Last August, Al-Azhar University’s dormitory refused to readmit Maryam Mahmoud, a pseudonym for a 22-year-old first-year student, because her official marital status was “married,” although she had separated from a husband whose divorce proceedings she had not yet completed. Maryam tells Zawia3 that her marriage in Sohag, where her family lives, a few months after she enrolled in college three years ago, turned into domestic violence that included preventing her from attending university. She stopped studying for three years before deciding to return this year. The university reinstated her enrollment and granted her an exceptional additional year, only for the dormitory to close its doors.
Maryam’s case is not an exception. It is the application of a condition that remained buried in internal dormitory regulations until it erupted publicly on September 21, when parents circulated Aswan University forms requiring female students to declare that they were unmarried. University spokesperson Hisham Al-Fouli said the regulation had “existed for years” and was applied at around 28 public universities. On September 23, MP Ashraf Amin submitted a parliamentary question about its legal basis. On September 28, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights issued a statement urging the Supreme Council of Universities to abolish it, after reviewing 27 university regulations. Between the statement and the parliamentary question, neither the Universities Organization Law nor the Al-Azhar law mentions marital status as a condition for housing. Lawyers describe this as a “legislative vacuum” that each university fills with its own regulations.
An Exceptional Year, but No Bed
Getting into a dormitory was not Maryam’s first obstacle. Missing examinations for three consecutive years brought her under Article 220 of the executive regulations of Law No. 103 of 1961 on the Reorganization of Al-Azhar. Its text was replaced by Prime Ministerial Decree No. 3125 of 2023, setting a maximum of two years in the same academic year. A faculty council may authorize a third year of examinations in failed courses, but this does not apply to first-year students, Maryam’s year. Her faculty told her to submit a reinstatement application to the university’s student affairs administration. According to her account, the university president then granted her an exceptional additional year after learning what she had experienced.
The Central Administration for University Dormitories nevertheless refused to readmit her because of her marital status. When she told its head, Osama Tawfiq, that she could not afford private accommodation, he replied that “these are rules that cannot be changed.” Asked by Zawia3 over the telephone, Tawfiq said only, “They were already there when I was born,” and declined to comment further.
Maryam says a bed in private accommodation for students away from home costs EGP 2,000, around $41, per month, plus a month’s deposit and another EGP 2,000 in brokerage fees. A dormitory bed had cost EGP 400, around $8, per month, with free meals, as well as the sense of safety she felt while living there in 2023.
Her father is dead, and her mother is a homemaker supporting five children in university, secondary school and primary school, along with an elderly grandmother, on his pension. “I want to attend my lectures to remember what I have forgotten. My exams begin in mid-November, but I cannot go. Housing is the obstacle,” she says.
A Declaration Signed by a Guardian and Two Witnesses
Last September, Al-Masry Al-Youm published Aswan University’s dormitory admission requirements: a guardian’s declaration that the student is unmarried and will not marry during her studies, signed by two witnesses confirming that she “has never been married,” and the dormitory’s right to terminate her stay without notice if she marries during the academic year. A financial guarantor who is an employee must also authorize deductions from their salary to cover any overdue payments, accompanied by a certificate from their employer confirming a monthly salary above EGP 400, the figure stated in the form.
The university responded that same day. Hisham Al-Fouli, its spokesperson, said in a telephone interview with Amr Adib on MBC Masr’s Al-Hekaya that the conditions were not new and had existed in dormitory regulations for years. The university interprets a female student’s marriage as meaning that “she has alternative housing,” and terminates her stay if her marriage is established, whether she married after admission or beforehand. He said housing rules followed a regulation applied at around 28 public universities, and that Aswan had received around 24,000 students this year, 2,500 of whom entered its six dormitory complexes. The next day, he added that the condition applied to male and female students alike and that the guarantor form had been used since the university’s founding to protect money owed to it. Acting university president Ashraf Imam said growing numbers of students arriving from other governorates had required clear, published rules.
On September 23, MP Ashraf Amin submitted a parliamentary question to House of Representatives Speaker Hisham Badawi for referral to Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Higher Education Minister Abdel Aziz Konsowa. He asked whether marital-status and financial-guarantee conditions applied uniformly across public universities and what legal and regulatory basis supported each. He called for reconsidering any condition that becomes an obstacle for students studying away from home, and for replacing old procedures with simplified electronic ones.
