As a hit series puts patriarchal guardianship laws under the spotlight, campaigners say proposed reforms are not enough
he day before Aly Hegazy graduated from high school in June 2020, his father died from cancer after a long illness. The grief of losing him was compounded by the realisation that, without his father’s signature, he would be unable to go to university.
The guardianship legislation is one of a number of “personal status laws” that lawyers say are outdated and treat women like criminals. They stem from a passage in the Qur’an that says: “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more [strength] than the other, and because they support them from their means.
It took six months before Helal was granted a special court hearing to transfer guardianship because of her father-in-law’s dementia. “It was easier for us because we had other sources of income,” says Hegazy. “Other people wouldn’t have survived those six months.” The guardianship legislation was intended to protect the inheritance of a child before they reached the age of 21, explains Karim Adel, a lawyer based in Cairo, and to prevent the mother from spending it. But in practice, he says, “the court treats the mother as a thief”, with judges reluctant to let women spend money.“Some people want to enrol their kids in international schools,” he says. “These schools cost $10,000 a year or even more.
However, he was too ill to leave hospital to sign the guardianship over to his wife. “My father worked so hard so that we could have a good future,” says Zuheiry. “And he died worrying about this.”Photograph: Jonathan Rashad/The Guardian “The law is based on very outdated ideas,” says Adly. “We have female politicians, we have doctors, scientists – even the minister of planning and urban development is a woman. But the law still sees women as incapable of managing their children’s money.”
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