In Egypt, although at first people will think that men have nothing that affects their ability to participate in society, one has to stop and reflect again. In a society where demands of marriage are huge financially and men are the only ones who is expected to fulfil these demands, time to volunteer and be civically engaged is very hard to find. As many male volunteers leave the country to find employment opportunities in the Gulf area or some European countries, especially those who live in rural areas. Therefore, as a man in Egypt, where there are huge financial expectations, volunteering seems the least of his priorities.
If men are to find a place in engagement opportunities in the society, gender roles have to be re-negotiated and challenged.
Shaheer George, Egypt
It’s time to decide!
I’m in the middle of the process of making a decision - should I go to the job interview or not? A lot is for but I also find some points against it. During my kind of “rational choice” decission process, I face a truth. That my decision is not mainly about whether to go or not to go, but it’s actually a choice between the coice of being 2 victims or being a powerful human being. If I choose to be a victim, I can skip the job interview – justified with a known and often accepted excuse – I’m a woman (and men are always a priority in those jobs, so why even try?). Or I could choose to tryst my skills and myself in general, and be powerful. Instead of reproducing the discourse and thoughts and assumptions of women and accepting the existence of and the influcence of gender role in achieving my goals, my dreams. I prefer not only to tag myself as a “woman” and reduce myself to a gender, to be the victim is the easy solution, I could tag myself with other victim–tags too – “I’m a Muslim, from an etchnic minority, I am young, from a small town, from a middle class family, uneducated parents etc. etc.” So what? Ofcourse I face the reality too. Yes, there are tendencies in society which can be interpreted as if gender has an influence concerning the chances to achieve a dream. But despite this, we at the same time see an increasing amount of succesful women – they could somehow! Ergo, it is possible!
To be a woman is not an excuse- we should not talk about women’s rights, but human rights! No one can take out dream from us. If Kolena Laila didn’t raise her voice she didn’t have the right to complain! We should raise our voices, make our demands, fall down and stand up again. I invite everyone to do so, not only women. It’s time to make the decision!
-Ayse, Denmark
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