{"id":16882,"date":"2026-01-28T18:41:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T16:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=16882"},"modified":"2026-10-24T14:59:35","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T12:59:35","slug":"rural-women-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/rural-women-2\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Field to the Margins: How Egypt\u2019s Agricultural Policies Feminise Poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rural women form the backbone of food production in Egypt, performing pivotal roles that extend from farming and harvesting crops to saving seeds, tending the land and raising livestock and poultry. Despite this, they remain the most vulnerable to poverty and marginalisation within the agricultural and economic system. Recent<\/span> studies<\/span><\/a> indicate that food and agriculture systems see broad participation by both women and men, but this participation is marked by a clear imbalance in terms of recognition, return, and the ability to control resources and make decisions. <\/span><\/p>\n

The role of rural men is often concentrated in officially recognised activities, such as owning land, determining the type of crops, accessing subsidised inputs, and dealing with agricultural cooperatives and formal markets, which allows them to benefit from government support, financing, agricultural extension and modern technology. At the level of decision-making, men remain the main actor, whether within the farming household or in public policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, women participate in all stages of food and agriculture systems, from planting and harvesting, through food processing and storage, to informal marketing and the care work linked to food production. Despite this pivotal role, women’s contributions are often<\/span> classified<\/span><\/a> as “help” or “unpaid family work”, which makes them invisible in statistics and public policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The<\/span> research<\/span><\/a> shows that women bear a double burden, combining agricultural work with domestic and care work, while men do not bear the same burden to the same degree. Women are also more vulnerable to shocks and crises, such as climate change or economic crises, because of their reliance on informal work, the absence of social safety nets, and their limited access to technology and resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, rural women in Egypt face legal, social and cultural restrictions that limit land ownership, access to finance and benefiting from agricultural support programmes, which leads<\/a> to a clear disparity in productivity and economic return that does not reflect the scale of the effort expended. While men’s role is recognised economically and institutionally, women’s contributions remain essential but invisible, which deepens the gaps between the sexes and the rising proportion of women living below the poverty line.<\/p>\n

Women make up about 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, but they are often in unstable, low-paid jobs. Women in agriculture have less access to vital resources such as land, credit, agricultural inputs, education and extension services, and they also represent a very small proportion of landowners compared with their rates of participation in work, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A<\/span> study<\/span><\/a> issued by the FAO, entitled “Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development”, reveals that agriculture in many developing countries is not achieving its full productive potential, partly because women, despite their large contribution to agricultural work, face a gender gap in access to productive resources and opportunities compared with men, which limits their productivity and reduces their contribution to food security and economic development.<\/span><\/p>\n

Women’s participation in agricultural work is a basic feature of poor and developing countries, as they work in various activities of crop and livestock production, and rural women are a pivotal element in achieving food security at the household and community levels. Women make up about 40% of the labour force in the agricultural sector in Egypt, and they take part in harvesting crops and loading and transporting agricultural produce, in addition to the almost complete role they play in milking and caring for cows and raising poultry and birds. Despite this, women’s ownership of agricultural land does not exceed just 2%, as social customs still deprive women of inheriting land, particularly in Upper Egypt, according to Dr Nader Nour El-Din, professor of water resources and land at the Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, and an expert at the General Assembly of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201dWomen bear the greatest burden of poverty within the rural household, amid difficult economic conditions and extremely small agricultural holdings; about 50% of agricultural landowners in Egypt own less than one feddan, and the proportion rises in Upper Egypt to about 90%,\u201d he tells \u201dZawia3\u201d, adding that small holdings are not enough to support a family, which pushes families to rely on the work of all their members, including women and children, whether on their own land or on other neighbouring farms, which is reflected in high rates of school dropout, particularly among girls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nour El-Din explains that poverty in the countryside, especially in Upper Egypt, is more severe than in Lower Egypt, owing to the absence of non-agricultural economic alternatives, such as industry or trade, which makes agriculture almost the only source of income. In this context, women bear double responsibilities, starting with working the land, through caring for livestock and poultry, to preparing food and taking it to the male members of the family in the field, and selling dairy products in the markets. Women are the main actors in these activities, from which men are often absent.<\/span><\/p>\n

The FAO expert explains that agricultural planning is mostly dominated by men, as they are the ones with greater access to formal agricultural education, while women’s participation in decision-making remains limited and usually comes through community associations and non-governmental organisations, which focus on supporting women in small projects, such as making dairy products, raising poultry and rabbits, or providing simple production tools. He points out that government agricultural support goes mainly to landowners, so men are the main beneficiaries of this support.<\/span><\/p>\n

