PhD defence Abdelrahman Mohamed Nagy Mohamed Hussein

Keywords: Women's employment, Gender norms, Childcare, Household decision-making

"Barriers to Employment in Egypt: Gender Norms, Childcare, and Household Dynamics"

This thesis examines why women and young people in Egypt remain outside work, even when they want jobs. It combines two experiments with a study of families during COVID-19. In rural Upper Egypt, giving young people tailored information about vacancies encouraged concrete steps toward work, but did not increase employment during the follow-up. Having a parent present during the information session produced suggestive short-term gains for daughters, but little change for sons. In Greater Cairo, even free childcare and job-matching services did not appreciably increase mothers' employment. Many available jobs did not offer the hours, location, safety, or working environment that women and their families considered acceptable. Nursery costs, limited information, quality concerns, restrictive gender roles, and pandemic-related losses reinforced one another. The thesis concludes that employment policies must address job quality, childcare, household decision-making, and gender norms together, rather than treating any single barrier as the whole problem.

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