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Egyptian female farmer… inferior conditions and ambiguous destiny
Land Center for Human rights issued its 22nd report “Egyptian
female farmer… inferior conditions and ambiguous destiny” from social and
economical series in order to monitor female farmer conditions in the Egyptian
countryside.
The first
part
of this report reflects the inferior conditions of Egyptian female farmer, who
bears numerous burdens patiently without complaint.
She suffers from awful
effects of the changeable policies, which are being applied in the countryside
that never care about her existence or her conditions. Her last burden was the
results of implementation of farm lease act that prevented most of them from
proportional guarantee of humanistic rights. The report ensures that the female
farmer, who possesses farm, feels with more economical safety that improves her
position inside and outside her family.
The report reveals the importance of farms possession in the countryside because it permits its owner to have loans and set up different projects. It explains that the family that is managed by female farmer (16% from families’ number in the countryside), suffers from more poverty. Moreover, 70% of them can’t satisfy their main needs. The report asserts that farm production can be increased if the farm is cultivated by its owner. Through crop selling, the family can pay for its treatment, education and other services. Moreover, the farm is a resource for keeping livestock in addition to wives’ participation in harvesting, storage, shopping and seeding. Therefore, family’s farm possession enables it to work and live. As we saw, the law prohibits poor families from social safety and guarantee. On the other hand, the new agrarian policies ignore the role of female farmer in the agricultural economy in Egypt for instance, she is responsible for 40% of animal production in addition that she represents 45% of needed labour in producing cotton, 75% in collecting berseem, 83% in cultivating rice, 72% in fertilizing corn and 85% in storing wheat. Moreover, she shares in other activities like pest control, harvest and crop storage and transformation in addition to her house activities and children bringing up. Nevertheless, the law affected negatively on her social and economical conditions.
The law no (96) for 1992 prohibited families from farm possession that led to downfall for their living conditions and burdens’ increase. Moreover, it was hard for female farmer to have bank loans because they had no guarantees moreover there were gender discrimination that in 1993, the developing and agricultural credit bank gave 88% of its productive loans to male farmers while it gave only 12% to female farmers. Of course, this proportion increased after law implementation.
The second part,
“El-Melahia female farmer… beginning with tire and ending by misery”. It gives
overall outlook for the infrastructure of El-Melahia village where developmental
opportunities are decreasing that there are no clinic, pharmacy or sewerage.
There is only one primary school.
About livelihood opportunities and income,
most of the dwellers are tenants, who depend on narrow agrarian area in the
village. Therefore, they are affected by implementation of farm lease act that
they have no solution but working as daily-wage labors or travelling to Cairo
where they work in unfixed works. The report points that the female farmers in
El-Melahia village play an important role that most of them work. This chapter
shows types of work that female farmer practices through her different age
stages that differ after implementation of farm lease act.
The third part, it shows the social and economical conditions of the Egyptian female farmer through their witnesses that represent different generations and stories. It expresses honestly their reality. Although husbands of some of these women are dead, they insist on their children education. Others work for living expenditures of their family after injuring of their husbands. Others over seventy years old are obligated to travel to feed themselves after marriage of their kids. The report shows that these women are a real school of wisdom and patience. Therefore, we wonder about who teaches those illiterate women to create their own economical projects, who teaches them to delete humanistic values like privacy, rest and satisfaction from their dictionaries!! It is unwritten cultural heritage that is carved by poverty, awful conditions and the desire to challenge the fate.
The fourth part, “the results of the report”
· The female farmers in El-Melahia village, who belong to poor families (tenants or daily-wage labors), live in hard living conditions.
· About 90% of them work before marriage in their fathers’ farms without wage or in other activities.
· 95.7% of them work after marriage with their husbands in their farms, keeping livestock or selling vegetables and bread.
· 50% of these women become responsible of their families after their husbands’ death. Even if their husbands are alive, women incomes are essential for families’ life.
· 90% of these families that are evicted from their farms, the women play an important role in protecting them from hunger that they establish small projects to save money for life expenses.
· Although most of them are more than forty-year, they are still working.
· Only one lady in this village goes for removing her illiteracy but she doesn’t continue more than one week.
· 80% of husbands died because of liver cirrhosis that has no treatment in the village.
· 80% of the girls, who release from education in order to work, marry although they are so young that repeats the same inferior conditions of women.
· 70% of women have no health care while the other 30% have poor treatment without any medicine because it is expensive in addition to absence of clinic or pharmacy.
· Only one lady has a loan from developing and agricultural credit bank. 50% of them are fear not to be able to pay back the money to the bank. The others have no idea about these loans especially for women.
Final remarks, this part asserts that we can’t separate between women conditions and the social and economical frame of the society. We can’t limit the continuous downfall of rural women conditions with individual efforts and partial solutions. The report ensures that it has to be new alternative economical and social policies that are interested in poor people in the countryside that may be occurred by supporting NGOs. We need to believe that those poor people are real powerful force, who needs our cooperation to protect their rights. We need to discuss the problem with other members “parties, political forces, local councils, representatives of the parliament, journalists, writers, different ministries and governmental institutions in the countryside” in order to put new policies that guarantee livelihood opportunities and suitable income. We hope to develop the living conditions of people in the countryside and achieve their dreams of health care, real education, clean water, balanced meals, suitable income, livelihood opportunities and safe life.