He adds: “Women’s limited ownership of land is reflected in their chances of obtaining production inputs, finance or agricultural extension, as men usually receive the fertiliser quotas and support from the agricultural cooperatives. Even in cases where a woman owns agricultural land, she often delegates her husband or son to deal with the official bodies, because of the patriarchal nature of rural society and the restrictions it imposes on women’s participation in the public sphere.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Nour El-Din points out that women’s unpaid work ultimately feeds into the household’s income and the meeting of its basic needs, given the low profitability of the agricultural sector compared with other sectors such as industry and trade, where income may reach several times that of agricultural workers.<\/span><\/p>\n

He stresses that the conditions of rural women, and their role in agricultural production, cannot be understood in isolation from the wider economic and social context, which is governed by poverty, the small size of holdings and the dominance of traditional customs, emphasising that achieving a measure of justice and fairness for rural women remains a basic condition for strengthening food security and sustainable agricultural development.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading:<\/b> The battle of women in rural Egypt.. rights lost under the grip of customs<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n


\nDeepening the feminisation of poverty<\/b><\/h1>\n

The pivotal role that rural women play in producing food, saving seeds, managing natural resources and tending the land is not recognised economically or socially, because of the dominance of the patriarchal capitalist model that undervalues domestic and care work, including the unpaid activities of food production, and makes this work invisible in public policies and official statistics, according to a<\/span> research paper<\/span><\/a> entitled “A Feminist Approach to Food Sovereignty: Rural Women and Food Sovereignty \u2013 Ways of Resistance and Resilience in the Face of Poverty”, issued by the New Woman Foundation in October 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n

The research paper explains that this structural exclusion contributes directly to deepening the phenomenon of the <\/span>“<\/b>feminisation of poverty<\/b><\/a>“. The paper links gender-based discrimination, and depriving women of fair access to land, resources, finance and decision-making, with the fragility of their economic and social conditions, stressing that protecting rural women from poverty is a basic entry point for achieving social, economic and environmental justice and building a fairer and more sustainable food system.<\/span><\/p>\n

This structural exclusion is clearly evident in the daily lives of rural women. Umm Mahmoud, a farmer in her thirties from a village in Mallawi district in Minya governorate in Upper Egypt, starts her day before sunrise, preparing breakfast and bringing it to her husband and son in the field, and spends hours helping them. She then returns home by ten in the morning to do some household care work and feed the livestock and poultry, and she milks the two cows owned by her husband’s family and collects the chicken eggs.<\/span><\/p>\n

By noon she goes to the market to sell the milk and eggs, then returns home an hour before sunset to prepare lunch for the family of 12, shortly before her husband and son return from the field. Despite her participation in farming and raising poultry and livestock, and her selling of dairy and eggs in the market, she does not own land in her name, and she receives no fixed wage or health insurance, which sums up the reality of thousands of women who contribute to food production without this role being reflected in their income or in their enjoyment of social protection.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>Omaima Emad<\/b>, a researcher in the Women and Work programme at the New Woman Foundation, explains that the work women do is often classified as unpaid work, including raising livestock, farming and taking part in the harvest, which makes their contribution invisible in the formal economy and deprives them of any social protection or guarantee of economic returns. As for paid work in the agricultural sector, there is a wage gap of about 50% compared with men, and the majority of women working in agriculture work in the informal or unorganised sector, which means they receive meagre wages and lack safe transport, in addition to the absence of social protection and health insurance.<\/span><\/p>\n

She tells “Zawia3″: ” Rural women make a pivotal contribution to food production, but their share of ownership of agricultural land does not exceed 5% to 6%, and this is mainly due to cultural factors, as land is registered in the name of the husband, father or brother, and women often do not receive their inheritance in the form of land”<\/span><\/p>\n

The researcher adds that \u201crural women are the guardians of food and cultural heritage, and their preservation of knowledge related to local production is an essential part of food sovereignty, but their exclusion from decision-making in agricultural policies limits their influence\u201d, noting that women face compounded vulnerability because of the overlap of economic, social and cultural factors, such as early marriage, poor access to health and education services, and the absence of social security, which leads to the continuation of the cycle of the “feminisation of poverty”.<\/span><\/p>\n

She notes that social protection and labour organisation policies, such as establishing agricultural cooperatives for women and encouraging the registration of land in their names, could help strengthen their bargaining position, improve access to markets, raise their income and productive efficiency, and reduce crop waste, and that strengthening technical and financial training programmes for women in the countryside is also necessary to confront the challenges resulting from climate change and reduce the fragility of their economic situation, pointing to the importance of the role of civil society in supporting rural women.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading:<\/b> \u201cThe deadly harvest\u201d: child agricultural workers in Egypt, victims of labour brokers and legislation<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n


