Gender-role attitudes among Egyptian adolescents.

Using nationally representative survey data, this study explores gender-role attitudes among unmarried adolescents aged 16-19 in Egypt, a society characterized by distinct and often segregated roles for men and women. Adolescents' views about desirable qualities in a spouse as well as more direct indicators of gender-role attitudes are examined, including opinions about whether wives should defer to their husbands, share in household decision making, and have the responsibility for performing domestic tasks. The findings regarding spousal characteristics reflect strong gender differentiation. Girls and boys provide divergent profiles of an ideal spouse, profiles that reflect traditional gender roles. Girls are significantly less likely than boys to favor educational inequality between spouses, however. Neither boys nor girls have egalitarian gender-role attitudes, although girls are significantly more likely to express less traditional attitudes. Multivariate analyses indicate that girls' and boys' attitudes do not vary consistently and significantly by socioeconomic background; in particular, increased schooling does not always promote egalitarian attitudes. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The decline of female circumcision in Egypt: evidence and interpretation.

Female circumcision is widespread in Egypt. Research suggests that the practice persists because of a belief that circumcision will moderate female sexuality, that it will assure a girl's marriagability, and that it is sanctioned by Islam. Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents, this paper investigates the prevalence and social correlates of circumcision among girls aged 10-19, the circumstances surrounding the procedure, and the attitudes of adolescents towards it. While the vast majority of adolescents are circumcised, a life table analysis indicates that girls today are at least 10 percentage points less likely to undergo female circumcision than were their mothers. Circumcision may have begun to decline prior to the time when the current cohort of girls were at risk; however, the data hint at a temporal association between the decline and the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, a time when the campaign against circumcision gained momentum. Over half of circumcised girls reported that the procedure was performed by a physician or nurse rather than a traditional practitioner. This represents a substantial increase over rates of "medicalized" circumcision found among earlier cohorts of Egyptian women. Even among circumcised girls, support for the practice is by no means universal, with 14 percent saying they think the procedure is unnecessary and a further 28 percent expressing ambivalence. A multivariate analysis indicates that girls who have been or are currently in school, who live in urban governorates, and who are older are more likely to believe that circumcision is not obligatory. When the analysis includes boys as well as uncircumcised girls, a large gender gap emerges, with boys considerably more supportive of the practice than are their female counterparts.