Women are less than two percent of the members. As the most important task of this new parliament will be to draft a new constitution, this constitution will be drafted by men. And by Islamist men.
Why so few women? One reason is that Egypt is a patriarchal country:
[W]e did a survey that was composed of only one question. Would you accept to see your president as a woman? One hundred percent of them said 'no.' This is what people think, it's OK to have democracy, but women are not in the equation of democracy.Another reason has to do with the way the election lists were constructed:
Also, the women who ran on party lists were placed far down on those lists, meaning they had virtually no chance of getting into office. And that was true of all parties, Islamist as well as liberal.It's not at all hard to predict that the new constitution will not give women equal rights.
"It really hurts so much when the same people you were with in that square that day, who are fighting against the regime ... are now turning against you," says Dalia Ziada, an activist who ran for Parliament. "It's like betrayal, betrayal from our companions."