The New Labor Law.. Discrimination Against Woman

     In spite of adopting the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1979, and the Egyptian government ratifying it in 1981, Egyptian women still suffer from different forms of discrimination. These forms of discrimination are represented in several fields, such as, woman's right to manage the public affairs of her society in which she lives or woman's right to nominate her self to the public local councils, etc. it may be said that these forms of discrimination are the result of anti- feminist social traditions and behavior, so, the government is not the main reason behind this discrimination.

      But when it comes to laws and legislations enacted and passed by the government, so the responsible is the government for being the absolute majority always ready to approve any bill. There are many examples for the discriminative laws such as, the penal code, the nationality law, criminal procedures law and the labor law, etc.
It is not easy to tackle aspects of discrimination against woman in every Egyptian law, so that, just one of the most important laws will be tackled in this article, the Unified Labor No 12 for the Year 2003.

     The law regulates the labor situation in Egypt, in its heart women labor. It could be claimed that, regarding women labor in the context of that law, many profits, that had been gained upon other laws, had been lost upon that law. The second chapter of the sixth part in the unified labor law is allocated for lessening women's rights and decreasing them.

     According to article No 91 of the new law, a female having spent ten months (six months only in the law No 137 for the year 1981) in the service of an employer shall be entitled to a maternity leave of 90 days, ( 50 days only in the old law), making the maternity leave for 90 days instead of 50 days is considered to be the may be only merit concerning the privileges of women in this law.

      As for article No 94 of the New Unified Labor Law stipulates that the employer who has 50 employees or more should give a child care unpaid leave for not more than 2 years and for not more than two times during her time in service, while the old law permitted the child care unpaid leave for not more than one year and for not more then three times during her service time. It is clear that the new law takes with the right hand what it gives with the left one, it does not improve the situation more or less. We believe that this verbal game mentioned in the old law and the new one is intended, as usual in the Egyptian legislations, when it use ambiguous or expandable expressions to give the executive authority the right to interpret them as it likes and also to give it more jurisdictions. We are not in a position to compare the articles in the late and current laws, but we would like to highlight the core of the text. While this article gives the right to child- care leave for women who work in an institution that contain more than 50 employees, it forgets that the major feature of the Egyptian economy is the kind of institutions which contain 50 employees or less, in which women do not enjoy this right.

      Likewise, article No 95 of the new law obligates the employer who is having 5 female employees or more, instead of one employee or more in the old law, to affix a copy of women's work order. There is no clear reason in the new law behind increasing the minimum of female employees to five employees. What could be of any harm to an employer who has less then five female employees in affixing a copy of the women's work order? We think that this is meant for further exploitation for working women, the law deprives those women from even gaining some awareness about their work rights. Also, there is vagueness, for neither the new law, nor the old one identify the women's work order. Is it the collection of the rights and the responsibilities mentioned in the labor law concerning women? Or it is all the working women's rights declared in the international human rights conventions related to this subject, particularly those ratified by the Egyptian government. Similarly, article No 96 of the New Unified Labor Law obligates the employer who hires 100 female workers/employees or more to allocate a child- care center in the place of work, this article was the same in the law No 137, it means that the employer who has 99 female workers/employee does not have to comply with this provision.

     As for article No 97, it reaches the highest degree of violating all the international measures related to the working women's rights. The law does not apply to women who work in the farming sector, instead of agricultural sector, in the law No 137. women who work in farming were deprived from being under the umbrella of the New Unified Labor Law, which is considered an unjustified tyrannical rule. For how could a complete group of workers in a certain sector be deprived of the necessary legal protection? The absence of legislations regulating the workers' situation in a certain economic sector is considered a discrimination against the women working in the field of mere farming, for not considering them equal to the women work in the other economic sectors which does not consist with the principals of eliminating the discrimination against women. Though the number of women working in the field of farming is about 3 millions workers, the legislator ignored the rights of this group and moreover did not codify their minimum rights in a legislative frame.

Abdel Mawla Ismaiel
Civil Society and Human Rights activist& researcher
Tel: 002/0105760794
00202/5422353
e-mail: abdelmawlaa@yahoo.com