One of the most important and interesting research areas for me is the study of women and children in developing countries. My research focuses mainly on international development projects, particularly those that require resettlement of indigenous populations such the Nubians of Egypt.
The Nubian society, like any other conservative Islamic society, has customs that limit women from generating their own source of income. My research focuses on creating or exploring new ways to help Nubian women to better participate in the market/ workforce- through marketing their products using unconventional methods – and without going beyond the traditions that have been practiced in the society for thousands of years.
The Nubian society in Egypt is characterized by its interest in handicrafts produced from the surrounding environment, especially palm trees. Nubian women are skilled in blending colors, spinning baskets, carpets and clothing in an eye-catching way. As the access of Nubian women to sell their products to tourist groups in their villages has been reducing/shrinking due to the monopoly of businessmen who began to drag tourist groups away from villages. Most businessmen, and especially coming back from the Gulf area with large capital, tend to build "Exhibits" like traditional Nubian houses. These exhibits called “Al Biet Al Nubi”. Therefore, it became difficult for women to interact with tourists and to market their products in the usual way. Nevertheless, women left with no choice but to agree to sell their handmade crafts at the cheapest prices to brokers or to owners of these large businesses. This problem that Nubian women face is the focus of my research that is to explore a new and “unconventional” way to ensure that Nubian women market their products and avoid being exploited by traders.
Mainly, handicrafts are a primary source of income for most Nubian women in Egypt. As producers, they often receive the lowest return in the trading chain. What exacerbates the problem is that the crafts made by Nubian women are rarely acknowledged as art that should be nurtured and included in the art scene, which defines the scopes of cultural identities of Nubian society.
In addition, one of the biggest challenges that Nubian women face in marketing their products is that in Egypt there is not much daily demand for locally made crafts, other than the simple, low-cost crafts used by lower income Egyptians, such as pottery to hold water, palm reed baskets, and iron works used in rural and semi-rural areas (Hassanin,2008).
Finally, in addition to financial gain, my project aims to raise awareness of the economic empowerment of Nubian women. From a social entrepreneurial angle, in comparison to their male counterparts, it was noted that women tend to ask for smaller fund/capital and also ask for significantly lower amounts of money in pricing their products (Giotopoulos et al, 2017). Regardless of the society's view of the work of women as something superfluous or non-essential. There are many households that depend on the daily income of a woman by selling her handicrafts to support their families.
My overall research agenda focuses on the social angle of entrepreneurship. Based on my previous research and my personal experience, I concluded that most non-profits in the region and many institutions that work on women empowerment depend on charity and don’t have a clear picture of the future of Nubian women in business. For more details, you can access my research agenda here:
Hassanin, L. (2008, September). Egyptian women artisans: ICTs are not the entry to modern markets. In IFIP International Conference on Human Choice and Computers (pp. 179-190). Springer, Boston, MA.
Giotopoulos, I., Kontolaimou, A., & Tsakanikas, A. (2017). Drivers of high-quality entrepreneurship: what changes did the crisis bring about?. Small Business Economics, 48(4), 913-930.
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