Female MPs and the political pageantry of ridicule

To be a woman in Egypt is to be constantly required to exert extra effort: to prove your worth, to persuade society of your competence to perform roles your male peers occupy with ease and without scrutiny. This unwritten rule, which cuts across all spheres of life, becomes especially visible in politics, where it lays bare a deliberate discrimination against women, one that large segments of the public, across genders, have come to accept.

This sensitivity surfaces clearly in media coverage and in social media reactions to news about candidates in the 2026 parliamentary elections, and to current women members of parliament.

Absent popular support

Women hold 26.8% of seats in Egypt’s House of Representatives, roughly in line with the global average, with a total of 160 seats. Of these, 142 are allocated through party lists, four through individual candidacy and 14 by presidential appointment.

Law No. 46 of 2014 governing the House of Representatives sets out the mechanisms and criteria for such appointments. Article 27 grants the president the authority to appoint up to 5% of elected members, provided that at least half of those appointed are women. This provision has opened a constitutional and legal pathway to ensure greater female representation in parliament through presidential decree.

Yet this political will, which formally affirms women’s right to occupy parliamentary space, finds little resonance on the street. Public distrust of the political process often folds women’s presence into its critique, treating their increased representation as evidence of systemic dysfunction rather than progress.

Women are cast as unqualified for legislative roles, and instead of support, they are met with a steady undercurrent of ridicule—one that quietly erodes even the most symbolic gains.

A double-edged weapon

Criticism of women politicians has ranged from mockery to outright bullying, compounding existing structural challenges. Gendered ridicule was evident during the election lead-up and continued afterward, targeting those who secured parliamentary seats.

Media coverage, both official and informal, but particularly on social media, has fixated on appearance, bodies and identity, often at the expense of political substance. This was evident in the case of MP Riham Abo El-Hasan, who became widely known as “the pretty MP.” A simple search of that phrase yields a flood of coverage, most of it detached from her legislative role or performance as an elected representative.

This pattern is not incidental. A systematic analysis of more than 90 studies, encompassing 750,000 media reports, shows that women parliamentarians receive disproportionate attention to their appearance and personal lives, while their speeches and political platforms are sidelined. Media framing often emphasizes women’s bodies over their faces, in contrast to male politicians—a phenomenon known as face-ism.

Satire, in itself, is a vital popular tool for critiquing power—provided it is stripped of gendered harm. When directed exclusively or disproportionately at women, however, it becomes what is known as gendered ridicule: a form of humor that targets gender identities or roles, often reflecting and reinforcing prevailing stereotypes and social norms.

In this context, ridicule does more than provoke laughter. It polices behavior, disciplines deviation and quietly reasserts the boundaries of an entrenched gender order.

Agents or spectacles

For women MPs, gendered ridicule acts as a disciplinary mechanism, regulating how they perform in public life. This is especially evident during campaigns, where many candidates faced mockery that cannot be disentangled from gender bias.

Among them were Helwan candidate Shaimaa Abdel Aal and Nagaa Hammadi MP Rehab El-Ghoul, who faced backlash after a campaign tour in which her supporters chanted that she deserved the parliamentary seat previously held by her father. While political nepotism is far from unique, the intensity and tone of the backlash against El-Ghoul placed her squarely within the crosshairs of gendered ridicule.

At first glance, such humor may appear trivial or even crude, as these examples suggest. But beneath its surface lies a deeper logic: it mirrors the foundations of the gender order and contributes to its reproduction within the social and cultural spaces where this humor circulates.

Here, women parliamentarians are gradually recast, not as political actors, but as objects of amusement, flirtation or spectacle, reduced to their bodies rather than recognized for their agency. This dynamic is starkly illustrated in videos of oath-taking sessions under the parliamentary dome. One clip of MP Eva Maher, repeatedly asked by the speaker to retake her oath, went viral as fodder for ridicule. The same request had been made to several male MPs during the session, yet their moments did not travel in the same way or reach the same media visibility.

Similarly, the reception of Monica Magdy’s campaign, who became known as “the bicycle candidate”, cannot be separated from gender bias. What a woman in her thirties framed as a creative attempt to draw attention in elections dominated by political money was reduced to spectacle.

Coverage lingered on her campaign rounds pulling a bicycle, and on her statement that her party followed a state-oriented reformist approach. She did not receive the same level of support granted to Mohamed Zahran, who was branded in the media as “the candidate of the poor.”

Soft repression

This sustained tracking of women MPs through ridicule rarely engages with their political performance with the same intensity reserved for their missteps or mere visibility. During the first month of parliament’s session, MP Irene Saeed submitted a formal question regarding internet packages that are depleted in less than 10 days—a concern shared by a wide segment of internet users in Egypt, particularly those subscribed to WE, the primary service provider in which the government holds roughly a 70% stake.

Her parliamentary question translated a broad public frustration into institutional language, feeding into a campaign that had already begun to echo across social media. Yet here, the machinery of ridicule fell conspicuously silent. There was no fixation on her demeanor or appearance, no cascade of mocking commentary—only engagement with the issue itself, which concerns millions.

The asymmetry is telling. Ridicule is not simply spontaneous; it is selective, calibrated, and deeply political in what it chooses to amplify and what it allows to pass without distortion.

The effects of this ridicule do not stop at the women MPs themselves—who operate under the weight of constant scrutiny, amplified by media narratives and social media campaigns in which even cultural elites participate. Its reach extends further, functioning as a muted warning to women considering political life or public visibility: this is the cost of entry.

In this way, fear of the public sphere is quietly reproduced as a space that is hostile, even unsafe, for women. An older social message is revived in contemporary form—“remain in your homes”—not as an explicit command, but as a diffuse social expectation reinforced through repetition.

This regressive posture is not confined to men alone. It is also internalized and reproduced by many women, shaped by a broader cultural mood that conflates "respecting women" with sanctifying them beyond politics, casting political life as a tainted arena unfit for them.

Under these conditions, gendered ridicule operates less as momentary humor and more as a slow, accumulative process of erasure—one that chips away at women’s legitimacy, narrows the horizon of their participation and, ultimately, disciplines the boundaries of who is permitted to speak, act and belong in political life.

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*The Arabic version of the article was published on Jan. 28, 2026