ScholarSimon, Commander, The State and Agricultural Development in Egypt since 1973 (London, 1987).Google Scholar

81 Boserup, , Women's Role, p. 80.Google Scholar

82 Commander, , The State and Agricultural Development, ch. 3.Google Scholar