Egyptians Do Not Accept Having A Woman As President of the Republic

A new questionnaire carried out by the Information and Decision Support Centre of the Council of Minister on the status of women in the Egyptian society has shown the increase of the proportion of people who think it is better for women to stay at home if there was no economic difficulty requiring her work. This proportion reached 84% after being 89% in 2006.

88% of the people above the age 18 and make 1025 person, think that it is very important that women should participate and have an opinion in the education of children, the house budget and decisions regarding the marriage of their sons and daughters.

However these views did not stop three quarters of the people from agreeing that increasing of women participation in the political life is an indicator of the progress of the society.

More than half the people think that the legislation in Egypt equalises between men and women, however regarding their views on women in leadership positions, almost 75% of them refused the idea of having a woman as a president of the republic, 75% refused women being mayors, 60% marriage official, 52% provincial governor, 48% judges and 52% as Prime Minister.

The posts to which rejection percentage was less were Head of the Parliament and Shura Council where the percentage was 37%, presidency of local councils 29% and Ministerial posts 23% and member of a local council with 16%.

Those who took the survey attributed their rejection to that they simply aren’t used to see women in such positions, some of them attributed it to traditions and customs which do not allow such thing in addition to having the emotional side of women preponderating their decisions as being stated by 21% of the people.