Women hold 45% of government jobs in Egypt, above the global average
According to the Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said, Egyptian women hold 45 percent of the total government jobs in the country. The figure is way above the global average of 32 percent.
During her speech at the opening of the first annual workshop of the Women's Studies Unit at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University, El-Said reviewed Egypt's success in the field of women's empowerment in the past few years. She noted that women's participation in boards of directors, in general, has improved from 9.7 percent in 2017 to 10.2 percent in 2018. Moreover, the percentage of women's representation in banks' boards of directors reached 12 percent in 2019, up from about ten percent in 2018.
She further added that the percentage of female executive leaders in Egypt reached 7.1 percent, which is higher than the average in the Middle East and North Africa region, estimated at 5.4 percent. In addition, about 18 percent of editor-in-chief positions in state-run newspapers are held by women.
In the framework of Egypt's financial inclusion process, the percentage of women who have bank accounts reached 27 percent. Egyptian women also received 51 percent of the total loans directed to micro-businesses, while the percentage of women who defaulted on loan payments did not exceed one percent.
El-Said highlighted the launch of the National Strategy for the Empowerment of Women 2030, which aims to address the factors affecting women's economic empowerment. She explained that this strategy identified several key quantitative indicators to measure the progress of women's economic empowerment.
The state is working on creating a legislative, institutional, and cultural environment appropriate for women's economic empowerment, as it is keen to integrate the concepts of gender equality and women's empowerment into educational curricula, she added.
The rehabilitation of government cadres, both male and female, through training programs is one of the strategic objectives of the Egyptian state. On top of these programs comes the rehabilitation of women executive leaders, which is implemented by the National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in cooperation with the National Council for Women, the Administrative Control Authority, and UN Women. A total of 300 women graduated from the program.