ABSTRACT
Women in the MENA region have the highest labour inactivity rates in the world, meaning not only are a significant portion of women not engaged in the labour market, but they also are not seeking to. Although there is evidence worldwide that increases in female education rates are positively correlated to increases in women’s labour market participation, Egypt and the entire MENA region continue to be the only exception to this trend. Almost half of all highly educated women in Egypt are out of the labour force and not actively seeking work. This is a stark comparison to OECD countries which have an employment rate of 80 per cent for women with the same educational attainment (OECD, 2018). This chapter examines both the paid labour market options available to the highly educated middle-class women, and the barriers that they face in entering and/or remaining in the labour force. The chapter analyses how the labour market situation and other factors such as marriage and education influence the way married university graduates navigate and negotiate employment and working life. There is also a clear intersect found between gender and class, whereby a woman’s cultural capital greatly influences her ability to attain a decent position in Egypt’s labour market. Where most single unmarried women were found to engage in the labour market, married women were found to carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages of working, and its effects on their families and household income. The majority of middle-class mothers in my sample were found not to work due to a lack of incentives in the labour market, and due to their inability to attain well-paying jobs in Egypt’s top-tier private sector that provides decent working conditions. Instead, these top-tier jobs are found to be reserved for the upper and upper-middle classes who possess the right cultural capital.
