The Egyptian women who belong to low and intermediate slices of the intermediate social category of Egypt suffer an economic exploitation (putting them in an intentional poverty). Women of these slices suffer also different types of racism based on gender. The last one is a general suffering of all Egyptian women. Rates of economic exploitation increased after implementing of structural adjustment policy.
As for the impacts of structural adjustment on the positions of rural women, we will display some of these impacts that are related to agrarian works and other aspects, such as unemployment and education.
a)    Deterioration in work conditions:
Rural women, who belong to a family that work in farming, work in farming with payment or without in case she works for the family. In some case she works in both kinds. She also works in recycling inside the family in the majority of Egypt’s countryside. 67% of women who are able to work “aged 15 – 64” work in farming in the countryside in 1997 either with or without payment (a research sample in a labour study in 1997). 40% of these working women work with a payment in different economic activities. Number of women aged 15 – 64 years old was 1,767,200 in the same year (the previous reference).
Regardless the degree of accuracy of official data mentioned about the economic participation of rural women in the different activities, participation of women is actually more than the mentioned numbers either in rural or urban areas. It is enough to mention that the labour study of 1997 does not put in consideration the females working in multiple activities and aged between 6 and 15 years old.[1]
>So, we will depend on the results of some researches and field studies run in the countryside. We found in these studies that the rural women work in farming with and/or without a payment. She also works in other activities other than farming, such as selling of vegetables, ghee, eggs and chicken, in addition to working in construction sector.
In most villages in Upper Egypt, women carry out the same agrarian works of the man, however hard and risky these works are. She works for example in mixing and distribution of pesticides. She can also be injured because of work. There is for example a high rate of pregnancy failure among women. Rural women work in farming (either for the family or for a payment) mainly to help in the livelihood of the family and to support the family in case the husband is dead or crippled. She would also work to participate in the expenses of her marriage and her personal needs. Women usually work away from the family from 6 to 16 hours daily. They work without any kind of legal protection in the aspects of payment, work hours, vacations, insurance and pensions. Work conditions are very harsh. There are no means of transportation and female workers have to walk for long distances to the workplace (they walk for 3 km sometimes). There is also no industrial safety in work places, in addition to other shapes of the absence of legal protection (Keshk and Mortada, 1999).[2]
Women do not work outside the family in some villages in Upper Egypt (except for work in teaching, administrative works and other specialised careers and except for girls younger than 12 or 13 years old). Working in fields for women is considered “unethical” and “sinful” in the point of view of men. Girls younger than 13 years old work in manual control of cotton worm, cattle breeding, transferring the food to males in fields, harvest of serials (beans, lent and European Bean) and cotton either for the family or the others with a payment. Women in these villages work in their houses in cooking, child care, washing, cleaning and bringing of water. The burden on women is larger among poor families. Some women start very small projects that make some profits (selling of eggs, dairies, sewing, vegetables…etc). Hopkins accounts for keeping women out of agrarian work in this kind of villages by the desire to keep the payments of men high (Hopkins, 1987, pp 83 – 95, Tolaan 1998).
In Delta countryside, women work in farming and other fields (services and productive activities). She innovates in order to face poverty and meet the basic needs of life. This innovation follows some mechanisms and principles, such as self-dependence through developing some limited abilities, developing new concepts of group consumption that decreases the need for money, rationalising of consumption and other mechanisms. This innovation is affected by the age of women, the size of their families and number of years of marriage (Rabaab, 1993, p. 216 – 315).
Rural women in Delta (and Upper Egypt as well) suffer a doubled exploitation. She works for less money compared to her work for one side, and compared to the payment of men on the other side. In addition, this work is considered as not decent or only inferior women would work in it (Za’look, 1996). Work hours for women (either for the family or for others with payment) have increased either in farming or in the production of small goods. Their effort in the field or recycling has increased too. They became more exhausted and busy in 1994 than two years before because expenditures have doubled two to three times during the same period. Expenditures on food, education, healthcare, clothes and agricultural inputs have increased. It seems that the policy of structural adjustment suffer a gender blindness. It affects women more than men. The policy differentiates between men and women in both payments and work burdens. As long as this blindness continues, marginalisation of women increases (Bosch, 1996, p. 154 – 155, Keshk, 1999, p. 299 – 342, Abdel-Gawwaad, 1998, p. 240 – 242, Morsy, 1993).
Rural women’s work in what is called non-official sector is a shelter for illiterate poor women, and even for intermediate literate and in a few cases for highly educated women (especially since the state’s policy of employing the intermediate and highly educated citizens has stopped since the eighties). Most female workers in non-official sector belong to families from the inferior social categories which are supported by women (widows, divorced deserted…etc). Women work in this sector in the activities of small goods production for the others with payment or inside the family (as sellers in stores, markets and streets and as domestic servants or cleaning workers in different organisations…etc). They work for 5-16 hours daily and the work is characterised by low payment and hard work conditions that have no medical or legal protection. Women in work are mostly exploited by employers and their sexual violations, in addition to gangsters in markets and streets (Keshk, 1998).