What the Published Regulations Say
The condition is not unique to Aswan. Dormitory requirements published by Cairo and Al-Azhar universities for 2026/2027 state, in Cairo’s case, that “the student must not be married, with an exception for international students,” and, at Al-Azhar, that “the male or female student must be single at the time of applying for accommodation.” Both universities therefore apply the unmarried-status requirement to both sexes. This was the wording that closed the dormitory door to Maryam. The accommodation requirements page on Ain Shams University’s website, however, makes no mention of marital status, stipulating only residence outside Greater Cairo and ranking applicants by academic grade and distance.
Elham Mahmoud, a researcher responsible for the gender-based violence portfolio at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, reviewed 27 public-university regulations. She found common general conditions: enrollment at the university, place of residence, no disciplinary penalties, payment of fees and medical fitness. She tells Zawia3 that an explicit unmarried-status requirement specifically for female students appeared in the regulations of Menoufia, Mansoura, Aswan and the University of Sadat City. A second group, Cairo, Ain Shams and Helwan, required that a female student be unmarried and never previously married. She could not find published copies of the internal regulations for Assiut, Tanta, Alexandria, Zagazig, Sohag, Fayoum or Kafr El-Sheikh universities. She adds that she had not imagined such provisions existed until her colleague Ishak Ibrahim, who leads the initiative’s freedom of religion and belief work, told her that the condition had been applied verbally before universities began writing it into regulations three years ago.
Elham argues that the danger is that the condition does not assess a student’s eligibility for accommodation. Instead, it makes her marital status and personal history the criteria for an educational service tied to her ability to continue studying, erecting a barrier for divorced and widowed women who want to complete their education. “What does a female student’s marital status have to do with her eligibility for university housing?” she asks. She explains that dormitories exist to provide housing according to objective criteria such as enrollment, geographical distance and academic grades. Distinctions based on marital status amount to discrimination prohibited by the Constitution, which bans discrimination on grounds of sex or social status. These regulations therefore require constitutional and legal scrutiny, particularly as marriage and divorce at a young age recur, threatening to push many women out of education because of housing barriers. She describes the underlying notion that a married student might corrupt an unmarried student’s morals as out of step with the awareness of girls in younger generations.
Her criticism extends beyond marriage. Requiring a guarantor who is an employee is another form of discrimination, she says, because many students have no relatives in government employment. Dormitory authorities should instead turn to the student welfare fund to cover the shortfall for those unable to pay. She recalls seeing four female students five years ago sharing one dilapidated room in a Nasr City apartment because they could not obtain dormitory places. In its September 28 statement, the initiative urged the Supreme Council of Universities to abolish the condition. Elham is contacting several universities to find even one affected student whom it can support legally and obtain a court ruling requiring dormitories to change their regulations.
Two Laws and Two Articles
Law No. 49 of 1972 on the Organization of Universities regulates dormitories in two articles that occupy no more than one page. Article 112 states that dormitories are university units supervised by a council chaired by the vice president for education and student affairs, with the university secretary-general as a member. Article 113 states that the dormitory council proposes its internal regulations, including admission conditions and residence and disciplinary rules, for approval by the university council. Al-Azhar University is governed by a different law, the law on the Reorganization of Al-Azhar and its executive regulations, and its dormitories are run by an independent central administration.
Neither law mentions marital status.
Lawyer Mohab Saeed tells Zawia3 that decisions imposing such conditions must rest on a clear legislative basis defining their scope, limits and what the administrative authority is permitted to do. The legislative vacuum in the Universities Organization Law leaves university councils relying on provisions empowering them to manage their own affairs, raising questions about the limits of that authority. He explains that dormitory regulations are not issued within a unified framework: some come through presidential decrees, others through ministerial decisions or organizational decisions by a university president. The absence of a legislative rule defining the body authorized to issue them and the limits of its authority has contributed to the proliferation of conditions imposed on female students.
