Breaking the Mold: Where Do Women Truly Thrive – At Home or in the Workplace
“Bab Dialogue”, produced by the Al Jazeera 360 platform, addressed the issue of women’s work and the extent of its conflict with being responsible for their families. Opinions varied widely among participants in the episode.
Some expressed their belief that working women are capable of raising a strong and educated generation, while others said that it is difficult to combine motherhood and work.
Which will be seen during the episode Next linkBanan Shams al-Din – an education academy director – said that women’s work is not as essential as men’s, responsible for building and supporting a family, but he also said that women’s work may be limited to education and women’s medical matters.
Shams El-Din believes that the task of raising an emotionally balanced and educated generation constitutes a greater need for society than women’s work, especially since his long personal experience at work “proved that the mother’s presence at home is important for children during childhood. “
However, media personality and activist Isra Al-Mudalal disagrees with the previous discussion and believes that women’s work is essential to achieve their economic security and to prove themselves alongside men in making important decisions for the sake of the family and society.
Al-Mudalal said that women complete their work 10% more than men, and therefore they are more able to achieve a balance between work and family, and if the husband understands this, they can also achieve great things, he said.
On the other hand, the Egyptian doctor Osama Odeh disagrees with the hadith of al-Mudalal that “men and women should not be placed on the same scale because it will lead to imbalance in life, because women’s work is not rejected, but it must be balanced.”
Egyptian social researcher Sarah Sabri agreed with Odeh’s statement and said that women always work and perform various tasks in their homes, but they work independently and are not bound to specific working hours required for work.
Journalist Rahshan Saghlam disagrees with the previous opinion that women’s work is “not only very important to prove themselves and achieve economic independence, as it has become an economic necessity these days, whether they are married or single.”
He added, “A working mother can raise strong children who look up to her as a role model. Even if she is single, she sets an example for those around her,” considering that “a working woman has a strong personality. There is and he is capable of making decisions, if it does not conflict with the interests of his children, this leads to the need to amend our labor laws.”
In the same context, journalist and activist Qutaiba Yasin said, successful countries are those countries where both sexes work because it is not logical to deprive half of the society, and therefore women’s work is very necessary and it is assumed that it does not exist anymore. topic of discussion.
But Odeh responded by saying that in these societies where the percentage of women’s work is increasing and if they achieve material success, they simultaneously suffer from major problems like the European middle-age problem, which is the main cause. Women’s allocation to family and childbearing through work.
Reconciling work and family
Regarding the possibility of combining work and home, Shams El-Din said that working women face difficulties in organizing their household affairs, adding, “In light of the generation that depends on their mothers for everything, women try to achieve this balance. own expenses.”
Odeh also said that working multiple jobs puts women under a lot of stress, which is scientifically untrue, and therefore grossly unfair to them.
But al-Mudalal said that there is no determinant of balance because the balance between home and work depends on the woman herself and her ability to teach and give, and being satisfied with the role of mother leaves a dependent generation and those who do. According to her, working women are no bigger than women.
While she admits that the balance is difficult to achieve, Sagalam says that women’s work requires the cooperation of men. Qutaiba Yasin added, “There are working women who do not neglect their household affairs and the same applies to men, while men do nothing.”
But Sabri believes that a mother’s presence at home “doesn’t mean she does everything, rather she can distribute roles to her children, while professional work consumes her energy and focus.”
Work or home?
Shams al-Din says that the working environment is “unfair to women and does not make them equal financially to men, and does not consider their situation as mothers and wives, and therefore they must choose a job suitable for their family.” However, Odeh said that the presence of women in the labor market “hurt men, created great competition and increased unemployment for men, after they entered all jobs, even those they could not physically do.”
But Al-Mudalal said that a woman can find a good work environment, otherwise her home is better than her, although this is not an excuse for laziness because men also face a difficult work environment and yet they do not stay at home.
As for Saghlan, she said that women have gained many rights, but they still suffer from financial oppression and workplace problems, including sexual harassment. Try it.”
Sabri disagrees with this proposition saying that women did not achieve success, but rather found opportunities because they accepted a lower financial return that men did not because they were responsible for a family that required a large salary.
Instead, Yasin said that women are not oppressed in the work environment, rather there is a positive preference for them and that injustice occurs in certain work environments and falls equally on men and women.