\nClear gaps between the sexes<\/b><\/h1>\n

For her part,<\/span> Lamia Lotfy<\/b>, director of the Rural Women Initiative, believes that land tenure in itself does not guarantee a woman the ability to control the management of her agricultural resources, as she may own a plot of land but be unable to decide the type of crop or dispose of the rent. Inheritance also often deprives women of land, as they are compensated with money that is merely a “token settlement” that does not represent the real value of the land, whereas land ownership gives a woman actual control over the resources associated with it to a greater extent than liquid cash.<\/span><\/p>\n

She tells \u201dZawia3\u201d that “plans aimed at financial inclusion are important, but having a bank account or an e-wallet card does not guarantee a woman the ability to make decisions about using it. Women’s membership of agricultural unions is also not enough to guarantee access to decision-making positions, as women in leadership positions remain \u201cvery few compared with their numbers.”<\/span><\/p>\n

She also points to clear gaps in all sectors, from lower wages for women compared with men, to unsafe transport and work accidents that affect women workers’ ability to continue in agricultural production, noting that rural women suffer from health and physical pressures that reduce their capacity to produce after the age of 45 or 50, with a large gap in access to health services and social insurance, which leaves them outside the umbrella of social protection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding unpaid work, Lamia explains that most of women’s work in the countryside, whether in farming, housework or caring for animals, is not considered formally productive work but merely “help”, which deprives them of recognition of their efforts, of joining unions and of obtaining social protection, pointing out that the proportion of women working in agriculture exceeds that of men, reaching about 84% or more, yet they do not own agricultural land, cannot obtain loans to set up their own agricultural projects, and have limited training opportunities, which reduces their agricultural productivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The initiative’s director reveals a phenomenon of “rural men fleeing agricultural work” in areas close to industrial cities, which has contributed to the feminisation of poverty, as women are forced into daily work for meagre wages in harsher jobs, while men obtain better job opportunities in the industrial sectors with social benefits and health insurance. This disparity also widens the gap between men and women within the household and between male and female workers in the same sector.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lamia calls for empowering women through training in modern farming tools, which will enable them to adapt to climate change, and enabling them to own land or obtain loans, in addition to providing health and pension social protection, which would achieve real empowerment and guarantee the sustainability of food security and agricultural work in general.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the state offers no real interventions to protect rural women working in agriculture and food security or to improve their conditions, and the private sector and privatisation continue to control the course of agricultural work without any recognition of women’s contributions. While they carry out double agricultural and care work, they own neither the land nor the decision over crops or economic returns, and they enjoy no social or economic protection, which makes them the most exposed to marginalisation and exploitation despite being the foundation of the food production system, according to researcher <\/span>Manar Abdel Aziz<\/b>, a researcher in gender and economic justice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their vulnerability is aggravated by the intersection of gender, poverty and geographical location, as \u201cwomen in the countryside lack education, services, job opportunities and safe transport, and the burden of providing water, fuel and food falls on them, and a woman is often forced to put the family’s needs before her personal needs, which leads to the continuation of the cycle of poverty and its feminisation, and increases women’s exposure to blackmail and to economic, social and gender-based violence,\u201d she tells \u201dZawia3\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researcher stresses that the absence of legal and economic recognition of rural women’s roles in agriculture and care work prevents them from obtaining any returns or protection, and that the state’s economic policies impose complete dependency on women, which increases the fragility of their situation. <\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, she believes that the solution begins with legal and economic recognition of rural women, providing social protection, strengthening their participation in decision-making, enabling their access to agricultural resources and assets, and guaranteeing sustainable food security, along with the need to support the role of civil society and feminist movements in making up for the shortfall resulting from state policies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ignoring the gender dimension in national policies is a main entry point for the marginalisation of women working in agriculture, as national plans and policies, including the national plan, contain no policies or data on the conditions of women farmers, which leads to their complete exclusion from planning and decision-making circles, according to Dr <\/span>Amal Abdel Hamid<\/b>, director of the women’s programme at the Trade Union and Workers’ Services Organisation and coordinator of the Permanent Conference of Working Women.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis neglect is directly reflected in women’s conditions in terms of worsening poverty, high illiteracy rates and the absence of training, in addition to the growing climate impacts hitting this sector, and women are affected by these factors to a greater degree because they work in an informal sector without employment contracts, for meagre wages and in unsafe work environments,\u201d she tells \u201dZawia3\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The director of the women’s programme notes that extreme poverty pushes many women to put their children to work in agriculture, including children aged between 13 and 14, and sometimes even younger, which is a form of child labour and places them in dangerous and unsafe work environments. <\/span><\/p>\n

She points out that the absence of social protection, including social insurance and health insurance, increases the vulnerability of women’s conditions, especially given their exposure to diseases and risks during agricultural work, as well as the absence of vocational training that would enable them to adapt to climate change or use modern agricultural technology, which forces them to work longer hours for lower wages. <\/span><\/p>\n

