Women and Housing I: Why Women and Housing?

In our Egypt State of Housing 2022 series, we focus on the gendered reality of women’s housing situations from a perspective of the right to safe and independent housing. In Part I- we introduce the series by identifying the problem and the questions to be addressed.

Introduction

“I do not have a house, I am living off donations. My only wish is a bedroom with a bathroom, and I will thank god” says Farida Ramadan a transgender woman in her fifties, in a TV interview.[1] Farida was forced to leave her home in Damietta, a provincial capital in Northern Egypt, during her transitional phase after being subjected to violence from her family, neighbors, and even doctors and hospitals she sought.[2] Menna Abdelaziz, one of the nine  ‘Tiktok Girls’- infamously jailed on the charge of ‘violating family values’, spoke out in the formal investigations about the different forms of homelessness she faced since the death of her parents.[3] Menna was a sleeper in relatives’ houses, supermarkets, and several friends’ couches after the illegal usurpation of her share of the inheritance by her brothers. More recently, Dalia S., a 34-year-old single woman of Al-Salam district in Cairo, was murdered at the hands of her doorman and landlord in a violent confrontation after they broke into her apartment because they saw a male visitor go up to her.[4]

These stories are not personal, they are glimpses of women’s housing situations in Egypt that reflect the systemic socio-economic, legal, and structural barriers towards women’s right to adequate, safe, and independent housing because of their gender identity. Questions need to be raised about the statistically hidden numbers of women who are forced to stay with their abusive families because of their limited capacities to establish independent homes, or women who sustain a violent marriage because they do not want to go back with their children to their parents’ homes. Are there restrictions over women’s movement and housing choices to secure an independent house? Is there a price paid for a safe home?

Considering the statistical fact that in Egypt nine out of 10 women are subjected to forms of street violence,[5] and five out of 10 women are subjected to forms of domestic violence,[6] a safe and independent home has various layers of meaning to women. Home is the only escape for many women from the lived reality; it distances them from street violence. A stable place of their own is a control to some degree of their own lives and a rare arena to construct and perform personal values.

Homelessness extends beyond women being roofless to women who are insecurely and/or inadequately housed, which includes categories of situations of ‘living in insecure accommodation’, ‘living under the threat of eviction’ or ‘living under the threat of violence.’[7] Accordingly, statistics of homelessness are underestimated regarding women who live under the threat of domestic violence, the threat of being evicted or subjected to violence by landlords. This is in addition to other forms of multiple and intersecting structural discrimination that direct them to the choice of compromising their safety, a situation that requires a feminization of housing issues. That points out the need for rethinking some of the gendered realities lying behind the housing policies and strategies.

Quantitative Priorities are Not Enough

The National Council for Women ran a ‘Safe cities free from violence against women and girls’ programme between 2011 and 2020 that listed its achievements in Cairo and Giza and headed to other governorates: Damietta and Alexandria.[8] Another example of virtual support is the National Women’s Strategy 2030’s fourth pillar: ‘protection’. One of its achievements is the Minister of Transport Decree 237/2021 issuing “The National Code of Conduct for Users, Operators, and Workers in Transportation Facilities and Means.”[9] The Safe Cities Initiative got through the issue of urban and housing safety with abstract targets in a number of neighborhoods, while the code’s measures and ways of implementation did not broadly reach out to the women users. The effectiveness of these quantitative achievements is questionable especially towards different situations of gender segregation to access adequate, safe, and independent housing and the diversity of women’s experiences of hidden homelessness which are difficult to quantify as we will show in the series. Shaping priorities according to quantitative indicators do not by any means respond to the actual needs of women nor understand the complex interactions between their legal and socio-economic situation on one hand and their housing situations on the other.

Gender-neutral Policies are Not Enough

Social housing policies and strategies fail to see women outside of the patriarchal nuclear family constructions which are male-dominated by definition. The projects of the Social Housing and Mortgage Finance Fund which are supposedly providing middle and low-income citizens with affordable housing announced prioritizing firstly breadwinners and their families, secondly married couples, and thirdly single people.[10]  The program is less transparent about how it prioritizes female-headed households, who represented 27% of beneficiaries in 2020,[11] up from 8% when the program started, though more importantly, single females. While this is a significant improvement,[12] failing to see women as independent individuals in the government’s housing projects is structuring their dependency on males and forcing them to preserve their marital/parental identity. The fact that domestic violence prevention policies and housing policies are developed and funded separately is problematic. It is enabling the construction of women’s hidden homelessness, adding a barrier to the breaking out process of the cycle of violence and leaving women to the ‘brutality’ of the private rental housing market.

New Houses in New Desert Cities are Not Enough

The establishment of the new desert cities around the edge of the Greater Cairo Region was a spatial development strategy since the 1970s to absorb the growing population as a solution to the housing crises. However, planning these cities from choosing their generally remote locations and designing their zoning to the transportation networks does not acknowledge women’s needs that are related to caretaking responsibilities and commuting behaviors. Women tend to choose short-distance jobs which enable them to manage their caretaking responsibilities, especially in light of the statistical fact that women in Egypt spend around an average of 8 hours daily in caregiving services to children, the elderly, and relatives with disabilities.[13] As a result, isolated desert cities are limiting women’s access to work opportunities. Women’s different commuting behavior includes a tendency to what is termed as ‘trip chain’,[14] combining more than one trip between two primary daily commutes such as home to work. In Egypt, where only 11% of households own a car, and even then, where women have less access to ‘family’ cars, their commutes primarily depend on public transport, as well as walking. Therefore, lacking reliable public transportation networks in the new cities,[15] increases women’s dependency on male relatives to drive them/accompany them in their commuting journeys and limits their mobility choices.

Urgent Need for Gender-sensitive Housing Policy

Ultimately, the need for gender-sensitive housing strategy is urgent, as a needed alternative to the violent reality. The limited knowledge of women’s housing situations in Egypt means there is a need to focus precisely on the different and interlocking experiences and trajectories of women’s specific homelessness and housing exclusion. A focus that will seek to address the hidden legal and socio-economic aspects of women’s insecure housing conditions, and contribute to forming housing policies that protect, support, and help women to alleviate the effects of domestic and street violence and allow them to practice their rights. That urgent need comes in accordance with the principle of equal opportunities, non-discrimination or marginalization, and the role of housing policies and programs in achieving social inclusion as stipulated in the guided principals for formulating the Egypt Housing Strategy,[16] as well as the Egyptian Constitution of 2014 –Article (78) that stated the right of all citizens to obtain adequate housing. It also responds to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – goal 5 – in promoting women’s access – without exclusion – to economic, financial, and non-financial resources, as well as property rights, the goal which is adopted by the National Council for Women’s 2030 strategy.[17]

Acknowledgments

Written by: Reem Cherif

Reviewed by: Yahia Shawkat

Main image: Nouran El Marsafy