Rural women working in farming suffer racism in wages. Work day for women is half the work day for men, while they both do the same works (Ibrahim, 1995). While the average wage for men increased from 4.1 to 4.7 pounds, average wages of women decreased from 3 to 2.9 pounds (Abu Mandour, 1996, p. 196). Results of a study run in 1988 indicate that the average wage of rural women (working either in farming or in any other field) was 49% of the average wage of men (Zeitoun, 1998).
Increasing of unemployment rate among rural women:
The report of human development in the Arab world for the year 2002 concentrates on the effect of slow or negative growth on employment chances. The report also concentrates on saturation of labour market in petrol countries, which leads to a decrease in labour exported to these countries. The report also mentions the shrinking effect of “structural adjustment” programs on the short run, and mentions the structural obstacles in front of creating new work opportunities, as labour markets are traditional or departed and unable to carry out their functions. Accordingly, mechanisms of exchanging of labour forces are weak and inactive (UNDP, 2002, p. 88 – 89).
As for the “structural adjustment” programs, we should mention the role of these programs in increasing the number and proportion of the unemployed. 71,441 workers retired according to early retirement system till 30^th of June 1998. Requests of early retirement were eighty thousands in the first half of 1999 according to the report of ministry of business sector. It was expected that 49,490 of them will be referred to early retirement at the end of 2000 (Khattaab, 1999, LCHR, 2001, p. 244).
These programs lead also to an increasing unemployment rate through firing of workers after privatisation in order to decrease production cost and increase profits (Abdel-Fadeel, 1996, p. 28). These programs lead also to bankruptcy of several small and intermediate private projects that lost in an unequal competition with imported productions that increased after cancelling the state’s protection (Abdel-Fadeel, 1996, p. 39). The same thing happens in the countryside. Liberalisation of agriculture and especially the new land law led to deterioration in life conditions for many poor farmers and many landlords of small ownerships. Many poor tenant farmers lost their tenured arable lands after the increase in annual tenure value from 200 pounds for one feddan in 1990 to 800 pounds in 1992 – 97 and then to 2500 pounds. Many farmers left their lands and began to search for a work either in farming or in any other field, the thing that represents more pressure on labour market.
Number of unemployed females among a research sample in a study about labour force in 1997 was 411,200 among the age category of 15 – 64 in the countryside. Unemployment rates among women are continuously increasing in the countryside. It was 5% of women and became 9% then 18% and 21% in the years 1984, 1990, 1993 and 1995. The proportion became 19% in 1997, may be because the proportion of the years 1984 – 1995 was calculated among the age category 12 – 64 years, while in 1997 the age category was 15 – 65 years (labour force study, 1997).
c)     Deterioration in education opportunities:

Women have achieved generally continuous and remarkable advances in the field of education during the last three decades of the twentieth century. These advances can be noticed in high rates of joining the different levels of education for women (national council for childhood and motherhood, 1995, p. 17 – 22). In the meanwhile there are variable indicators of educational status of women that reveal a weak position compared to general educational status. High rates of illiteracy among women reveal how the marginalised and low positions of women in life (Egypt: human development report, 1996, p. 97, El-Baradei). In the course of this fact, official data reveal a decrease in illiteracy rate among rural women from 77% in 1986 to 63% in 1996, but it is still a very high rate, especially when compared to illiteracy rate among men that decreased from 47% to 36% in the same two years (population survey in 1986, 1996). Illiteracy rate among females in 1996 is even higher in some provinces such as Menya (70%), Bani Sweif and fayyoum (69%), Sohaag (68%) and 66% in Assiut and Qena (Population survey in 1996).

It is known that illiteracy resources are represented in not joining education, inability to contain all numbers and escaping from basic education. Official data show that 15% of children who have the right to join basic education every year cannot be contained and stay out of school (946,000 in 1990/91 and 1,291,000 in 1995-96). Data also show that 27% of students registered in basic education escaped before completing their primary school and 7% escaped before completing the preparatory education. Total escaping from basic education in 1986/87 was 51%. Several studies showed the relation between low income and low rates of joining the school, escaping from school and low abilities in studying (national planning centre, 2000, p. 110 – 113).

Survey of human development report for the year 1996, which was made to clarify the living conditions of the poor, declares that 28% of the research sample in the countryside had to stop educating their sons due to hard life conditions. 45% of the research sample declared that the priority in education is for sons not daughters (Zeitoun, 1998, p. 33 – 34). Numbers show that more than 25% of children in education age in Upper Egypt in 1994/95 did not benefit from education budget for the three levels of schools: primary, preparatory and secondary. This number reached more than 1.5 million children out of education this year (Zeitoun, 2000, p. 29 – 31).