View previous stories
	In prison for debt, tens of thousands of women are the ‘double victims’ of poverty in Egypt by Hossam Rabie Equal Times, Penal Reform International   “What are you accused of?” ... “A debt of 35,000 Egyptian pounds (€1100 Euros)” ... “And you’ve been sentenced to three years in prison? The reason for the debt?” ... “My daughter’s marriage.”   These were the answers given by Iman, a divorced housewife and mother of five, when she visited the Sawaed Foundation, a charitable NGO in ‘10th of Ramadan’ (Al-Ashir min Ramadan), a city north of Cairo.   On 14 January 2023, the 48-year-old woman went to the foundation to ask for help, wearing an old black djellaba and a veil covering her face to hide her identity. Iman has been wanted by the police for over six months.   In June 2022, she was sentenced in absentia by a court in the Sharkia Governorate, in the Nile Delta, for failing to pay back a debt amounting to the equivalent of €1,100, for over a year. Since the verdict, Iman has been hiding in her neighbours’ homes to escape the regular police raids.   “We receive about 50 cases like Iman’s every month,” Rabab Mansour, general secretary of the Sawaed Foundation, tells Equal Times. For the past five years, the NGO has been trying to raise money to help the Gharemat, women in debt, who have been condemned to prison in Egypt.   “After receiving the cases, we try to offer them legal support from our lawyer and launch fundraising campaigns, especially on social media, to repay the women’s debts and enable their release,” she adds.   While Iman may have the good fortune of being on the list of women helped by this small NGO, it is too late for the tens of thousands of women already put behind bars for the same reason.   Based on official estimates, the Gharemat currently account for as much as 25 per cent of Egypt’s prison population, the second largest category after political prisoners. Most of these women are sentenced to between three and 16 years, according to a study published in May 2021 by the Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue (FDHRD), an independent Egyptian NGO, which estimates the number of women in prison for debt at 35,000.   “Most of the women in debt are from villages and are female heads of households who borrow money to get their daughters married. Others take on debt to buy medicines, to pay for surgery or because they are in urgent need of money,” explains Mansour. “Among those that have come for help is a woman who was sentenced to two years for failing to pay back a debt of EGP6,000 (about €380).”   Prisoners of poverty   The Gharemat phenomenon illustrates how women are the primary victims of poverty in Egypt, as well as how large the gap is between men and women in terms of labour market access and financial autonomy. According to figures from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) published in March 2021, only 11.8 per cent of women of working age are in employment.   “The prisoners of poverty, as I would like to describe them, are a worrying phenomenon in Egypt, and highlight the economic hardships and pressures faced by women, especially female heads of households,” Noal Mostafa, director of the Children of Female Prisoners Association (Atfal al-Sagenat, in Arabic), tells Equal Times.   In Egypt, being a female head of household is a day-to-day struggle. According to the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, a third of Egyptian families are under the sole responsibility of the mother. The vast majority of these women are unemployed, uneducated and receive no support from the state.   Most of them have large families to feed and are alone in covering the exorbitant cost of their daughters’ marriages. Over 59 per cent of these female heads of household are illiterate. The figures published by CAPMAS at the end of 2021 confirm how very poor they are – a level of poverty that leaves them with no choice but to take on debt.   Illiteracy and lack of education are a boon for greedy creditors. “To finance their daughters’ marriages or borrow money, these women are forced to sign blank cheques made out to the creditors. If they cannot repay their debts, some creditors write exorbitant amounts on them, to intimidate the women and force them to repay the money or risk jail,” explains Mostafa.   Mostafa’s commitment to women in debt began in the 1990s. A journalist at the time, she went to the women’s prison in al-Qanatir, north of Cairo, to report on the situation. She was shocked to see women, most of them Gharemat, having to look after their newborn babies in prison. Her shock was all the greater when she realised that some of them were in prison for sums as modest as €200. This was what prompted her to set up a charity to provide assistance to indebted women and their young children through donations.   While Mostafa’s initiative has secured the release of hundreds of indebted women, she acknowledges that they are only escaping from a small prison into a larger one: society.   “Women who come out of prison are heavily stigmatised. No one is willing to give them work, because they are on record as having committed a crime. Some have no alternative but to resort to illegal ways of making a living to feed their families, such as prostitution or begging,” she adds.   Mostafa has since decided not to wait until women end up in prison to pay their debts and is trying to tackle the problem at the source. With the help of grants and partnerships, in 2016, she set up a first clothing workshop to enable indebted women to work and pay off their debts. The project also offers sewing training to give women a fresh start after life in prison. A second workshop has since been opened and the association has managed to provide work or training to more than 6,000 indebted women.   