Women and Housing 2: Residents not Detainees

In our Egypt State of Housing 2022 series, we focus on the state of women and housing in Egypt. Women and housing series looks at the gendered reality of women’s housing situations from a perspective of the right to safe and independent housing. In Part 2 we answer questions of how and why these housing rights for women are a necessity.

Introduction

Despite the fact that more than 20% of women living in urban areas of Egypt do not live under the form of parental or marital housing,[1] women continue to face invisibility of their needs in housing policies, and the manifold legal, economic, and social burdens to their right to safe and independent housing. Living outside the binary of parental/marital housing can mean for many women breaking out of the structures of male-dependence, out of the necessity to access to education and employment opportunities, as well as protecting their personal safety by escaping verbal and physical violence and abuse. As reported by Tadwein, two out of ten women confirm that they have been exposed to some form of sexual abuse within the family.[2] To simply practice being citizens in their own rights: exercise choice, make decisions and having a space to shape their own identities and lifestyle patterns, women in Egypt yearn to leave their parental homes. Yet, this ironically means encountering the wider guardianship and authority of the intrusively patriarchal society of landlords, neighbours, and doormen.

How can safe and independent housing be a self-defense tool, an environment to heal, a prerequisite for the inalienable right of self-protection, and a form of resistance? In an attempt to answer, we have interviewed a number of women housed on their own in a range of different neighbourhoods in Cairo. In this essay, they share their needs to have the option of leaving family homes and to shape their livelihood, at that moment of their lives, outside the societal fate of ‘leaving her father’s house to her husband’s.

Reclaiming the Right to Exercise Choices

Women’s choices are manipulated and limited under the family’s heel for being housed by them. As such, escaping this institution should still be an option. “I was rediscovering myself, I wanted to experience, choose and live my life. I always had this urge in my mind that all the things in the world will pass by without me knowing it, without even the chance to recognize if it was suitable for me or not” says Mona,[3] a 28-year-old woman. Mona left her family home at the age of 23 to “practice what things in life reflect her and what do not,” before she chose to marry and agree on a mutually satisfactory social contract with her husband after that.

Having that option of being housed outside the family institution can also mean escaping the manipulated situation which imposes that entering other institutions of heteronormativity, marriage and motherhood and staying within them are the only protected options. Dina explains that “after graduation, I was trapped in a loop of potential husbands, and meeting them was a subtle compromise to avoid my family’s disapproval of going out. Saying a decisive no was not an option, the pressure was bigger than me” the 26-year-old woman added that, “my need to move out was strongly related to the obsession of spending time outdoors, I wanted the choice to be mine without my family’s control to start managing it according to my schedule and my willingness to do so.” Dina, as so many women, experienced levels of control over her access to the outside that immobilize her and limit her movement entirely to their father’s management.

Reclaiming the Ability to Act

“When I got out of their house, I began to start shaping my relationship with them to be the relation that should exist between the individuals and their families, they are people I love and I want them to exist in my life, but not in a dominated way,” says Mona describing how having a room for her own enables her to rebuild and rearrange the power dynamics between her and her parents.

Sarah, aged 33, describes how dependence instead of resting solely in the hands of the male head of the family in a one-way form becomes mutual, saying that “I start to maintain an interdependence form of our relationship. When I distanced myself from that entity of the family, our clashes and conflicts reduced and our mutual relationship became better. Now, I miss them, I know they need my presence, and eventually visiting them turned out to be a thing that I love to do weekly.” Also, Aya, aged 30, spoke out about her ability to redraw boundaries and create new roles, “I stopped doing actions that all the time were taking place under coercion, such as all the family social events that I was coerced to attend to gain more exposure to potential husbands with a cheerful attitude and a fake smile, it was such a degrading scene I had to act.”

Reclaiming the Capacity to Stop Being Apologetic

“I always felt like being extrinsic in ‘our’ house, mainly due to the fact that it is ‘ours.’ All the time I had to explain why I need a space of my own. Privacy! That unintelligible word that I was always in need to explain within a prevalent logic of being a family means that we share everything, even my life and my space, which they have free access to!” says Mona. What Mona experienced is one of the classic manifestations of exercising differences of power that Marilyn Frye describes by “total power is unconditional access; total powerlessness is being unconditionally accessible”.[4]

Rana, aged 27, elaborates that “getting out of the house needed to be notified well in advance, no short notices were allowed! Giving a clear reason, listing places I will stay at and people I will meet with when needed too. My requesting manner must be polite. In short, my case must be properly stowed to reduce the likelihood of their rejection.” She continued “now, I am exempted from all these explanations of why you left work early? Why did you come home crying, you should quit your job, who bothered you? I always had to justify my mood or finish all my crying outside before returning home to avoid questioning or interference. But now, I left my job or I did not, I have money or I do not, had a fight with my friends or had not, all of these are issues of mine that do not need justifications.” Having separate housing options for many women is a breakdown from the need to provide explanations and justifications for being late or being early, for being frustrated or getting exhausted, and for every step outside which is always a matter of family negotiation according to the level of validity the reasons are, and her previous obedience history.

For that, women need a place to be residents, not detainees, the right to a place of their own to call home. A home of their own is a change in their violent and abusive social reality. Every woman has the right to be included in clear housing policies that recognize them outside of being mothers and part of a family, provide them with affordable housing options, recognise and preserve their right to have the necessity of safe and independent homes.

Acknowledgments

Written by: Reem Cherif

Reviewed by: Yahia Shawkat

Main image: Nouran El Marsafy