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Hijabis Demand Justice in the Egyptian Workplace

January 31, 2021
Illustration by Noran Morsi.

Egypt is a country with, as of April to June 2020, a 9.6 percent unemployment rate, a rise of 1.9 percent from the first quarter of the year. However, for veiled women (hijabis), who objectively constitute a majority of women in Egypt, employment is a different ballgame. In the last decade in Egypt, there has been a trend of discrimination against hijabis in the job hiring process. Documented on social media, job listings have requested non-hijabis, hiring managers have directly told hijabis they would need to edit how conservative their hijab style is for the job, and others were asked to take it off completely. In 2013, a customer at Spectra, a restaurant in Mokattam was in the bathroom when she discovered that hijabi employees at the restaurant are made to take off their veils during work hours and would put them back on after their shift. After the customer’s Facebook post went viral, a small movement began to Boycott the restaurant, but its reach was limited. المذيعة دينا زكريا تعلن أنها ستقاطع مطاعم سبيكترا بسب تعنتهم ضد الحجاب .. السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته النهاردة… Posted by…


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