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Victims and Heroines: Women, Welfare and the Egyptian State

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In the US and some other developed countries, there is often much to-do about welfare "bludgers". Of these welfare recipients, those that are single women with children consistently attract the most opprobrium. The US has the added overly of race: The stereotype of a racial minority single mother. This admixture exacerbates feelings, at the very least. An American might ask: If we could somehow remove the racial stereotype, would there still be an animus towards women-headed households on welfare?

That is the attraction of this book. It looks at the travails of such women in Egypt. The women are all of the same ethnicity as most of the population, and mostly too of the same religion, Islam. The narrative shows that prejudice still exists; of a conservative patriarchal bent, where the women are blamed for their situations and discriminated against, to "encourage" them to find a husband to head their households. Due to Egypt being a conservative Muslim country. Yet such attitudes are scarcely unknown amongst social and Christian conservatives here.

Bibars writes in a clear style, readily understandable to laymen. Mostly dispassionate. But she presents excerpts from several interviewees that starkly describe the difficulties they face. A constant theme is poverty or near-poverty; and these are Egyptian levels of subsistence. Some readers may find these passages not easy going.