A legal issue   The growing phenomenon of women in debt recently began to catch the attention of the Egyptian authorities. In 2018, the state-run Tahya Misr Fund launched the Egypt Without Debtors initiative, aimed at finding solutions for women and men in debt and in prison. In addition, Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has recently started to pardon small debtors on national holidays. But according to NGOs, the numbers are still very small, as the state is not seeking a radical solution to the problem.   For Nader Eissa, head of communications at the Children of Female Prisoners Association, the plight of women in debt is also worsening because of a law dating back to the late 1940s that allows for people to be imprisoned for not paying off their debts.   Since 2018, the Children of Female Prisoners Association has supported two parliamentary bills calling for the replacement of prison sentences for those in debt with civil punishment, allowing them to work for the state to pay off their debts. But these bills are left “in a drawer,” according to Eissa.   The economic crisis affecting Egypt since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war has worsened the plight of women in the country. In 2022, the Egyptian pound lost 50 per cent of its value and prices almost doubled, putting further pressure on female heads of households.   “Nowadays, more and more women have to take on debts to pay for the basics needed for their families’ survival,” Eissa explains. “The situation is catastrophic for them. Some women can no longer even pay back a debt of one or two thousand Egyptian pounds (€30 to €60).”   The economic situation has also led to a fall in donations to NGOs that depend entirely on this funding. “It is harder to raise money to pay off women’s debts than in the past. Collecting 10,000 Egyptian pounds can now take over 10 days, compared to three days before. Unfortunately, our ability to help is greatly affected,” laments Mansour. http://tinyurl.com/4da3pu4f   * US: Private Nonprofit Hospitals chase low-income patients on Debts. The United States government’s failure to adequately regulate private nonprofit hospitals and to provide quality healthcare alternatives undermines access to health care: http://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/15/us-nonprofit-hospitals-chase-low-income-patients-debts   * Penal Reform International: Five takeaways from #CSW68 on the criminalisation of women linked to poverty.   One week after International Women’s Day, a coalition of organisations and experts convened to address the rising trend of women’s criminalisation driven by poverty in a side event at the 68th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York on 15 March. The event highlighted the intersections of gender, poverty, and punitive legal systems, drawing attention to the urgent need for reform, amid a rising female prison population globally.   http://www.penalreform.org/blog/five-takeaways-from-csw68-on-the-criminalisation-of/ http://www.penalreform.org/resource/from-poverty-to-punishment/ http://www.penalreform.org/blog/the-over-penalisation-of-poverty-through-fines-and/ Visit the related web page
	Globally, for each dollar of labour income men earn, women earned only 51 cents by International Labour Organization (ILO)   According to a recent ILO brief, new data shines a light on gender gaps in the labour market, 15 per cent of working-age women globally would like to work but do not have a job, compared with 10.5 per cent of men. This gender gap has remained almost unchanged for two decades (2005-2022).   In contrast, the global unemployment rates for women and men are very similar, because the criteria used to define unemployment tends to disproportionately exclude women.   The jobs gap is particularly severe in developing countries where the proportion of women unable to find a job reaches 24.9 per cent in low-income countries. The corresponding rate for men in the same category is 16.6 per cent, a worryingly high level but significantly lower than that for women.   The brief points out that personal and family responsibilities, including unpaid care work, disproportionately affect women. These activities can prevent them not only from being employed but also from actively searching for employment or being available to work at short notice.   It is necessary to meet these criteria to be considered unemployed, so many women in need of a job aren’t reflected in the unemployment figures.   Gender imbalances in decent work are not limited to access to employment. While vulnerable employment is widespread for both women and men, women tend to be overrepresented in certain types of vulnerable jobs. For instance, women are more likely to be helping out in their households or in their relatives’ businesses rather than being in own-account work.   This vulnerability, together with lower employment rates, takes a toll on women’s earnings. Globally, for each dollar of labour income men earn, women earned only 51 cents.   There are significant differences between regions, the brief finds. In low and lower-middle income countries, the gender disparity in labour income is much worse, with women earning 33 cents and 29 cents on the dollar respectively.   In high-income and upper-middle income countries, women’s relative labour income reaches 58 and 56 cents respectively per dollar earned by men. This striking disparity in earnings is driven by both women’s lower employment level, as well as their lower average earnings when they are employed.   The new estimates shine light on the magnitude of gender disparities in labour markets, underscoring how important it is to improve women’s overall participation in employment, to expand their access to employment across occupations, and to address the glaring gaps in job quality that women face.   http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_869930/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/equality-and-discrimination/gender-equality/lang--en/index.htm   * ILO launches Global Care Policy Portal to encourage the investment needed to support the two billion people still without adequate maternity and paternity support, parental leave and childcare services: http://bit.ly/3F4asAS   Mar. 2023   Time to care: gender transformative social security for a Caring Economy, by Angie Barca from Development Pathways.   