Violence Against Women
Violence against women has been and is still exercised as an old and prolonged phenomenon in Egypt. It is largely expanding, often due to low cultural or social environments. Dr. Azza Karim, professor of sociology at the National Center for Social and Criminological Research stresses that by accepting violence, and tolerating it as normal or natural, encourages the continuance of violence against women.
A recent study noted that the Egyptian economy lost about 150 billion pounds over the last 50 years due to violence against women. This figure does not include the loss of direct materials or the moral losses compounding the social environment.
Dr. Hamdi Hinawi, the leader of the study, affirmed that there is an annual $3 billion and 322 million pound bill borne by society due to violence against women. The study aimed to assess the economic costs of the violence, which includes not only the financial burden on the community’s budget, or the allocation of its resources to address the effects of violence, but also the loss to society, production and national income that could have been achieved if the violence was not part of the community.
Dr. Hinawi’s study shows that the culture of the community is to look down on women, which leads to the poor treatment of women including a combination of coercion and/or beatings, which begins in childhood, training subservience and submissiveness, later decreasing their access to opportunities.
Dr. Hinawi notes that economic costs resulting from violence against women are either direct costs represented in the treatment of injuries incident because of violence, the disruption of women’s work, the cost of disruption to family members who need to take off work to take care of the women, or indirect costs such as lack of productivity, the low contribution to GDP, and a low income community.