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It could mean multiple things: Either they like you, they just want to hang out as friends or they want to hook up.

Egyptian marriage customs, education, etc

But no one really knows. In our society, this battle is hard because you will be slut shamed for wanting a casual relationship. The topic of marriage is inescapable.

Egyptian Marriage Customs

So naturally, because you want to avoid the inevitable discussion about marriage, you refrain from updating your parents about your dating life. You never introduce them to your date because they will overthink the situation. There is an increasing return to philanthropy in a traditional sense of charity and patronage, in addition to some community-based foundations and associations that provide services.

Islamist groups have been active in providing services in poor areas, particularly in health care and educational services. This was the main source for their popularity in the past decade. With government restrictions on Islamist groups, however, such activity has been considerably curtailed. Egypt has a long tradition of voluntary associations. Currently there are over fourteen thousand associations, most of which are devoted to charitable purposes.

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They are mostly small and local, and none has a mass membership. After , the associations were governed by a law that stipulated fairly close governmental control. A new law allowing somewhat more flexibility was passed in but was declared unconstitutional a year later, so the older law continues to apply. This law was contested by many environmental and human rights associations, because it appeared to prevent them from taking political positions.

The main national associations are the professional syndicates for doctors, lawyers, teachers, agricultural officials, and others. They lobby for their members, and also sometimes play a role on the political scene. Their internal politics tends to be a reflection of national politics, with the main competition between the NDP and the Islamists. The professional syndicates are also governed by restrictive laws, and are periodically suspended by the government for infringing these restrictions.

The Egyptian marriage culture

People wait outside a spice shop in Khan el-Khalili. Business queues are often separated by gender. Division of Labor by Gender. Household work and child rearing are almost exclusively women's responsibility. Women also contribute significantly to productive work outside the home, especially in cities. But since the majority of women work in the informal sector, the size of their contribution is often underestimated. In rural areas, women work in the fields in most regions.

In addition, women's household responsibilities in villages involve many productive and profitable activities, although they are not generally recognized as "work. Women may also take part in some stages of preparing crops for market. The Relative Status of Women and Men. In general, men and women have equal legal rights. But equality is not determined only by law.

For example, the principle of equal pay applies only in the formal sector. Women working in the informal sector are often paid less than men. Women do not have the same legal rights as men in the domain of personal status marriage, divorce, child custody. Only Egyptian men have the right to pass on Egyptian nationality to their children. Various feminist and human rights groups, however, are active in promoting legal change in areas of discrimination against women.

At home men have more power than women, and are supposed to make the major decisions. Nevertheless, women have much influence and informal power. One of the critical decisions a woman can make is the choice of marriage partner. The pattern here is one of negotiation among the members of her family about whom she will marry. She is a participant, and must in some sense agree, but many others are involved, including matchmakers.

Similarly a young man may find constraints on his choice of marriage partner. The trend is for marriage partners to be increasingly more like one another in age and level of education.

Egyptian Marriage Customs and Legal Rights

The old hierarchical marriage is giving way to a companionate marriage, especially in the urban middle classes. Marriage to cousins, however, remains frequent, accounting for 39 percent of marriages in a sample. Since premarital sex is rare, the pressure to marry is high, and almost everyone marries.

The actual marriage ceremony is distinct from the legal contract of marriage.

The Downside of Dating in Egypt | Identity Magazine

It is a major event in the lives of all involved. The young couple must prepare a place to live, while at the same time seeing that the often considerable costs of the ceremony are covered. People spend as much as they can, if not more, on a marriage, and in the upper classes, the sky is the limit.

Polygyny having more than one wife among Muslims is rare, and declining. Around 5 percent of Muslim men have more than one wife, and most of them only two. A polygynous man usually maintains two households. Divorce is formally easy though families try to reconcile the partners. The rate of divorce is declining, while the absolute number is increasing. When a divorced couple has children, the mother retains custody only while they are young.

The father may then claim them. Copts recognize neither polygyny nor divorce. An important signal of family identity is the personal name. Egyptians frequently do not have "family" names in the current Western sense of a last name that is shared by all members of an extended family. Instead, each person has a given name, followed by the given names of his or her father, grandfather, and so on.

For legal purposes one's name is usually "given name, father's name, grandfather's name," resulting in three given names e.

Thus one carries one's paternal lineage and one's status in one's name. In certain parts of rural Egypt, where genealogy is important, people learn to recite a long list of paternal ancestors.

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Muslim men are likely to have religious names but some have secular names. Christians may carry the names of saints, or may be given names that are Arabic rather than religious. Women also have religious names but sometimes have more fanciful ones, including names of foreign origin. Women often do not change their names upon marriage. Although most households now are organized around a nuclear family, there are some extended family households.

Marriage was historically patrilocal brides moved to the household of the husband , though in cities the young couple often establishes a new residence, at least after a couple of years. Even when residence is not shared, extensive kin ties are maintained through frequent family gatherings.

Authority tends to be patriarchal, with the senior male in the household generally given the last word and otherwise expecting deference. Wives, for instance, often are reluctant to assert that they have any serious independent power to make decisions. Islamic law requires partible inheritance. The property of a dead person must be divided among the heirs, usually children and surviving spouse.

Male heirs are favored over female heirs by receiving a share that is twice as large. Moreover, any group of heirs should include a male, even if that means tracking down a distant cousin. A person may not dispose of more than one-third of his or her estate by will, and may not even use this provision to favor one legal heir over another.


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  • The Downside of Dating in Egypt.