Care work, and the people who provide it, is an essential determinant of the wellbeing of families, communities, and nations, yet all around the world it is systematically undervalued and invisibilised.   Care work refers to the act of providing support in order to meet day-to-day life needs, including activities like cleaning and cooking, or caring for children, persons with disabilities, and older people. The bulk of care work is unpaid and carried out disproportionally by women.   Time Use Surveys all around the world show extreme disparities in the distribution of housework and childcare responsibilities among men and women, with women performing between 2 to 10 times more unpaid care work than men.   This is largely due to gender roles and expectations about domestic duties, which place the responsibility of raising children and taking care of the home primarily on women.   The unequal responsibility for unpaid care work is one of the main reasons why many women struggle to access paid employment outside the home. Worryingly, the global Female Labour Force Participation Rate has been slowly declining since the 1990s and remains at only 52.4 per cent, compared to the 80 per cent rate of male labour force participation.   In the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, the gap between men and women is of 55 percentage points, meaning three times more men than women participate in the workforce.   The ILO identifies work-family balance, gender roles, and a lack of affordable care as the main challenges to closing the gender gap in employment. It is crucial that the design of policies that encourage female employment do not overlook the fact that the majority of women often take on significant workloads of unpaid care work on top of their paid jobs. Getting women to work must be done in a way that works for women.   What role can social security play in challenging the established norms and dynamics surrounding care?   Inclusive, multi-tiered approaches that provide universal coverage across the lifecycle can be used to ensure families are able to meet their basic needs.   The introduction of extensive maternity benefits that enable women to take time off work while providing care for young children is essential to ensure flexibility in working arrangements.   This should be coupled with shared parental leave that promotes the distribution of childcare between partners to avoid placing the responsibility solely or predominantly on women.   A step forward would be non-transferable paternity leave, which is increasingly seen as best practice as it is significantly more effective at achieving high levels of take-up.   In addition, high-coverage, inclusive child benefits present an opportunity to support families during the formative years of a child’s life, while alleviating the additional financial burden and providing the breathing space for greater choices when it comes to entering the work market.   In order to have a positive impact on women, child benefits should be universal or near-universal, and should not disappear or reduce with work or income, as this can work to keep women out of good quality employment by conditioning eligibility.   However, direct income support, while a fundamental step, is not enough to address the care inequalities that affect women’s economic freedom. Affordable, accessible, flexible, and quality childcare is key for women to be able to make their own free choices about how to manage their time, realise their rights, and access opportunities that are economically empowering.   Accessible childcare is also highly beneficial for children, correlating with reduced child poverty, decreased stunting rates, and higher educational achievement.   Expanding childcare initiatives, in particular day care centres that can provide quality coverage to all children, including the most vulnerable, is a crucial move towards tackling the inequalities of the care economy, and it can help create paid, decent employment for people working in care.   The experience of Quebec, which introduced an ambitious universal and low-fee childcare programme in 1997, has found that the boost in consumption and tax revenues from women entering the labour market as a result of the policy meant that the childcare services paid for themselves, increasing the province’s GDP by 1.7%.   Investing in the care economy through the expansion of social security has a multiplier or knock-on effect, creating jobs in other industries and increasing tax contributions by empowering women to join the workforce without the overbearing burden of childcare, and increasing household incomes and consumption.   Of course, social security alone cannot achieve a societal shift towards recognising the value of unpaid care work, nor can it push informal care work into the domain of the formal economy. It can, however, provide indispensable support to unpaid care workers, empower women to enter the workforce by alleviating the burden of childcare, boost economic growth, and reduce inequalities.   This International Women’s Day, we at Development Pathways are calling for a Caring Economy, one where we prioritise caring for one another, and we recognise that care is something all of us need at different points in our lives.   It is time to value care as a public good that deserves investment, and to urge states and institutions to take responsibility for it. Moving forward, let’s bring adequate, accessible, and affordable care to the forefront of the gender equality agenda.   http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/time-to-care/ Visit the related web page
	View more stories