She adds: \u201cThe proportion of women working in agriculture exceeds that of men, yet women do not own agricultural land and cannot obtain loans in their own names to set up their own agricultural projects, and their training opportunities are limited, so there is no real possibility of increasing productivity.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

She explains that women are not seen as independent economic actors but as helpers within the farming household, which deepens gender gaps that are clearly manifested in wages, as women receive roughly half of a man’s wage for the same work, as well as in the nature of employment, as farm owners prefer to employ men inside the villages, while women are pushed to work on distant farms, often in desert areas, which exposes them to serious risks while travelling. The work environment imposed on women also lacks the most basic elements of safety, whether in terms of the absence of toilets or exposure to harassment and violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amal believes that empowering women through training in modern farming tools will enable them to adapt to climate change, as well as enabling them to own agricultural land, providing loans, or providing health social protection, stressing that gender empowerment is a basic entry point for promoting sustainable agriculture and food security, and for improving the ability of rural communities to adapt to climate change and environmental difficulties.<\/span><\/p>\n

For her part, <\/span>Mona Ezzat<\/b>, chair of the board of trustees of the Al-Nun Foundation for Family Care, believes that integrating the gender dimension into agricultural policies is a fundamental matter for understanding the conditions of rural women, pointing out that women in the countryside are exposed to multiple forms of discrimination and violence compared with others, as a result of the highly conservative nature of rural society and the dominance of traditional cultural and social patterns that restrict women’s movement and limit their opportunities for education and economic and social empowerment.<\/span><\/p>\n

She explains that gender gaps in the countryside are not limited to the economic aspect alone, but are the product of a complex overlap of cultural, social and economic factors, stressing that depriving women of inheritance or of ownership of agricultural land cannot be separated from the prevailing patriarchal and male-dominated context, which seeks to preserve family control over land as a source of influence, power and social and political privilege.<\/span><\/p>\n

She tells \u201dZawia3\u201d: \u201cIn the rare cases in which a woman obtains a share of the land, rural society does not accept her direct management of the land or her supervision of agricultural work, which often makes her ownership merely formal, without actual control or the ability to make decisions\u201d, noting that this exclusion also extends to women agricultural workers, who face clear wage discrimination under the \u201cdaily wage\u201d system, and whose job opportunities are confined to particular seasons and crops, with their almost complete exclusion from work in mechanisation and agricultural technology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The chair of the board of trustees of the Al-Nun Foundation points out that unpaid work is one of the most prominent forms of economic discrimination against rural women, as women do real productive work, such as caring for livestock and poultry, taking part in the harvest and saving the family the cost of labour, and despite the direct or indirect economic return this achieves, it remains unrecognised and entails no social protection or economic rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

She criticises the absence of comprehensive rural development policies that take gender into account, explaining that existing interventions remain mostly traditional and reproduce stereotypical roles for women, through small projects limited to particular activities, without addressing the cultural and social roots of discrimination or involving women as independent economic actors capable of making decisions, and indicating that the absence of a link between economic empowerment and social empowerment limits the impact of these interventions and keeps patriarchal and male control in place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Concluding her conversation with us, she stresses that any policies or programmes targeting rural women must start from a deep understanding of the cultural and social context, and seek to change discriminatory patterns, alongside supporting women economically, in a way that guarantees them a real role in managing resources and decision-making, and in achieving gender justice and sustainability in food production.<\/span><\/p>\n

A reading of the agricultural reality in the Egyptian countryside from a gender perspective reveals that the fragility of food security is not the product of economic or climatic factors alone, but a direct reflection of an unjust structure that excludes women despite their being the main pillar of food production and its sustainability. Between unpaid work, almost non-existent ownership of land, and glaring gaps in wages and social protection, rural women bear a compound burden of poverty, marginalisation and lack of recognition, at a time when agricultural and development policies are run without involving them or listening to their accumulated experience.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ignoring the gender dimension in agricultural planning not only entrenches social discrimination but also undermines the chances of achieving fair and sustainable food security, and keeps production systems hostage to structural imbalances that weaken their ability to withstand economic and climatic crises. Therefore, legal and economic recognition of the role of rural women, enabling their access to land, resources and finance, guaranteeing their social protection and involving them in decision-making is no longer a development option but an urgent necessity to guarantee the right of society as a whole to food, justice and sustainability.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This report was produced as part of a fellowship with Free Press Unlimited<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The hidden face of agriculture in Egypt: women plant, harvest and feed the country, but they own neither the land nor the decision. The state’s agricultural policies reproduce poverty at the hands of women, while gender justice remains absent from the fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"kateb":[1550],"class_list":["post-16882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-en","kateb-aya-yasser"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\u0645\u0632\u0631\u0627\u0639\u0627\u062a.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16882"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23981,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16882\/revisions\/23981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16882"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=16882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}