A total 72 percent of Egyptian women do not want a female head of state, according to a poll by the parliamentary information center of Cairo, reported the Italian news agency AKI.
According to the survey of more than 1,000 men and women, the female interviewees said they preferred women to remain at home and look after the domestic economy. The majority of people (82 percent of men, 74 percent of women) said they thought women should complete their education including university but would not approve of a womanas president or prime minister, the reports added.
More than half of those polled gave reasons for their choice, arguing that “women are not strong enough in facing the difficulties that these institutional roles involve.
Some 46 percent of women said they opposed a woman speaker in parliament.
Half of all interviewees, irrespective of their gender, said they would not trust a woman judge because incapable of keeping the correct distance from the situations they are presented with.
This comes despite the pronouncements of two of the country’s most respected religious figures, the grand mufti Ali Gomaa and Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University.
At the start of the year Gomaa issued a fatwa, or religious edict, saying that women had the right to become heads of state. Tantawi also recently declared that there are no obstacles within the Koran to a woman becoming a judge. Last March, for the first time, Egypt s Supreme Judicial Council of Cairo nominated 31 women judges.
