Region | Egypt
The bully in the house
Women's empowerment is the buzzword in Egypt. Scores of groups have been set up in recent years to promote women's welfare.
- By Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent
- Published: 00:00 June 2, 2007
- Image Credit: Illustration: Ramachandra Baba/Gulf News
Cairo: Women's empowerment is the buzzword in Egypt. Scores of groups have been set up in recent years to promote women's welfare.
In 2000, the government launched the National Women for Council, chaired by Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of President Hosni Mubarak. Last month, Egypt celebrated the induction of 31 female judges for the first time.
Men cry foul. They claim that women's empowerment has gone too far and they are the victims.
"Advocating women's rights has become like a rollercoaster, which refuses to stop," says Farouq Latif, a psychiatry professor, who has set up the Oppressed Men on Earth Association, a pro-male group, in Cairo.
Incomplete
"Women feel their rights will remain incomplete, no matter what rights they gain, and they blame men for this," he told Gulf News.
"We have set up this association to help abused men after women have exploited their rights to destroy men."
He added that the idea to create the Oppressed Men on Earth Association came to him two years ago when he noticed that a large number of men sought psychological counselling due to "their wives' oppression".
A recent study, conducted by Egypt's National Centre for Criminal and Social Studies, showed that 38 per cent of men suffered spousal abuse.
"I think the percentage is far higher, because men are usually too embarrassed to admit they are humiliated by their spouses," Latif said.
He denies that his group is hostile to women. "The association is based on gender equality, without infringing upon women's rights. The aim is to motivate men and women to treat each other as humans who have duties and rights, and to change the common culture that women are wronged or oppressed."
The group, according to Latif, has female members "who agree with us that women have rebelled against their roles as wives and mothers in the name of equality". The association seeks to promote its agenda by holding workshops and recruiting the help of the media, theologians, psychologists, sociologists and legal experts.
The Oppressed Men on Earth Association may be the oldest but not the only one of its kind in Egypt. Last March, an association with a similar agenda was launched, grouping 620 members, who include 23 women. It is significantly named Si (Mr) Al Sayed, an authoritarian male character created by Egypt's Nobel Laureate Najeeb Mahfouz in his famed "Cairo Trilogy". The character has become so famous in the Arab world that he is a byword for male strictness.
"This has apparently become a matter of the past in Egyptian society," the association's Chairman Naeem Abu Eida recently told the website of Arabiya satellite TV.
"This has spawned many social problems as women now have got the upper hand over men," added Abu Eida, who attributed the situation to what he described as a decline in male virility. "Today's young people do not do exercises. Three quarters of men's food is unhealthy," he argued.
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