Saeed argues that, however broad universities’ power to set dormitory regulations may be, it remains constrained by the Constitution. University autonomy does not exempt them from complying with it. These decisions are constitutionally flawed, he says, because they involve discrimination contrary to Article 53 on equality and non-discrimination, Article 11 on guaranteeing women’s rights, and the principle of equal opportunity. He questions the basis for assuming that a married student can afford expensive private accommodation, an assumption unrelated to her actual economic circumstances that cannot justify excluding her. He explains that a challenge can be brought before the Administrative Court against the negative administrative decision to refuse the student accommodation. The precise route depends on each case’s circumstances and the grounds the university relied on in its refusal.
“What Does It Mean for a Female Student to Be a Virgin?”
Malek Adly, director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, tells Zawia3 that requiring female students to be unmarried or never previously married is unacceptable and fails to keep pace with social change. Egypt is a civil state governed by the principles of citizenship, he says, so marital status, whether marriage or divorce, should not become a justification for discrimination in services provided by educational institutions, including housing. He considers the condition an unjustified stigmatization of female students and a questioning of their reputations: “What does it mean that a female student has to be a virgin to live in a university dormitory?” He sees it as a violation of constitutional and legal principles, and a failure by the relevant bodies to uphold their obligation to apply university service rules without discrimination.
He adds that if officials approach the issue paternalistically and prefer to separate married and unmarried students, the alternative is to allocate accommodation for married women and apply residence rules to everyone, rather than deny them housing. Citizens’ compliance with the laws governing their affairs does not give any body the right to discriminate against them. He explains that he has seen these regulations only through the discussion on social media and does not know whether they are recent or old rules that have been reactivated. The center is ready to provide legal support to female students denied accommodation because of marriage if they wish to challenge the decision, although it has not yet received a single complaint. He considers these administrative decisions open to review: the bodies that issued them can reverse them.
Hiding a Marriage for Nine Months
During the second semester of 2021, Mai Sherif, a pseudonym for a graduate of a university in Sadat City, Menoufia, concealed her marriage from the dormitory administration and her friends, fearing expulsion as soon as it was discovered. The administration, she tells Zawia3, “was strict about this.” Concealment did not shield her from the consequences. She was frequently ill and experienced pregnancy symptoms while pretending to dormitory supervisors that she was fine. She says her husband could not afford private student accommodation because his work was unstable and they were newly married. Had she been expelled, her only option would have been a daily commute between Giza, where she lived, and Sadat City, a journey of around an hour and a half according to Google Maps.
Rahma Mostafa, a pseudonym for an Al-Azhar student, tells Zawia3 that the unmarried-status declaration was the most important document she submitted for dormitory admission. It had to carry the official eagle stamp and the signatures of two witnesses confirming that she was not married. She explains that admission priority often goes to orphans and students with disabilities, such as blind students and those unable to climb to upper floors, who receive ground-floor rooms on humanitarian grounds. That consideration was not extended to Mai, whose husband could not rent accommodation, or to Maryam, who could not afford a room.
Rahma divides university housing into three types. Standard accommodation costs EGP 400, around $8, for a bed in a six-student room in lower-quality buildings. Economy accommodation costs around EGP 650, around $13, in an eight-student room with a refrigerator and slightly better buildings. Premium accommodation costs EGP 1,000, around $21, with meals, or EGP 800, around $17, without them, which is what she pays. Al-Dostor lists premium housing prices by room type: EGP 1,300, around $27, for a single room; EGP 1,100, around $23, for a double; and EGP 900, around $19, for a triple.
These prices remain far below private accommodation outside the dormitory, where a bed can cost EGP 3,000, around $62, in an apartment crowded with as many as 14 students, as Rahma experienced before entering university housing.
She explains that admission requires a “Good” academic grade but sometimes follows criteria she does not understand: “A student may get a Good grade and still not be accepted.” Applications proceed in three stages on the university website, which asks for the student’s grade and academic year. First-year students apply in the second stage after learning which faculty they have been assigned to. Students who have failed some courses are accepted in the third stage if places remain. Applicants must update their information annually, providing a medical examination, receipts and the financial guarantor’s form, which permits salary deductions if the student leaves without completing clearance procedures. Rahma says a student who criticizes the dormitory is referred to a disciplinary council, causing her serious harm.
Between a regulation that Aswan University says applies at 28 universities, a parliamentary question awaiting the government’s response, and a rights group searching for one student to bring a case, Maryam is looking for a room she can afford before mid-November. Meanwhile, those who marry while living in dormitories pay for their marriage through concealment or expulsion.
