Against women’s work: Social media panders to fragile masculinity

In our Eastern societies, we tend to move in empty circles, revisiting the same old debates. Issues that are long settled in more progressive countries remain open for discussion here—with no outcomes, and no progress. In fact, they sometimes even regress.

Women’s right to work tops that list. It continues to trend on social media, where recent months have seen successive waves of attacks on women’s employment and warnings against marrying working women. Some posts go so far as to suggest that a woman simply being in a workplace with men is a prelude to infidelity.

Like other campaigns steeped in racism and hate, these posts and memes targeting working women lack any data or coherent thinking. They aim instead to provoke and manipulate the Eastern male ego, stoking jealousy and possessiveness. One recurring scenario, for example, imagines a woman alone with a male colleague in a closed office—leaving it to the reader’s imagination to complete the sick fantasy.

The absurdity of imagination

Aside from the exaggerated depiction of the workplace as a private room shared by a man and a woman, these ideas deeply affect many who are shaped by a patriarchal mindset built on customs and traditions, and by the male-only conversations that dominate certain social spaces. This makes challenging such views risky. Any attempt to question them is often met with ridicule or accusations of being a "dayyouth", a derogatory term used in Arab societies for describing a cuckold.

Many posts highlight common, everyday workplace interactions—light jokes, friendly chats, and professional discussions. Yet, those who know such behaviors are normal rarely have the courage to admit they wouldn’t mind if their own wives did the same. This silence encourages questions like: who really “owns” the female employee—her husband or her boss? The husband’s desire to possess often wins out, even though he never pauses to consider what “owning” a person really means.

These campaigns that frame workplaces as settings for illicit encounters also ignore the reality of professional environments. Most jobs come with structures of professionalism, boundaries, mental discipline, and mutual respect—reinforced by the presence of other coworkers, surveillance cameras, and workplace regulations that penalize misconduct.

People who share these posts don’t see reality; they see the world through the lens of their own insecurities. In their minds, the working woman is a wife who hates her husband for no reason and spontaneously falls for a colleague or supervisor. This imagined conflict between the husband and the coworker leads many to avoid marrying working women altogether—or to pressure their wives into quitting—to avoid a conflict that exists only in their minds.

What does religion say?

Some people believe that women’s work contradicts the natural social roles. They cite religious and social interpretations to justify this view. Many men demand that their wives leave their jobs, embracing the slogan: “Don’t marry a working woman”, so she can focus on her “real duties”—giving birth and serving her husband.

These men believe that letting a woman work “without an urgent need” reflects a man’s weakness in fulfilling his role as provider and guardian.

Much of the negativity around women working is fed by conservative religious rulings from clerics who prohibit it except in cases of extreme necessity. Meanwhile, women who face harassment are routinely blamed for simply being present in the workplace. The “solution” offered? Return home—because a woman’s very existence in a mixed-gender setting is deemed provocative.

Data tells a different story

Women make up just 15% of the labor market. Yet, according to data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics/CAPMAS in May 2023, women are the primary providers for 4.4 million households out of a total of 25.8 million Egyptian families.

Given Egypt’s current economic conditions, a wife’s income is a necessary lifeline for many households. But this fact is often drowned out by these campaigns, which promote an image of the working man as a noble provider sacrificing his life for his family, while painting the working woman as constantly trying to dodge responsibility, using her job as leverage to leave her husband whenever she wants.

Despite the fact that women earn over 13% less than men, the issue of wages only enters these conversations when men complain about women joining the labor market. Their argument? Employers prefer hiring women because they’ll accept lower salaries.

According to this logic, men are more entitled to jobs because they support families, while women spend their salaries on “trivial, unnecessary things” or just to “prove themselves.” Meanwhile, men suffer under the weight of being sole providers.

The entire wage crisis, then, gets pinned on women—while state policies, private-sector practices, and economic conditions escape scrutiny.

The truth is that low pay in Egypt results from poor employment practices, low productivity, and broader economic dysfunction—not from women joining the workforce.

A backlash disguised as morality

This growing resentment towards working women may be deeply tied to feelings of powerlessness and the rage that stems from it. It can also be seen as a desperate attempt by men—who experience defeat on a daily basis—to assert power over someone, anyone. And no opponent is easier to attack than a woman.

In our Eastern societies, today’s version of masculinity has evolved from the domineering “Si El-Sayed” figure (a cultural archetype representing the traditional authoritarian patriarch—popularized by Egyptian literature as a symbol of absolute male control within the family) to the self-proclaimed “sigma male,” who still craves dominance but now seeks it through validation and visibility in digital spaces. Yet the mindset—and the need to assert control over women—remains unchanged.

This backlash against working women is not just a social trend—it’s part of a larger effort to deflect blame for societal failure onto those with the least power. It’s easier to hold women responsible for job scarcity, economic hardship, or strained marriages than to challenge the actual forces behind these problems.