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The Conditions of Female Workers in the Agricultural Sector - A tragedy Needs to a Legislative Intervention”
Since the very early trip of Nile towards Egypt for irrigating its plots, the
Egyptian farmers used to prepare eagerly with their axes, plows and seeds for
cultivating their plots. The female farmers were, hand by hand with men, facing
the seasons of flood and bear also the seasons of aridity.
This is besides the woman traditional role in breeding and caring the livestock as well as in the process of marketing the domestic products made by women at home, such as milk products.
These activities had been found recorded on the Pharaoh sculptures and papyrus and reserved in the sayings of the priests of ancient Egypt. The aim was to inform the following generations with the active role of women and that her relation with land was very old and also that this fertile green plots were a production of the active role of both women and men.
This active role of women was not confined also to the time of Pharaohs but it extended throughout history.
And when the machine entered the field of production in Egypt and men went to the cities and towns to work in the factories, women remained in the villages to sustain the works of farming and animal production as well as caring the family.
Egyptian agricultural labor:
Women have always been main contributors in the rural economy, and also victims of crisis in the field.
So, we can exclude that the call of Kasem Amin for women to out for work, was not directed to the rural women that used to work along times ago. Now, the question is does the rural woman get her rights? Is she enjoys a good work and day life with this active role she plays? Does she practice her right to live appropriately?
This report may be not the first in this kind of reports that handle the situation of labor women in the agriculture sector, but in the same time, it is as warning about the inferior and deteriorating situation of women in the rural areas. So, it is not only for monitoring the problems, but also it includes a trial to find real solution for the most important from which these sector of women do suffer.
The report includes also the legal situation of women working in the agricultural sector in order to shed a light on the most controversial legal issues. This to be in a setting for the legislator takes in consideration in order to protect the rights of women in the resolution of the Unified Labor Law as guaranteed in the international conventions to which Egypt is a part.
So the important question does this research pose is would the legislators pay attention to the rights of those women and their own conditions and requests? Are the work conditions under which women of the agricultural sector work are at least equal to those under which men work?
These questions would remain unanswered but for the people that practice or live in the experience by themselves. So we try here in this report as precisely as possible to present the truth about the people that suffer from these situation. Thus the words of both Sana`, Mabrouka Saida and others, are the real warnings on the truth and real image of the current reality of the situation of women in this sector. Through these words they gave we try to reach the answers on these questions posed above.
The report also handles the details about the size of women- labor in the agricultural sector and presents also the most recent statistics in this field, which helps significantly in assessing the level of change in this phenomenon.
Then, in the second section we handle the most important field notes of the situation of women in the agricultural sector in several villages such as Abu Ghaleb, Al-Katta, Berkash, Nekla, Um Dinar, Beni Salama and Kafr Hegazi. Those villages place the north of Giza province and represent the most places in which the phenomenon of women- labor is prevailed.
The report on the other hand presents the most important problems to which those women expose in the work places like the inequality of wages, the absolute absence of the legal protection, added to the hard works they do that are considered illegal, and also the absence of fair vacation and depriving her from real participation in the developmental programs.
In the last section in this report, we try to reach to a final picture through which we can conclude some of recommendations that have to be taken into consideration for better situation of those women.
Finally we have to mention that we know that one or even ten reports of this kind can not be enough for setting the appropriate solution for all the problems mentioned in this report, but however we hope these words to move on this silence towards better situation.