Guaranteed Seats for Political Representation of Women

Egypt adopted in 1979 a guaranteed representation formula reserving 30 seats for women in Egypt's parliament. In late 1986, however, this quota for women was cancelled in a general revision of the electoral laws. This paper examines the experiment with guaranteed representation for women from the perspective of women political activists, both in government and outside. The data are from interviews with 45 women political activists, both inside and outside the government, conducted in the spring of 1987 and supplemented by 15 years of research in Egypt on the role of women in public life.