Conclusions

low-income economies, more hands mean more work gets done. Moving out of this cycle requires investment in education and job creation outside of traditional labor-intensive sectors. It also requires behavior change. However, often these same social and cultural norms stand in the way of having open and frank discussions about these issues, including women’s empowerment and reproductive health, as these may be considered sensitive topics.

Cultural misinterpretations and rigidity in the narrow definition of gender roles have also compounded with the rise of the militant religious wave over the past decade. This package of militant norms is translated into consanguinity, early marriages, adolescent childbearing, extended family, and resistance to FP. Although these manifestations are more pronounced among the poor, uneducated, and rural residents of Egypt, they have also crept into the lives and lifestyles of wealthier, educated, and urban residents (World Bank 2018). gender bias in access to education and employment still exists.Egypt has succeeded in the last decade in closing the gender gap in health and education, but a lot is still needed to grant women equal opportunitiesacross all these areas (WEF 2019), and especially in labor markets.

Egypt continues to suffer from a gender literacy gap as well. The literacy rate among women stands at 65 percent, which translates into a 15 percent gender gap that needs to be bridged (WEF 2019). The gender gap tends to be wider in rural areas and among the lowest wealth quintiles, which poses a serious challenge to those groups, given that the education level of the population is an important factor influencing perceptions, economic participation and productivity, reproductive behavior, and so on. Because illiteracy is higher among women, the impact on women’s empowerment and, accordingly, fertility behavior is highly probable. There is evidence that women who are less educated and less empowered are more likely to bear more children and less likely to be using contraceptives (Baseera, nPC, and UnFPA 2017).

In some contexts, preference for sons may be a contributing factor to these outcomes. gender-based biases continue throughout the life cycle of women and men. Thus, as children grow and reach school age, some families may send their boys to school, whereas female children may stay at home to help with household chores. In addition to contributing to high illiteracy rates among females, such trends contribute to increases in early marriage and childbearing.

These norms and biases also influence female labor force participation, which, as discussed earlier, continues to pose challenges for women. Educated, working women are more likely to make informed choices regarding their reproductive health and the health of their children. They are also more likely to use FP methods. This choice applies to first birth as well to intervals between births, which tend to be longer among working women (Baseera, nPC, and UnFPA 2017).

CONCLUSIONS

Although considerable progress has been made in improving access to health services, both supply- and demand-side constraints remain. Most important among these constraints are (a) shortage of key health personnel, particularly in rural or remote areas; (b) inconsistency of FP programs as a result of policy changes, with service delivery oscillating between vertical, stand-alone, and integrated sexual and reproductive health services; (c) poor planning and