Abstract

The desire to craft new lifestyles is the main drive for the relocation to New Cairo among Egypt’s upper middle classes. This research is focusing on the upper middle class--people who still rely on their incomes from working to maintain their status—as opposed to the elite upper class, who rely on incomes from property, investments, inheritance, and other forms of intergenerational wealth. These communities were enmeshed in high degrees of domestic violence. The power-relations reconfigured in the domestic sphere, with increasing numbers of upper middle class women embarking on professional careers while navigating households and family relations, have opened the doors to new power dynamics that were not previously experienced in this society. There are multiple factors behind the neoliberal economic contribution of those women. The pressures of sustaining certain lifestyles, as well as women’s high levels of education in upper-middle class Egypt, spawned new home cultures, which in turn spawned a specific version of men at that socioeconomic level. This entanglement has resulted in female abuse despite high levels of education and economic independence for women, which, according to my fieldwork, has been linked to a cultural platform of violence against women in New Cairo as a reflection of the individualistic insecurities of men.

School

School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

Department

Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women's Studies

Degree Name

MA in Gender & Women's Studies

Graduation Date

Spring 6-25-2024

Submission Date

5-21-2024

First Advisor

Martina Rieker

Committee Member 1

Helen Rizzo

Committee Member 2

Jason Beckett

Extent

119p.

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Approval has been obtained for this item

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